Visitor to our yard

Today, this tortoise came to visit. My husband was pressure washing the patio, and the tortoise stopped by to have a drink. Afterward, he ambled around the yard, checking out the fountain area. He didn't seem overly concerned about me taking his photo. Carmine, my cat, was MOST interested! Carmine loves other animals of all kinds. He flirted shamelessly with the tortoise, showed him his tummy, and talked up a storm. Later, we took down the Christmas tree. Carmine helped, hiding in the branches and pouncing on the lights as we tried to unwind them.

Afterwards, he needed a long drink and then a nap!

Happy New Year!

Wishing all of my blog readers a wonderful New Year! The past few weeks have been so crazy, sometimes I feel like my life is in a blender, set on Puree. I have gotten out of the habit of blogging, so I hardly know where to start to catch up.

My Mom moved three days before Christmas....it was supposed to be four days before, but they had a major blizzard! Two days before Christmas, we got the news that my husband has prostate cancer. So, we have had a crash course in what that is, what it means and we are meeting with his urologist on Thursday to discuss treatment options. It has put somewhat of a damper on the holiday spirit for us, but we did have a nice visit with his daughter and the 2 grand girls. The photo on the blog heading is of Haley (age 2) at the beach, searching for shells. She is in constant motion. I love the sweet, baby roundness of her in this photo. Her older sister, who is 4, is already all sharp angles. They grow up so fast! We also had friends in from France for 2 weeks. They were a lot of fun.

I made a Paper dolls quilt for the girls for Christmas, I have it pieced but not quilted yet.

I have finished (bindings and labels) the Bill quilt for Janey, plus another quilt I made a while ago. I am still working on taking the paper off of a the cranes quilt before I put that on the longarm. I want to enter the Cranes in a quilt show in Fort Lauderdale in a few months.

I've been working out with a personal trainer, I am sore but can see some small results! I've been reading some great new fiction too! I am so gratefull to live in a town with a fantastic library. Right now I am reading The Girl With No Shadow. Can hardly put it down. Have also recently read Garden Angel and Perfect Family. I would recommend all without hesitation to anyone who likes current fiction.

Going Green

At our house, we've recently become fascinated by the Planet Green channel on TV. We like to watch Living with Ed, where Ed Begley Jr is on a continuing quest to tweak the everyday encounters with electricity that we all have into a more green, planet friendly form. After watching the show for a while, we made some changes in our daily lives that have resulted in our electric bill being cut in half from what they were a few months ago.

Some of the changes we have made are: changing our light bulbs from incandescent to fluorescent bulbs. The next generation of screw-in fluorescent bulbs is here, they are more roundish than the older ones which look like a cross between spaghetti strings and a soft serve ice cream cone. You know which ones I mean! The light is a bit blue and faint when you first turn it on, but in a minute or so you can't tell the difference from incandescent. We turned off all of our outdoor lighting, which was nice to look out at, but not necessary. We also cut our pool pump run time in half, which didn't seem to affect the water quality at all. We make a conscious effort to unplug our TV's, phone chargers, and any small appliances when not in use that are otherwise just sitting there sucking juice all day.

We learned about solar tubes, shown above. Michael recently cut a circular hole in our garage roof and inserted this tube, which allows daylight to come through some sort of a prism which makes the area under the tube really bright. It looks like there is a light on, but you can't find the switch to turn it off. Very cool.
Yesterday, we had a solar hot water system installed. As we live in South Florida, it seemed a smart way to go. It is sunny for at least part of every day here. I took this photo nearly at dark, when they had just finished the install. We actually got money back from the state, a tax rebate, and an incentive from the company that installed it so that the final cost to us was very reasonable and will pay for itself in several months' time. My husband cautioned me that we will not be able to regulate the temperature of the hot water, and that we must be careful to mix it well with cold water so we don't get burned. He said we would'nt need to boil water for tea any longer, it would be hot enough right out of the tap! I woke up this morning all ready for a hot shower, with water heated by the sun. I stood under the tap and...well, lukewarm would be a generous way to describe the temperature of the water. Since they finished installing it last evening, there was no sunshine to heat it overnight and therefore my tepid intro to the world of solar heated bathing. It was sunny and 80 degrees all day today, so will hope for a warmer shower tomorrow morning. And of course, a nice cup of tea!

Bruce's Christmas Quilt

I recently quilted this quilt for a customer who made it for her boss for Christmas. It is all batiks, and several have an african or animal print feel.

