Spring has sprung where I live!

 

Although I originally come from Ontario, Canada, I am so grateful my parents made the decision to retire on the West Coast.  I affectionately refer to it as the Wet Coast due to the amount of rain we get, but I honestly feel I live in the most beautiful place!  And that is no truer than this year, where we are having the warmest, sunniest March in 30 years.

 

 

Blue skies have been around for a week now, and are expected to last at least through the Easter weekend!

 

The bald eagles have arrived for the salmon run!  Here in the Fraser Valley we have one of the largest congregation of bald eagles every spring.  On my way home from work last night, there were seven or eight flying over my car, so I followed down a dirt road to see more roosting in the trees.  I'm sure glad my phone has a great camera.  Even the zoom function was better than my first digital camera 10 years ago.

 

 

Where else can you ski and golf on the same day?  This is my view on the way home from work (here I'm only 5 minutes away from my house)

 

 

And on my way in!  I live in a community nestled at the foot of the Cascade mountain range, the same range that follows the coast of Washington and Oregon states, through to Northern California, but I can drive on the flat roads of the Fraser River valley and the temperatures are quite moderate due to the influence of the ocean less than 100 kms west (60 miles).

 

 

 

I get to see mountains from every window in my house, and from my back deck, where I am enjoying the sunshine today.

 

 

 

 

And my garden is starting to bloom!

 

Of course, not every spring is like this and even if it is, we can still go from this:

 

 

April 14, 2011

 

to this overnight!

 

 

April 15, 2011

 

How is your spring shaping up?

 

Hope you have a wonderful Easter weekend, however you may celebrate it!

 

(This post is part of a series Project 365. Day 4 - Be more grateful and be more impulsive! For more, see here) 

 



Sunday Stash Report - Week Four

I am finally finished "Orca Bay"!  What an amazing journey this mystery quilt has been, but that's a topic for another post. The best part has been the amount of fabric moved out of my scrap bins - I only spent about $10 on 10 fat-eighths to expand my selection of black. (but that was before I was counting stash)

Please excuse the lighting - it is almost evening and raining, so I had to turn on all the lights to get this shot.  I'm going to have it quilted by a long-armer, there are way too many seams for me to try and tackle it. I'll count the backing and binding separately for the Stash Report.

Bonnie estimated about 9.5 yards, her EQ plan estimated 17 yards, I think it was closer to about 13 yards or 12 metres. So that is what I'm busting out of here!

Used this Week: 12 metres

Used year to Date: 27 metres

Added this Week: 0

Added Year to Date: 7.6 metres
Net Used for 2012: -19.4 metres

 

I am so glad I discovered Bonnie Hunter and her method of managing scraps and her beautiful way of designing quilts from scraps.  I would never have expected a quilt made entirely of scraps spanning 30 years would be so beautiful! 

I've almost finished another quilt top this week, but it's not ready for counting yet.  Being snowed in has been great for sewing time, but not so great for work - I haven't been able to go for the whole week because there is a stretch of highway between where I live and where I work that has been treacherous with whiteout conditions or freezing rain most of the week.

But after a week of snow and wind, it started raining on Friday.  First we had freezing rain, and my car looked like this yesterday morning:

That ice is about 1/2" thick!

And rumour is our town has one snow plow.  I wouldn't know because it never did come down my street.  Here is what it looked like yesterday morning:

That is snow, ice and freezing rain coating the road.  But 24 hours can bring a huge change.  This is what I woke up to this morning, a bare driveway, a windshield that is clear, and I can see grass again!

By tomorrow, this week of storms will just be a memory.

Snowmaggedon!

I can only imagine what Western Washington and Seattle must look like, if we only got hit by the edge of this latest storm. It's been close to 20 years since I've seen snow like this!  Today is my third snow day and at this rate, I won't be going in the rest of the week.

My poor little bug was buried up to the top of the tires.  I managed to get it dug out, but got stuck in a snowdrift just a few feet down the road, so I managed to get back in my driveway and here I am staying til I see the last of this!    Just a few hours later, the snow had blown back in behind my car, trapping me for the next few days until the rain comes on Saturday.  I dread the thought of the flooding that will follow - mostly in the local farm areas.

The upside is that Jack Frost has made a visit!  Both of the following pictures are of my kitchen window - so drastically different from one side to the other:

I have never had frost on my windows since I moved here to BC as a teenager.  This reminds me so much of when I lived in Labrador - and so does the weather today!  It's -25C with the wind chill factor, and the winds are blowing at about 70 km/hr.  I wonder why I don't remember this bone-chilling cold of my earlier years, standing waiting for a school bus, when it was even colder there.

I've been holing up in my sewing room and got my Orca Bay quilt top put together to the point of the outer borders.  Here it is on the double bed  in the grandkids' room - reading a measured size is so much different seeing it in real life:

Pardon the lumps and bumps, but I didn't take the time to move the stuffies out of the way!  I think this quilt might have found it's home. 

I've also found the time to make a start on the Just Takes 2 blocks, I have finished Blocks 1-5 and have to review the tutorial on back-basting before I attempt Block 6.  Maybe I'll do that tomorrow, since it looks like it'll be another snow day.

Here's four of my blocks - still not crazy about the lack of contrast between the aqua and white but it will make a nice pillow in my living room.  I'm going to wait until I can order some Bella Christmas Red to start over.  I love the way the Bella fabrics handle and are soft to the touch, so my true Red and White quilt will be done with the red and Bleached White.

When I was doing the blocks, I realized the instructions primarily used individually-cut pieces.  After analyzing them, I realised some could be adapted to quicker methods.  The Ohio Star is exactly the same measurement as the ones I did in my Orca Bay quilt, so I pulled out Bonnie Hunter's instructions and used my Companion Angle to quickly piece this one together.  Faster and more accurate than individual pieces in my opinion. I also tackled the large block in a similar fashion, and wrote down my notes right on the block instructions of both so that I have them to refer to when I do my red and white quilt (and future ones I might do). Here's my notes on the Ohio Star.



I love this Ohio Star so much!  I've already got another quilt planned out using a printed panel of quotes about grandchildren. Now if I could only find it!

Here's a picture of it from the website Block Party Studios.  I bought it in a kit at a quilt shop in Sumas, WA with the pattern they list (because they didn't have any individual panels left), but I want to do mine using the Ohio Star.  The quotes are based on 5" blocks, so they would make 14" blocks, and the two top quotes measure at 2 1/2" x 10" so they could go into sashing or the inner border somehow. 

Feeling guilty (almost)

I'm watching the weather reports about the impending storm on central Canada and the Northeastern US and remember when I used to live in Ontario - you have my complete sympathy.  Boy, am I glad I live out here in Lotus Land.  Today was gorgeous and sunny (a little chilly at 4C/40F), no wind to speak of and this was my view driving home today!

Pardon the quality, I only had my cell phone, but I did pull over ;o).  I've lived from one end of Canada to the other in my lifetime, but I love my mountains and the fact that I can visit the snow if I want, but only have to shovel it once or twice a year.  In fact, the foot of snow I showed a couple of weeks ago was gone by the end of the next day.  I live about 10 minutes from where I took this picture and see this mountain range if I look east from my front window.  Unfortunately, I'm that much closer to it so the trees and houses block most of it.

It's the beginning of a new month, so I'm going to try something new.  I'm trying to post something everyday - just to see if I can.  Later tonight, I'm going to post my January finishes and an update on my WIPs, including some UFOs that have made it to the top of the pile