Some little quilts

Here are three little quilts I've been working on. Each of them is 12 inches square.
The first two I made from scraps, mostly batiks, that I had left over from a project several years ago. I always like the idea of using up scraps in a creative way. I used my Pro Chem metallic paints in gold, bronze and brass shades to stencil the figures and leaves and I'm pretty darn happy with the results. Here's a closer look at each of them:

And finally, this is a miniature replica of the quilt that Alice and I made for the Folk Heritage Committee to raffle off during this year's series of "Shindig on the Green" concerts. Alice paper-pieced the little log cabin blocks for me out of scraps from the big quilt. I put them together, quilted and bound the block. It is a nice memento of our collaborative project. It makes me smile!

Three generations!

Earlier this month, my daughter Nora and I spent a few days with my mother, Dorothy. I thought it might be nice to share a couple of pictures of us together. Here we are!While we were there, we also got to go out to dinner with Uncle Ed and Aunt Carol, and cousins John, Pam, Tom and Barb. I wish we would have thought to take some pictures then.

The long drink!

The hummingbirds seem to be less plentiful this week, but I did refill both feeders, probably for the last time this season. In an attempt to get a bit clearer video of my window feeder, I set up an elaborate "tripod" next to the window. It is made up of a dining room chair, topped with a tv tray, a large cardboard box and then the family bible to anchor my iPad at the correct tilt.

I have also learned to "trim" my videos, so during the 5 or so minutes I had my camera on this morning, I had only one visitor. But he/she took a very long drink. This video clip is just under a half minute and I hope it is a bit clearer than my earlier attempt.

Woo Hoo!

The video did work!
However, I do have to apologise for the quality.
If you make it full screen, it gets blurry, but you can see how many birds we had flying around!
It's too smudgy, though, for you to see the hummingbird perched on the crook of the hook of the larger feeder suspended over the deck railing. He was guarding that feeder while most of the action was going on around the window feeder. What fun!
If you have your volume turned up, you can also hear Russ' soup spoon hitting the side of the bowl. Ha! We really were having lunch while I was doing this.
Thanks for your patience!

Lunch with the hummingbirds!

My friend Chris gave me this window hummingbird feeder last Christmas. There is another feeder in the background over the deck railing.

Today at lunch we had so much hummingbird activity. I decided to video it so I could try putting it on the blog. One thing I learned was that I should have oriented my iPad horizontally to capture the images better, but I'm hoping you can see all those little bodies. This is a learning experience for me... I can only improve!

PS - Okay, so I just looked at the "preview" and it didn't seem to work. But I think I am going to post this blog anyway, just in case the actual posting does work. Meanwhile, if it doesn't, I will keep on trying.

Mexico

We are just back from a week in Mexico, so I thought I would share a few interesting images with you.

The area right next to the resort we stayed at is a little patch of jungle. There is some building going on there, but like many Mexican building projects, they have not made much progress over the years. It's supposed to be a museum, we were told, but right now it's just a happy place for iguanas to live. Here's a nice specimen who wandered through the chain link fence to bask in the sun and pose for pictures.

This colorful character is a Mayan (I think). He visited the welcome party to invite everyone to go to a special dinner at one of the resort restaurants that included a show about Mexican history.

The sunset is usually quite magnificent over the lagoon. So it became an almost daily challenge to try to capture it. Here are a few versions. Often "sunset" was accompanied by margarita's at the lagoon-side bar, "Poncho and Willy's." (By the way, Poncho and Willy are two of the salt water crocodiles that visit the restaurant there nightly.)

One day we rented a car and traveled south along the Mayan Riviera. We spent the day at a sister resort close to Playa del Carmen and on the way back we stopped at a quieter fishing village that has so far escaped overdevelopment. The town is Porto Morelos and a popular photo spot is this leaning lighthouse that was tilted by a hurricane in the 1980's.

This was also taken at Porto Morelos. The white speck on the horizon is a cruise ship traveling north from Cozumel. The ocean along the Mayan Riviera is very calm because there is a reef that acts as a natural breakwater.

Friends

While I was in Plattsburgh earlier this month, I had lunch at "The Naked Turtle" with my friends, Carol, Carol, and Sandy. I told them about my blog and said I would post our pictures on it. So, ladies, here we are!
The hostess took this picture of all of us, but we were in the shade. That's Sandy to my right and Carol H. and Carol L. to my left. Here are some clearer shots of us in the sunshine. It was a pretty day on Lake Champlain!

It just doesn't get much better than this!