This is a close up of the quilting. It is a ginko leaf all over pattern, in a royal blue thread. The top and back are busy enough that the quilting does not show up too much. The arching pattern of the top of the leaf is the most dominant graphic element, which surprised me. It was the first time I had used this design.

Christmas Parade

Every year, the first Saturday in December is our town's Christmas Parade. We don't have many of the seasonal reminders of Christmas that you would see in the North (like snow!), so the parade is the signal to one and all that the Season is open!
I think everyone in town knows someone, and most know several people who are in the parade. Our friend Bill was in the Knights of Columbus contingent. Yes, he gets to keep the car!! Our godson, Sebastian, rode with our friend Laurie who is on the School Board, in her convertible. He's reaching into the basket to throw some candy to the kids.The shriners were there with their crazy little cars and the clowns. There were 4 bands! This is our friend Sara, playing the tuba. (3rd one in) She looked like she was ready to fall over. It was about 80 degrees, and they were marching into the sun. Harry was there in his motorized armchair, with his kids. The guy who drives the porta-potty that pops wheelies didn't show this year, though.Lots of boats, including one 18 foot sportfishing boat that was left to a local waitress as a tip (!) from a loyal customer when he got too sick to enjoy it. Love the sea horses! Lots of animals Tshirts and beach balls were thrown to the crowd And a great time was had by all!

Block printing with gelatin

Today, in our Secret Artists' fiber art group, we had fun making some prints from trays of gelatin. It was a gorgeous day, and we were able to work outside at a big table on the porch of my studio. This is a technique introduced to us by one of our members, Billye, who is a collage artist.

I made up the trays of gelatin ahead of time. The recipe (for each tray) was: dissolve 4 packets of plain Knox gelatin in one cup of water. Add 3 cups boiling water and pour into 11 x 9 or so inch pan. Pat out any bubbles, so the surface is smooth and clear. The mixture will set up in a few hours without being refrigerated. In fact, I don't recommend even trying to put it into the fridge, because the whole thing is very unstable and it sloshes all over your counters, floors, shoes and the inside of the refrigerator. It especially seeks out those little nooks and crannies where you put eggs and things. AFTER it has set up, you can transfer the tray to the fridge for longer term keeping.

OK, so armed with our gelatin trays, the secret artists put some block printing ink on our palettes and loaded up a breyer. We then rolled a thin-ish coat of ink onto the surface of the gelatin.
To make the prints, we placed rubber stamps onto the ink, which lifted up the ink and left the impression of the design we were after. For variety, we also tried pressing lace, paper doilies, and string onto the surface to absorb the ink. One person had a little problem with using a sharp-ish object, and it made a slice into the gelatin.

THEN, we gently patted a piece of fabric onto the surface of the gelatin. You could see the design emerging, like watching a photo come up in a chemical bath. We lifted the fabric up and draped it over a hedge to let it dry. We really came out with some interesting prints.

This was a copper print on black satin. We used cotton, satin and organza for our printing fabrics.

The very cool thing about printing from the gelatin block was that the ink did not ever dry out. To change colors, you could blot up the remnants of your previous color. This is fun and would be easy to do with kids.

I had a blast, even though my head was still pretty stuffy and I was kind of out of it from The Thanksgiving Cold.

Celestial Cookies

Each year for Christmas, I like to bake cookies for friends. I saw some cookies that had been made with cookie molds, and thought I'd like to try them out for my cookie gifts this year. I have always been attracted to the clestial theme, and it fits well with my business, sleep disorders. I found celestial cookie molds on ebay. There are 4 designs that I was able to find. I actually tried to make them last year, but my recipie didn't work out! So, I brought the molds with me to Maine and made them in Mom's kitchen. She is a great cook, and I figured that she'd be able to help me figure what went wrong. I made the same recipie, and the problem turned out to be the temperature of the dough. The dough needs to be fairly cold to be pressed into the molds. In Maine, I put the dough outdoors on the step in 20 degree weather, and it worked fine!

I was able to press the chilled dough into the molds, then peel the cookies out of the molds onto the cookie sheet. They are so big that only 6 cookies fit on each sheet. I love how they looked on the sheet. I floured the molds to try to give some definition to the designs. When they are cooked, they rise up a bit, and some of the definition is lost. I thought the next time I make them, I might use dark Karo syrup, instead of the light. I think the darker cookies might show the design better.