Back From the Big Apple!

Well, we got back yesterday after spending a lovely five days in New York City where we saw the sights during the day and went to shows and movies in the evenings. This time we drove down and parked on Staten Island at Warren's aunt's house and that worked very well as the hotel where we stay is basically "on the way" going and coming from Staten Island. Speaking of the hotel, this is a picture taken at dusk from our 12th floor hotel room at the Riverside Towers where we always stay. This year we had a corner "suite" with windows facing across the Hudson to New Jersey and down the Hudson toward 45th st. This hotel is located at 80th Street and Riverside Drive in a really nice neighborhood. Zabars is two blocks east on Broadway which is where we hop the subway as well!

Monday was spent visiting with Warren's elderly aunt who is getting very frail -- she is the last of that generation for the both of us and we like to visit each year and see how she is getting along. She has aides full time now as she does not want to go to a nursing home (and she is pretty healthy except for hearing and short term memory loss).

Our first day out on the town we spent at the Metropolitan Museum of Art which is always a must see for both of us. I particularly liked the Pierre Bonnard special exhibit. There was no photography but I took this picture also by Bonnard at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) two days later. That evening we went to see Shrek, the Musical which was very well done and the music was wonderful with great talented singers -- although we have almost never been disappointed by Broadway musicals.
This is of course the main entrance to the Met.

The next day we got up early to make our annual visit to the Zoo in Central Park which we really like. We particularly enjoy the building dedicated to the Rainforest birds. This was a particularly handsome polar bear moving around for our entertainment. We managed to catch the Sea Lion feeding as well for the first time.

We rushed up 9 blocks to take a guided tour through Central Park in the afternoon. It took us from East to West at around 72nd Street.

Always on the lookout for a new bird, I spotted this Hooded Merganser off in the distance camouflaged by many, many mallards! He wouldn't let us get anywhere near him!

Although you probably can't see him, Pale Male (a red-shouldered hawk) was sitting on this pole (left hand side) on an apartment building close to the Park. He caused quite a stir a number of years ago when the apartment building where is nest has been for years decided it needed to go!! Petitions were signed and the nest is back at the Montana (I also took pictures of that!). Quite exciting to actually see the famous bird as well (easily amused as I am).

There were actually flowers blooming in the park so spring can't be too far off. We saw a lone crocus, a pansy and some violets later in the week at the Brooklyn Botannical Gardens as well. Warren and I split up for the evening and he went to a Haydn opera given by one of the Manhattan opera companies and I went to another play -- this time August-Osage County which had won the Pulitzer for drama and several Tonies a couple of years ago. It was absolutely excellent. It was over three hours long and I never noticed it! Warren was getting worried as I was not arriving home and it was 11!

The next day we split again and Warren took the Grand Central Station tour that I had taken last year and I went to MOMA. This was really a high point of the trip for me. I especially liked a large exhibit they had on the history of printing and bought the book published by the Museum which was the full document -- it was fascinating!! We didn't have the patience to stand in line for tickets and there were no plays we were dying to see so we opted for the movies and saw Doubt which I would highly recommend -- superb acting and good thinking story. This is of course one of the many Picassos that is housed at MOMA.

This is one of the spectacular water lily paintings by Monet. It was probably 10 feet by 30 feet. I remember seeing a similar one at D'Orsay in Paris.

Friday was a gorgeous and fairly warm (60 degrees) day so we decided to walk the Brooklyn Bridge to Brooklyn from Manhattan, go to the Brooklyn Museum and also to the Botannical Gardens. This was Warren with the Financial District of Manhattan in the background.


The view back down through the Brooklyn Bridge. The weather was supposed to be cloudy and drizzly this day - ha!
See, I didn't even wear my coat! I really enjoyed the Botannical Gardens and would love to see it in bloom. They have a wonderful section inside with Bonsai which is some of the nicest I have seen!

The highlight of the Brooklyn Museum was the Judy Chicago masterpiece called The Dinner Party. It is extremely impressive both from an artistic statement standpoint and sheer craftsmanship as well!

