Hello from Lake Mead!

I turned on my computer to check a recipe in MacGourmet, and noticed that I had 2-3 bars on my Airport - I'm picking up the internet on someone's wide open network. I'm in an RV park at Echo Bay, and someone has their own WiFi network! Wheeee!

We are having a fabulous time. We have great weather, finally, after a week of off-and-on wind, cold, and rain. It's clear and sunny, and I'm sitting outside where the reception is the best for this accidental network, and though it's a little chilly, it's bearable. Don's out on the lake with his friend Gary - and has been having great fishing success. We had fresh fish for dinner two nights ago, and yesterday he gave me 14 fillets (7 fish) to freeze. It's all striped bass, which to me, tastes much better than the catfish they sometimes bring back. We're having a "neighborhood" fish fry for New Year's Eve - a sort of potluck for the sides and desserts, and Gary and Don will cook a bunch of fish that should feed about 2o people.

I've gotten 4/5 of Black Swan Design's "Desert Sunrise" stitched, though I haven't taken any WIP photos of it. Tomorrow I'm going quilt and cross stitch shopping in Las Vegas - I need my nails done so I will make a fun day of it while Don and Gary are fishing. I'll report later about what I got!

Sunday Stash #1

I'm posting this tonight since we're leaving tomorrow for 2 weeks with no internet. Lake Mead and a relaxing time in our trailer await us.



This fabric shouted my name at the Quiet Mouse last week, and now I need to find a pattern for it. The focus black, the red, and the yellow are from Northcutt's Midas Touch line, and I found the green and coordinating black elsewhere in the store. Lovely stuff!
If you'd like to join Sunday Stash, go here.

See you in a couple of weeks!

We Have Power!

Wednesday I went down the mountain to work, and came back home in the early evening in time for another storm to move in. During the night, we got another 2 feet! Don got up at 2:30 and told me the power had gone out. At 3 I heard him outside, and got up to see why he was out there. He said you have got to come look at this. I could not believe how much more snow there was. In 4 days, we got about 5 FEET. The power stayed off all day Thursday, and we learned that the Edison trucks weren't allowed to come up the mountain until around noon. When I drove down in the morning Thursday, they had the road blocked - NO ONE was coming up. There must have been 150 skiers and snowboarders waiting for the road to open up. I felt a little sorry for them - they took the day off to ski, and couldn't get up to the mountains!

Thursday evening we used our generator for light and to keep the fridge cold, and Don figured out how to hook up the fan from the fireplace insert to warm the living room. We had nice stovetop dinner - we can still use the stove since it uses propane - and even watched a couple hours of tv. He brought the little tv out from the bedroom and hooked it up to the generator and picked up ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX with the antenna.

The Edison guys, bless them, worked through the night - the temps were in the teens (this is southern California!!!!) - and power came back on this morning at 4:30.



Remember this wheelbarrow? Here it is again - almost totally covered.






Pretty, yes?







This is the view from our house up to the San Gorgonio Wilderness, and San Bernardino Peak.







The mountains in the far distance are the San Gabriels, above Rancho Cucamonga/Claremont, visible from Forest Falls.

My First Ever Quilt Top

We got another couple of feet of snow, so I couldn't go to work. Too bad. I stayed in and stitched together this quilt top, from a book I got at Barnes & Noble about learning how to quilt. I used cheap fabric from JoAnn's and Wal-Mart since I knew it would be very flawed, but still I think it looks pretty nice. I couldn't make the quilt sandwich today because I forgot to get safety pins. That'll come some other day, I guess.



Here's a close-up of the fabric I used.

Southwest Santa - The Sweetheart Tree

This is my first tuck pillow - it bit rough on the edges, but that gives it that homemade look. The ornament was in the 2001 JCS Ornaments Issue. It used a bunch of red Mill Hill beads that look like little lights on the cactus.

Thanksgiving Ornament - better late than never!

Debbie sent this to me as part of the Thanksgiving Ornament exchange on the 1-2-3 Stitch board. It's actually the second one she sent - the first one was sent in plenty of time for Thanksgiving, was returned due to wrong zip code, re-sent, and is now wandering somewhere in mail boondocks. But I like this one - she mounted it on some orange felt - frayed the edges a little - a simple finish that I can use on some other ornaments!

There were some fabulous goodies in this package - some notecards that I can use at work, and a mini tuck pillow ornament to stitch. I looked at that tuck pillow and realized "I can do that!" In my next post I'll show you the first one I made.

Thanks, Debbie, for the goodies!

Snow, snow, snow!

This was the view from the front door on Monday morning, while the first storm was coming through. The wheelbarrow and our cars can show you how much snow we had then, and by the end of that storm I'd estimate 2 1/2 feet judging by how much was on the deck.








I took this photo this morning (Wednesday), and you can see how high the snow is on top of the wheelbarrow. Yesterday Don spent all day shoveling. The snow plow came through one time, and piled up a berm 5 feet high behind his truck. He cleared that out, spent another half hour putting chains on the truck, and drove down to Yucaipa to leave it with the trailer at Tommy's. I was able to get out and go to work - my Jeep is 4WD, and it took 20 minutes to get the 2 miles from my house to the highway. When the plows did the main road, they took off the snow and left a solid sheet of ice - thick ice - AND DIDN'T PUT ANY CINDERS DOWN. Idiots. But even bigger idiots were the drivers who didn't put chains on, didn't have 4-wheel drive, and SLID down the steepest part of the road through town - DELIBERATELY. One guy I passed was sipping his coffee, right wheels along the edge of the road, just slowly sliding downhill, wheels not turning at all. Unbelievable.





This used to be a front walkway down to the street.


Anyway, I think I'll get some quilting done!

"Sunday Stash"

Now that I'm getting into quilting, I've added a bunch of quilting blogs to my Google Reader. On 1/4 of an inch Tamara has started a cool thing - "Sunday Stash." It's a great way to share our stash - and while Tamara started it for quilting stash, I'm going to do it for both. It'll have to wait until after the New Year, since Saturday we're leaving for 2 weeks at Lake Mead.

So consider it a great wordless, picture-only post opportunity. You can grab the code for the button here.

Apple Tree, part of Autum Sampler - Cross Stitch Gold

This little tree is part of Autumn Sampler, which was in Cross Stitch Gold. It's for Kay's 4-person round robin on CSRR. It's a lovely piece - and she's almost finished! Looks like only 2 more parts need to be completed.