Grandmother Gnome

Another little gnomey today. It's still grey outside, but getting brighter as we march toward Christmas. Posting may be sparse this week as I head out of town to give this little one to my real Grandmother. Have a great week!

Snow day

It snowed all day today and is still snowing, but the flakes are small and it's not particularly cold so we only have about three inches' worth of accumulation. For some reason our teeny tiny camera (as opposed to the huge digital SLR) makes snow scenes a little blue. But the sky really was this grey, and I kind of love how this photo would have been changed not so much were it in black and white. It's winter. Don't you love those branches against the sky? And the pattern of snow on the magnolia?

Jingle Jolly

Preparations for Christmas continue apace. To brighten up the dining room, I made Happy Zombie's Jingle Jolly Runner over the weekend. I didn't do the best job with the binding on this one (it also hasn't yet had a trip through the washer and dryer to crinkle it up), but I was happy to make it almost entirely out of scraps (save the black polka dots in the centers of the stars).

I'm hoping that later this week it will make a nice soft landing spot for the advent wreath that I'm still working on finishing. Until then, the only advent wreath in the house is this miniature tree ornament one that my mom made, which lovingly recreates the full-sized wreath that we lit when I was a child. It's amazing! (I wish I could have gotten a better photo, but we've had another cold, grey day.)

And here, just for kicks, is a picture of the furry child on Thanksgiving, doing one of the things that he likes best (can you tell?). This photo serves double duty, showing as it does, one cute dog and the horse jump over which his human was thrown in the little flub that resulted in two cracked ribs. Fun, huh? P.S. It's taller than it looks!

Fall Quilt-along: Block 3

Boy, what a grey week. These blocks are my contribution for week 3 of crazy mom quilts' fall quilt-along. The grey skies and plummeting temperatures are definitely reflected in these photos-- it was tough to get any kind of true colors at all this week.

Foxhunt Thursday: Hilltopping from Oakland Green

Such fun-- thanks, girls!

Mix Tape

The rig: 1991 Trailet New Yorker hooked to 1996 full-size Ford Bronco by way of a fancy load-levelling hitch.

The purpose: To transport one horse and his owner to and from hunt meets.

Average number of minutes spent in rig on the way to a meet, round trip: 50 minutes.

Length of mix tape from the summer of 1998 that is caught in the tape deck and cannot be adjusted volume-wise, fast-forwarded, rewound or ejected: 45 minutes.

Number of embarrassing tracks on said mix tape: 16.

To boot:

1. Summer Lovin' from Grease

2. Passionate Kisses: Mary Chapin Carpenter

3. What A Wonderful World: Louis Armstrong (somewhere in the middle of this one, the tape switches over to the other side, where we find:)

4. D'yer Maker: Led Zeppelin

5. Sunblock: Emmet Swimming

6. Real World: Matchbox 20

7. Just The Two Of Us: Will Smith

8. One Week: Barenaked Ladies

9. Build Me Up Buttercup: The Foundations

10. Pencil Thin Mustache: Jimmy Buffett

11. Love Is Strange: Mickey & Sylvia

12. Pure Imagination (you know, from Willy Wonka): Smoking Popes (this one starts on one side and continues on the other.)

13. She's In Love With The Boy: Tricia Yearwood

14. Train Slows Down: Emmet Swimming

15. Saddle In The Rain: John Prine

16. If I Had A Million Dollars: Barenaked Ladies

Percentage of words I know by heart: 100.

I remember this tape, and even though I can't see it since it's stuck in the machine, I know that it's a pink and yellow plastic thing that used to be a mix of Disney songs given to me by my childhood friend Marion one Christmas. This is probably why I can hear a few bars of The Aristocats in the middle of that last track. I used to record over things all the time.

It's funny how this tape makes me remember exactly how I felt in the summer of '98. I only know that it was 1998 because that's the year that Emmet Swimming record came out--I had to look it up. They played that Sunblock song every morning that summer as bumper music for The Bob and Madison Showgram (back when it was still the Bob and Madison Showgram), and Margaret and I had that temporary job out in RTP alphabetizing all day in a windowless room packed with aisle upon aisle of grey metal filing cabinets. We got the job through ManPower, where either Katherine or Elizabeth worked, and we tried to get there as early as we could each morning, like 7:30, so that we could leave early to beat the traffic coming home. I remember that felt so early and so grown-up.

I guess not all of the songs are so embarrassing. But they feel half a world away from this dirt road.

Dear Jane Update

This is D-6, Challenge. The latest pink block-- I'm running out of different pinks in my stash!

And here's the progress chart. Those are tiny wee little pieces of each of the fabrics I've used for the various blocks, glued on to the mock-up from the DJ computer program. They allow me to see at a glance which fabrics I've used, and to make sure that nothing looks too strange. Also it's a good motivation to see all those little squares filling in as I finish blocks.