Christmas Past - 2008

I have finished cutting out all my chickens

and their parts

and now I am matching them up color wise.

I do need to cut out some eggs.

I also made a plan using OmniGraffle

 for a chicken quilt to use up some of these chickens.

It is just an idea for spacing

but I will put it away with the chickens

to work on after I finish the Japanese quilt

for my daughter.

Well, it won't be really a Japanese quilt.

Just one using Japanese style fabric but I do want to incorporate

some designs that I have found in old Japanese scroll paintings.

But, in the meantime I would like to show you

my wonderful wood stove.

It keeps us toasty warm.

And it burns up the smoke.

If you look at the chimney outside you can't see any smoke.

We use it to heat the house and so my husband

makes sure we have enough wood to last the winter.

Sometimes I cook on it

using my iron dutch ovens.

We keep a big pot of water on the stove

to keep the air humidified.

Morgan has her doggie dishes next to the stove

and the space underneath is for wood

that I burned because I didn't

want to go outside in the cold.

I wanted to post these next photos

of the snow of Christmas 2008

so they will be in the blog

when I get it printed.

The greenhouse and the wood storage buildings

are behind the porch swing.

I like this picture with the big snowy branches.

This is a view out my kitchen window

toward the motor home.

The motor home is worth a post or five.

We lived in it after the 1989 earthquake

"broke" our house in the Santa Cruz mountains.

This view is out of the sewing/computer room.

The old screen door helps keep some of the snow off the car.

I do like the snowy branches.

Snow is beginning to cover everything.

These two photos show some of the large snow flakes.

Well, you can't really see the flakes,

but you can see that they are big enough to photograph.

There are only small spots of snow left on the ground now

(in shady areas)

like in the photo on the sidebar.

Soon I am going to go out and start raking up the leaves

and making paths

partly to cut down on fire danger in the summer

and partly to use for walks.

I have been waiting for most of the leaves to fall.

I really don't like having to rake it all up

three or four times.

Smiles