Houses Under Construction

 Hello Everyone,

Yesterday I spent the day in the classroom with the Independence Hall Quilters, my home guild, and taught them how to foundation paper-piece little houses.

By the end of the day, we had the beginnings of a neighborhood of cute little 3" x 3" houses.

The girls braved the chilly temperatures and the 4-foot-long icicles hanging from the eaves of the Hall to be in the classroom.  We've had such a harsh winter; the guild hasn't been able to meet in person in several weeks.  Everyone was looking forward to getting out and getting together and we made the most of our time together.

Independence Hall has a spacious classroom which easily accommodates 20 quilters and all of their assorted quilting gear.

The little houses are the same houses in my Calico Cottages pattern, which I'm going to try and release next week.  The pattern is out for proofing as we speak.

I want to get it on my long-arm this week and quilt it so I can get a decent picture of it for the front of the pattern.  This picture that I took in the snow may have to be the front cover if I don't get it done. 

Over the span of several days, we had 18" of snow dumped on us.  We liberated one of the cars last week, but the other one is still buried.  Now the snow is living up to the infamous name of Sierra cement.  It's been so cold and now it is so frozen.  Our daffodil bulbs are going to have a hard time fighting their way through the frozen ground to catch a glimpse daylight this Spring.

We won't be picnicking anytime soon on our back deck.

Underneath the ice in the middle of the picture is Snowflake Lake.  We sit at that picnic table to enjoy a bite to eat during good weather.

The day the sun came out, my sunglasses were nowhere to be found.

We've been snug as two bugs underneath our winter-white blanket of snow.  We had a couple of power outages, but they didn't last for days at a time.....just a few hours at most.  One of my jobs is shoveling the walkway from the house to the garage.  It's more like a luge run as you can start at the top and slide all the way down to the front porch face up, feet first and flat on your back. I think I made a qualifying run the other day for the Jamaican bobsled team.   

There's not a bag of ice-melt to be found in town and we exhausted the contents of our bag.  Yesterday, Mr. Joe found a bag of water-softener salt to do the job and it works just as well at twice the price.  We will pay anything to be able to keep our footing and stay upright and vertical as possible.   

My new block of the month is coming together nicely.  The weather has been so bad that I've hunkered down inside for days at a time in blissful creation in my sewing room.  I should be able to give you a sneak peak at the fabric and my project next month.

Have a great week and stay upright!

Soon,

Lynn