March

This March has been a typical "in like a lion, out like a lamb" here in New England. We had another big storm on March 2nd: here are some pictures.







The snow took forever to melt, mainly because of temperatures in the teens and twenties for a couple of weeks, but we have finally started to warm up a bit. The crocuses that I planted to naturalize the back yard have finally poked their little heads out of the ground.





When I was little my Dad used to take pictures of flowers that we saw when we were on vacation. I never used to understand that, but I do now. It's so rewarding to see the flowers that you have planted and tended bloom. They look really cheerful in the sunshine.

Now that the weather has warmed up I've been able to hit the roads cycling. Doing Spinervals all winter has really paid off;I feel like I'm stronger and faster than even at the end of the season last year. It's still pretty chilly and I've been wearing tights, several layers, a woolly under-the-helmet hat and lobster-claw gloves, but it's so great to be out in the sunshine.

I have also spent March polishing my thesis document, getting it ready for submission. I finished the final edits and turned it in today. The next step is for the research director to review it and provide me with another list of edits. Hopefully after that it will be off to the printer and I'll be done. I also got my papers to order my graduation "regalia" - I plan to walk on June 4th and everyone is invited!

Snow and Ice

It's been a cold miserable couple of weeks here in New England.
We have had a couple of big snow storms, followed by temperatures in the single digits at night and only in the teens by day. We have a huge pile of snow in the front yard, as you can see from the pictures.


We have also had ice dams on the roof. For the uninitiated, if the roof is warmer than the outside air, then snow melts and flows down to just above the eaves, where the roof is colder. The water freezes, and creates a chunk of ice which causes water to pool behind it, and then to seep under the shingles and into the house. I had a couple of drips in our bedroom, which was bad enough, but I have heard of some people who have had waterfalls down their walls.

Robert was enjoying a trip to San Diego, so a brother from our ward came by and sawed some holes in the dams, and then put socks filled with rock salt in the channels to keep them open. That seems to have done the trick.

Our next project will be to fix the ceiling in the bedroom that got wet, and to get more insulation in the attic so that we're not losing so much heat out the roof. That should help the problem, although I did read that a heavy snow followed by really cold temperatures make the ideal conditions for the formation of ice dams. We haven't had a problem with them before, so maybe this is just a one-time thing. One can only hope.

I had to go into Cambridge the other day, and coming back on the T, our train slowed and stopped for around 5 minutes between Porter and Davis. They finally announced that they were having problems with the brakes, and that it would be resolved shortly. We sat for another 5 minutes, and then the train started moving, but quite slowly. We finally made it to Porter, and then continued on to Alewife, which is the end of the Red Line. However, as soon as we got off in Alewife, they announced that this train was out of service. Now I wonder, were we barreling along at rush hour, underground, on a train that might have had brake failure? Scary thought! I suppose I should be grateful that we didn't have to evacuate in the middle of the tunnel.

Happy Birthday, Robert!

We celebrated Robert's birthday this year with a surprise party with Sean, Rob, Sadie, and the kids.

I found a fun birthday card for Robert - we all got a good laugh out of it.

Catching up: Organization

I had some time off from work between Christmas and New Years, so I decided to re-organize my sewing area. I have boxes of fabric scraps that I could use if I knew what I had, so I decided to use baskets of fabric sorted by color to make them more accessible. I also put some metal shelves together so that I had a place to store the baskets. Here is the result:


I can make several quilts from the different fabrics, now that I have inventoried them! I'm going to make a nickel quilt from all of my brown fabrics, with a yellow or golden background and maybe a bit of orange or green thrown in for contrast.

I also found a project that I started several years ago, with blue, yellow and pink floral fabrics. I think maybe I'll work on that some more - the blocks are pretty easy. I think I will use the blue fabric for sashing between blocks, with the pink floral for the posts, and then add borders out of the blue and the yellow, if I have enough fabric.

I also have lots of large pieces of neutrals that I can use as backgrounds for other projects. All in all it was a very useful exercise, and in addition to organizing the fabrics, I cleared out some space in the furnace room as well.

The next put-together project was a bookcase that I bought at Target. This was a really nifty project and so easy to put together - instead of them giving me a bag full of all the hardware necessary for the whole bookcase, they had organized it into a bubble pack. Each bubble had only the hardware for the step. What a happy idea!

Here's a shot of the bubble pack:


I put the finished bookcase in my sewing area so that I can store my current projects, sets of coordinated fabrics for my next project, and my thread and tools.


I have decided that my goal this year will be to finish some projects that have been hanging around for a while. I plan to discipline myself and not buy any new fabric until I have Dan's bear-claw quilt, the Mariner's Star wall hanging, the blue/yellow/pink floral, the Christmas quilt for an unnamed recipient (it's a gift so I don't want to spoil the surprise), and the sunflowers quilt done. Well, at least I did until I saw this: Shade Cascade Medley Hmm, I could use those fabrics to make a kaleidoscope quilt....

So many fabrics, so little time!

Catching Up - Christmas 2008

They canceled church today because of the snow, so I have a chance to get caught up on my blog postings.

We had a nice Christmas holiday. Here are some pictures of everyone on Christmas morning. Lisa was here for the holiday, and Tiffany and Dan came over for presents. Nyssa supervised it all from her position on one of her favorite quilts. Later in the day we had dinner with Rob and Sadie and their kids, and Ray and Adrienne were here too, but I forgot my camera.

Here's a shot of the tree skirt that I made for Tiffany and Dan:



We did our traditional puzzle assembly - or should I say Lisa did and I helped! She is a total genius at putting puzzles together. I always leave the hard parts to her.





Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone!

Let it snow... NOT!

Friday, 12-18 and Sunday 12-20 we have had huge winter storms. Friday we got around 12 inches, and today we have another 12 or so. We had a break on Saturday - the roads were clear enough to go to the store, but then we got hammered again on Sunday.

Here is a picture of the snow on our back deck, looking towards the driveway and the car. I love how the snow stacks up on the railing.
We swept the car off this morning to go to church, so it doesn't look too bad. But notice the snow stacked up against the fence. When we run the snow blower, the only place to put the snow is against the fence along the house. We've had trouble with the fence blowing over in the wind lately, but I think with all the snow, it's going to be pretty stable this winter.
	Our pine tree in the back yard is covered - it's so pretty, as long as you don't have to go outside!
	We keep the BBQ grill on the back deck. Here's a shot of how the snow builds up on it. Guess I won't be doing any grilling for a while.

We had a wonderful Christmas program this morning. It might be that we had to sacrifice a bit to get there today, as the roads were very bad, but there was a sweet spirit there. We had lots of wonderful music and a couple of especially thought-provoking speakers.

Christmas Concert

December 12th and 13th were the annual Christmas concerts with the Melrose Symphony Orchestra. Here is a picture of me ready to go to the Saturday concert. These concerts are a mixture of classical and pops music, along with a wonderful soloist and a hand bell choir.



Robert is all decked out to go to the ward party in his snazzy Christmas tie.



After the concert we finally had time to get our tree decorated.