At Last - New Snow!

Well, I will get to test out new fallen snow today with the snow dyes! I am heading out to scoop up the snow now -- it looks like it will be rapidly replenished the next few days as well!

Hmmm. The new snow is snowball snow (which I think means pretty wet) but it melts in about 1/3 the time that the old stuff did which had been pretty packed down and snowflakes merged together. I just dumped a second layer and some more dye on. The dye actually compresses the snow when you are putting it on unlike the old crunchy stuff (now I got the old crunchy stuff when the temps were in the 40's and it is only in the 20's today). Hmmmm. We shall see I guess! I may even have to scour some more fabric! I am doing 4 yards at a time now. Hopefully I will get something other than just regular chrystally stuff that I can get without snow! This time I went for the warm colors as I was getting tired of the blues so we shall see!! This first piece is a result of the first tries with the fluffier snow. I was a little careless with my colors and am not crazy about it but it has some redeeming qualities!

The remaining pieces were done later in the day and I used twice the snow of the earlier attempts (a six gallon bucket instead of a 3 gallon one). I liked the colors better and could see using them for rocks as there are lots of beiges and grey blues. This was a mix of lots of yellow, a little mixing red and some navy thrown in for good luck!

This final piece is just a closeup of one of the above views. Each of the pictures represents about a piece 23" x 36". The last one portrays only half of that.

Mickey the Mouser aka Marmalade McTavish

Well, it was a very sad morning for us as we had to have Warren's beloved pet kitty put to sleep. We knew he was an old kitty when he was dropped on our doorstep 18 months ago but had hoped we would have him for a bit longer.

He moved in, assessed the whole downstairs and then chose a chair where he pretty much slept his life away for the next year! When he wasn't sleeping, he was purring his heart out -- a purr so loud that you could hear him two rooms away. This was great except when you were trying to sleep and he would start purring in the middle of the night!

He disdained playing with toys and laps for the most part but LOVED his catnip and special treats. He also thought that anything in your plate had to be much better than anything he was eating, but he was a cat after all! In the picture in better days, he was trying to convince Warren to give him some more of those special cat treats.

We will miss him very much and plan on getting new kitties to love this spring.

On a Clear Day

This was my first stop on doing a lot of my usual shopping chores. This is the view east looking at the bay and the lake on the other side. I finally got to the lake when the sun was out and what a difference in wildlife -- stunning difference! There were no oldsquaws or scaups anywhere around and that is mostly what I saw at dusk last week. There were, however, the mergansers and I think some Goldeneyes off in the distance. It was hard to tell even with the telephoto.

These were taken with telephoto lens as the birds were so far away, there was no way I could see what they were. Looking at my bird books, I think they are common mergansers in front. I think I also saw some Goldeneyes but they would let you get within 100 yards. Don't know how they even saw me on the pier, they were so far out.

The swans were being fed by local visitors. I suspect this is not a good idea and there were tons of the swans, Canada geese and pigeons which would walk right up to you. So this was taken up front and personal with the swans.

I loved this very colorful mallard sitting on the rocks. He just seemed to be begging to have his picture taken. Okay, a mallard but a pretty boy mallard! He looks much more iridescent in the sunlight, doesn't he!

Stress Free Days at Play

Well, two days off at the lovely Holiday Inn Express in Webster, NY just sitting with lovely ladies and quilting does make my blood pressure mellow out. This is our hostess and guru Janet Root, giving some advice to fellow club member Merilee.

And then I get home and opened up my email......a group I have been a member of for ten years is having a very painful growth spurt and I am frankly not sure I will be able to stand much more infighting. If I want bickering, I can go on a trip with my husband for several days! Being with the ladies in the dysfunctional group was always a lovely getaway but alas no more!

Anyway, I got a whole lot of "easy on the brain" work done during these last two days sitting at my trusty Featherweight with my shoes off! It is always nice to get together with a new group of people and get to know some out of your normal circle. All different kinds of work was going on, from very traditional to contemporary to art quilts. People were working in a variety of dress and undress (more on that later)!

