A new visitor

We awoke to another Winter Wonderland this morning. This always creates a frenzy of activity at the bird feeders, but today for the first time we saw this on the double-sided suet feeder.


It may be a female Downy Woodpecker, with that white stripe in the middle of the back and no red on the head. The suet feeder is a new one. We had not bothered to take it in every evening with the sunflower feeder because no one was bothering it, but one day a couple of weeks ago, it was completely gone.

The photo was taken from the house, through the door and the screen. We will learn to use this camera better some day. (a try on a manual exposure setting resulted in a much better picture of the grill to the left). Lots of finches on the nyger feeder also - the nyger bag stays out all the time. No one else seems to have a taste for nyger.

Early bloomer

Yesterday the witch hazel in the back right next to the bird feeder was doing what witch hazels are noted for - winter blooming.


We didn't even notice it last year. This plant is visible in the photo of the turkeys we posted on Friday, right behind the three birds closest to the camera. It was not giving any hints it was about to bloom then.

Turkey Visitors Cleaning Up

We haven't seen a lot of turkeys hanging around this winter. They have mostly been feeding in a farmers field near here. But today a roving gang of males stopped by to clean up all the spilled bird seed under our feeders. The sun finally melted the snow we have been accumulating under the feeders for the past couple of weeks and it uncovered quite a pile of seed that has been dropped by the other birds during the snows. This group seems to be none the worse for the wear of the cold winter this year, as they all look healthy and well fed. The melting snow has made the ground so soggy our sunflower feeder is leaning over precariously.

Kason's new quilt

When great-nephew Kason was born, he was given a blanket with a very soft fabric on the back, called "Minkee" that his grandmother Marla bought for the purpose. His parents told us it was his favorite drag-around blanket and was in danger of wearing out. It looked like this - no piecing just a flannel printed fabric

with yellow Minkee on the back and a purple binding.

Kason got a new quilt this week - he's two and a half, so he needs something a little larger. He's old enough for an alphabet-printed panel with a border to add ten inches per side

with bright blue Minkee on the back.


Kason called last night (well, his mother did) to thank us for his new quilt (Kason did come on the phone to say thank you). His mother says he took the new quilt right upstairs to put on his new bed.

Beech

Once upon a time, (in 1886), our part of the Reems Creek Valley had its own post office and was called Beech, after the grove of American Beech growing in the Post Master's yard. We are fond of the many beech trees particularly in the winter. They lend a different color to the landscape as they hold on to their brown leaves until Spring.



Cheryl took these pictures Saturday when we had just started shoveling the driveway. It unexpectedly snowed all day and was still snowing while we worked. Tiny flakes were caught by the camera and are almost visible in the above picture. The snow has perhaps finally stopped falling late Sunday morning. During our most recent snows (Friday and Saturday) the Beech part of the Reems Creek Valley was the only area between here and Flat Rock, where Norris was finishing EMT class, that was getting snow.

You can look at the close up of this next photo to see how little had accumulated.


It was late afternoon when these photos were taken. We don't get much of a sunset in our cove as the winter sun disappears behind Chestnut Knob (in the left background) long before the sky changes color.

Two Recent Projects

Norris is in full-time, very intensive EMT training, with nothing to photograph there like he has in Fire Academy. Meanwhile, the weather is pretty darn awful for going out. This has unfortunately made for some monotonous quilting topics for our blog lately.

But instead of catching up on older efforts, here are two quilts Cheryl recently completed for customers. This first was pieced by a mother for her son and his fiancee. She calls it "Spicy Love" as her son is cooking in a restaurant these days.



Here's a closeup showing the feathers and border areas. The border print has spice bins.


And this next one was a "subtle" Christmas quilt - subtle because the fabrics were the reds and greens, but other than a couple of the prints having holly leaves, none of them were really Christmas fabrics.



The customer asked for the setting triangles to be quilted with holly leaves. Cheryl traced a purchased design for those areas. The gingham fabric was quilted with crosshatching to contrast with the curving lines of the holly motifs.



The center of the quilt was done with a coordinating holly leaf pantograph. We usually like to use those "edge to edge" but this was a semi-custom treatment, where the traced design had to start and stop at the gingham fabric that zigzags around to separate the main part of the quilt from the setting triangles and border.

fantasy quilt

This quilt was made by the granddaughter of a regular client. Cheryl quilted it last spring and took the photo when it was displayed in the Asheville Quilt Guild show last summer.

The center of the quilt is a pre-printed panel.

Here's a closeup showing a little of Cheryl's quilting - lightning bolts.

Quilt on Parade

Well, not exactly a quilt, but a photo of a quilt I made for a fund raiser for my brother Roger a few years ago. He had the photo printed probably about life size to decorate his tiny red car to appear in parades last summer.


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Here is the Blue Heron mirrored and smaller on the side of the car.

This photo shows brother Roger and his daughter Julia.

Thank you to brother Jeff for the excellent photos of a bright warm sunny day in Illinois when it's a foggy rainy cold one in North Carolina.