The mountain is missing...

There was no mountain here today, but you can see the foothills crowned with fresh snow in the distance, and the sky was heading toward blue. It's one of my favorite places to see the mountain, high on a ridge overlooking a golf course. And it was early enough that the foreground wasn't cluttered with golfers... just the way I like it.

Catching up...

The cold is keeping me out of the basement these days. So instead of quilting, I'm working my way through my library of Dick Francis mysteries. So far this month, I've read twelve of them. I love sitting in my favorite corner of the living room, in a big overstuffed chair right by the wood stove. It's toasty and warm there, and I can look outside at the snowy orchard, and be glad I don't need to be anywhere else.

The first few years we were in the farmhouse, before we put in a wood stove, I dreaded winter. The house was always cold, and the only way to be warm was to crawl into bed. We had a waterbed in those days, and it was always warm.

Once the wood stove went in, the opposite happened. I packed away my sweaters in favor of short sleeve t-shirts, because the stove heated the house so well!

But there were those winters when the house won: ice storms would pull down trees and power lines, the power would go out for days, and we couldn't keep the house warm. Those days, I'd pull the love seat in front of the wood stove, and spend the day there (always competing for space with a couple of cats).

Winter quilts...

My sewing room is in the basement, great for lots of space... not so great when it's been in the low 20's and snowing. It's dang cold down there!



So I bundle up and and pull on wool socks, and work on one project at a time. There is a stack of quilts that just need backs before I can quilt them. I finished this granny squares quilt top at a retreat the end of January and can't wait to get it quilted.

More white...

The windows look out over the old orchard and a wall of cedar trees, and the jewel in the crown is the barn red pump house, which protects the original well for my 1923 farmhouse.



In the corner is a woodstove that heats the house, a toasty place to stand and watch the snow fall. The tiny stained glass window has hung here almost as long as we've lived here. It was made by my dad in the colors of spring, with one deep red tulip.

The critter tracks keep multiplying... I can see where the deer have been moving from my neighbor's property across my orchard.



It's the second major snowfall this month, and this one dumped on the whole Puget Sound region. The peacefulness of my little patch of earth is a huge contrast with the chaos out on the roads and highways. I'm so glad to be at home.

New old...

My country farmhouse has always been a blend of new and old... antique quilts and china and furniture are my favorites. A Grandmother's Flower Garden from the 1930s has hung on the wall for almost twenty years, but today I decided it was time for a change.

Yesterday a blue and white oval platter arrived from eBay, and today the armload of forsythia branches burst into bloom. So I went upstairs to go through my antique quilts, and found the perfect replacement:  this red and yellow quilt that I bought at my guild's quilt show last summer. 

Antique quilts and traditional patterns drive my own quilting passion. I love knowing that the patterns I make have been made for decades, some for more than a hundred years.

First came the snow...

And then came the critters. Birds around the feeder, deer in the orchard, racoons and house cats on the porch. All day long, Madison sat on her tower in the window and kept watch. I don't know what she saw... I never saw anything but animal tracks.

By hand...

When I got home from retreat on Friday, I unloaded my sewing stuff and carried everything downstairs, and left it. And it's been there ever since. It's too cold to work in my sewing room. So I am hand-piecing the blocks of a flannel quilt, in the warmth of my living room. It will take much more time than using my machine, but is very satisfying... and great practice for hand quilting.

This cute red and black bear quilt will be donated to the "car campers," a group of homeless families who sleep in their cars behind the church that hosts my quilt guild.

February snow...

At 7:00 am it was 24 degrees and snowing, about 4 inches on the patio table, even deeper in the orchard. The wind always blows strong across the patio, between the house and the big cedar tree, and the snow is always shallower there. There are tracks on patio and deck, rabbit?

I settled Madison on the platform in the window and left her looking outside at a white world. It snowed all day long, heavy in the morning, stacking up fast... then tiny flakes, then heavy, then tiny again. But all day long, the snow built up.

Beautiful, sparkly, brilliant snow.

Game board...

This little game board quilt is one of my favorites, and I plan to keep it. So it's perfect for practicing my hand quilting. The checkerboard is made from 1-inch squares of blue and white, surrounded by a border of red and blue flying geese. The quilting pattern is a simple one: diagonal lines through the checkerboard, and outline quilting for the flying geese. Just straight lines. The next little quilt, I'll move on to curved lines.

I worked on it during the afternoon, while keeping a fire going in the woodstove, and keeping an eye on Madison, who was sleeping on her tower in front of the window. And late afternoon, right on schedule, I looked out to see huge snowflakes blowing around in the breeze.

Finally... we get our snow!

Horizontal...

After three days of getting up at 5:00, sleeping in this morning felt almost sinful. The house was cold; I made myself a mug of lemon tea and lit a fire in the woodstove, then bundled up in a fleece quilt and read until DW got up a couple of hours later. And by then, I knew I was sick. When DW wandered out in his sweats to make tea, I headed back to bed.

And I stayed there all day, sleeping (mostly), and reading. Madison came to see what happened to me, and curled up on the bed and stayed all day. It's cold and cloudy, and I'm still hoping for snow. I finished one book and started another, kept up with e-mail and Instagram, and didn't feel at all like being vertical again until dinnertime. We heated up leftovers and settled down by the fire to watch a movie, and then I headed back to bed.

Since retiring, I've rarely been sick (which tells me what a germ factory I used to work in). So when I do get a bug, it takes a bit to realize it.