This was a wall hanging that our own Priscilla was working on. This was an incredible piece of Vietnamese embroidery that she has never shared with Marcia and I before (we might have mugged her in the driveway if she had -- double click and see the incredible detail in this centerpiece).

The first quilt has lovely colors and she got a very large quilt top done in just two days. The second is a Dear Jane quilt but made with 6 inch blocks instead of the normal 4.5 inch blocks. I always like to see what someone has done with these blocks.


This was a top that Linda K was working on. She had done the center and outside blocks at two separate times and thought they might go well together and boy did they!!

This was Beverly using herself as a design wall -- unique as only Beverly can do!

This is the aforementioned Beverly with Pat ostensibly working on quilts.

Oh my who is this person who felt the need to quilt in her undies!! Identities have been hidden to protect the guilty. What kind of behavior is this for a staid lady in a very posh hotel conference room....

This is the beginning of the latest I Spy. I am just a few short for making one more after I finish this one. This was the perfect activity for this group sew in. I managed to machine quilt the first one I did yesterday on my handy featherweight using an original even feed foot which works really well!

GVQC February Meeting

The weather is certainly not all that was predicted. It is very windy but it was supposed to snow with the wind and that just hasn't happened. It has been dreary and rainy all day and there is hardly any snow left so no snow dyeing for awhile but I was going to be busy these days anyway.

This beautiful quilt is the raffle quilt for our 2009 raffle for GVQC. This stunning quilt was designed by Pat Pauly (she has a quilt in Quilt National this year) and was put together by many members of the quilt club. It was all paper pieced and patterns will be available for sale at the quilt show. See my sidebar for further information on the show and the Quilt Challenge sponsored by Blank Fabrics.

Isn't t his a beautiful quilt? If you look closely, you can see that it is a really simple pattern and the maker actually drafted it from a quilt she saw in a magazine.

We had a lovely show and tell as usual and I took a few pictures but it is difficult to get a good angle and I was way far away from the stage!

I had to get a picture of this one as it has the four pieced stack and whacks in the center and I thought this was a lovely setting. They are sooo addictive.

I thought this quilt was just stunning. Beth machine quilted in the ditch and then did hand quilting in the rest.

One of our quilt club members did a lovely and very lively show and tell of quilts that she owns with a narrative on quilt history from one of the other club members. It was just plain fun and very relaxing! This was my very favorite top which I think was made between 1860 and 1870 but it may be earlier because of the quality of the stitching in the applique.

Warm Wednesday and the Last of the Snow Dyeing Until More Snow

This is the piece that I finished today which I describe below and show some more detail.






Well, the weather is certainly warmer -- in fact we have a lot of fog coming off the remaining snow. Amazingly enough, the frozen top layer of snow is keeping the snow underneath from melting and it is about the right consistancy for more dyeing. The next three days are filled with time away from home.

Yesterday, I actually got up extra EARLY so I could scoop up snow before it melted and get in another piece. And today I managed to find some more snow and do another!! The results are rather unpredictable to say the least -- yesterday I was going for purple with some blue but threw in yellow at the end so really have no purple and very little brown (thought that yellow would meet the purple) but lots of blue and green with some pink areas that look like large dahlias.

Today, I restrained myself and just went for mostly blues and threw on navy, turquoise and intense blue and just a teense of yellow. I did get mostly blues and may tone down the navy the next time or add a lot more yellow for greens! Because I am starting with just 5% solutions, I am not getting dark darks like I sometimes do when using the 10% solutions. I am unendingly fascinated with how the colors are moving around and bouncing and layering and fading in and out. It is just so different from the usual scrunching low water immersion. Of course there is less control of the outcome as well!!

The good news is that they are predicting snow again tomorrow so I can replenish my twindling supply without having to resort to the snow at Walmarts... (Did I just say good news and snow in the same sentence?)

This is a closeup of the second half of the above piece. This piece was about two yards in length.