Spring!

 

When I saw these at the grocery store yesterday, I just could not resist buying them.  Later in the morning, as I was sewing, a huge flock of cedar waxwings swooped into the flowering crabapple tree outside my window.  They gobbled the little fruits and then swooped away.  Still later, a flock of robins pecked around on the front yard.  I think they know that spring is near.  

In true April fashion, it's supposed to rain all week.  This is good as we need the rain AND, best of all, gives me an excuse to spend as much time as possible sewing.  I've got 36 Wensleydale blocks made - just 20 left to go!  I ordered some matching fabric for the border via etsy yesterday.  I've found etsy orders come quickly, so I'm hoping I'll be nearly ready for it when it arrives.

We went to the movies yesterday to see Project Hail Mary, and I highly recommend it.  It was fun, interesting and very touching.  Ryan Reynolds was perfect in it.  How nice it was to see the theater practically full.  The last few times we've gone to the movies, there were only a handful of other people there.

The bests of 2023

This morning's New York Times newsletter mentioned all the "best" lists that have been coming out, so I thought I might list a few of my own...

Best book read - Remarkably Bright Creatures, by Shelby van Pelt.  A cleaning lady befriends a giant octopus at an aquarium.  Yes!  A very interesting group of characters.  Lots of fun, and a great book to gift to family this year.

Best movie, either in person or on TV - I know that Oppenheimer is the most high quality movie I saw this year, but I really liked All the Light We Cannot See.  It was a wonderful adaptation of the book I loved a few years ago.  I also enjoyed The Holdovers for a feel-good experience.

Best new recipe - hands down, the Facebook Bread Machine group's "Antique White" continues as my favorite loaf and roll recipe.   It never fails me.   I looked for easy recipes this year, and my sister in law Linda's fruit tart became another favorite I can make again and again.

Best quilting project finished - Arboretum was a lot of fun to make and swap blocks for.  It just seemed to go together so quickly and easily.  I was glad to give it to Preservation Burlington for a fund raiser.

Best outing - we went on a few long trips as well as day trips, but I think I enjoyed going to Staunton, VA, and Asheville, NC, last March the best.   That trip included visiting the Virginia Quilt Museum with its thrilling Jinny Beyer retrospective, attending two plays at the American Shakespeare Center, and getting together with cousins I hadn't seen in 50 years.  Along the way, there were other fun experiences, making for a very full vacation.

Best thing I did - turn over the treasury of the Barre Town Democrats to a young man who actually seems to know what he's doing.  I'm so glad to have a little more free time and hope to continue to make more time for myself in 2024.

Colorado memories

Our week in Colorado went by much too quickly, and now we are back to "life" - grocery shopping, mail, laundry, to-do lists.   But we had a fine time with Mom and Jenny - a ballet honoring the Harlem Jazz Age, a visit to a Dutch artist's studio, a Vietnamese lunch with the Indo-Dutch group, and a trip to Leadville, the highest municipality (over 10,000 feet) in the USA.  We took a tour of  the Matchless Mine shack where poor Baby Doe Tabor spent her impoverished last 36 years, and we stopped at the public library which had an extensive local history collection.  Lunch was super there - delicious grilled cheese, tomato and bacon.  In fact, we ate too well the entire week, and now it's back to watching our intake again.  :-)


We also visited the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum in Golden where there were two outstanding exhibits - one of Russian quilts and the other some amazing thread painted pieces by Jill Kertula.  There were quite a few Russian quilts using traditional American patterns like Trip Around the World.  The fabrics were muted even though they used a lot of red.  Many of the appliqued quilts showed scenes from folk tales, but any words were not translated, unfortunately.

I'm sorry I didn't get any photo of the Kertula quilts - they were outstanding - but a couple of Russian ones caught my eye.  The logs in the log cabin quilt finished at less than 1/2" and many of the centers were grass green satiny fabric.   It ends up looking like an oriental rug.

The appliqued quilt was pieced first and then appliqued with butterflies, yo yo flowers, etc.  I think the background was mostly hand pieced, too.

 There was a fun display of Matryoska dolls, including one featuring the Washington Redskins football team and another featuring heroes of the Soviet Union, with Lenin being the smallest.

The gift shop in the new museum location has grown considerably, and pretty soon they'll outgrow the space.  I didn't buy anything, but I admired the Laurel Burch scarves and t-shirts, and Mom got greeting cards and fun socks.  In fact, I didn't buy any souvenirs at all.  We were too busy to shop!

We love to go to the movies when visiting Mom because there are two multi-plexes nearby.  We saw BlackKKlansman, a Spike Lee film about a black cop infiltrating the KKK in Colorado Springs in the 1970s, and Crazy Rich Asians, a very lightweight romantic comedy with great music - familiar pop songs sung in Chinese.

"Spotlight"

Today is the last of the library's four part journalism-themed film programs, and the film is Spotlight.  Although we saw it in the theater when it came out a few years ago, I am interested in seeing this excellent, thought-provoking film again.  This time, it will be introduced by film scholar Rick Winston who always offers us insight, both before the film and in the discussion that follows.  He's lowkey and encourages everyone to participate.

We've seen a couple of wonderful oldies like His Girl Friday and well as two more contemporary films this winter, and the audience is growing.  The first year we had the film series there was just a handful of people in the audience.  But this year there are about 30 there for the Saturday afternoon events each month.  The Friends of the Library support the series, and I hope we will do so again next winter.

Today I'm standing in for our librarian, setting up/taking down chairs, making popcorn (in a real movie popper so it is delicious), and introducing Rick.   My smaller quilt guild meets at the same time and I'm sorry to be missing it yet again. We meet one Saturday a month, mostly to do hand sewing on our own projects.  I'll look forward to seeing everyone again in April.

"La La Land" and Fannie Flagg

It was cloudy Sunday and threatened to rain, so after lunch we headed up the highway to Daphne and the 12-plex.  We do like to go to the movies when we travel because we rarely go to our 2-plex which features movies of interest to kids and teens.  We usually wait to see the good movies via Netflix, but some are best on the big screen.  La La Land is one of those.  The opening number is just great as everyone is singing and dancing on the congested freeway.  It's an old fashioned story with a realistic ending.  One friend didn't like it; others (who love musical theater) loved it.  We liked it - it was perfect for a gloomy day.  Not that any day in Fairhope or on vacation can be all that gloomy.

Before the movies, I finished off a couple more appliqued swap blocks and read a little.  Dinner was at a nearly deserted Italian bistro, and we brought home quite a bit of food for at least a couple of lunches.  Monday was partly cloudy, but warm enough for capris!  So glad I brought some.  We took a couple of walks, roamed around the pharmacy, wrote post cards to various people, and visited the bookstore.  I got a first edition, signed copy of Fannie Flagg's latest, The Whole Town's Talking.  She lives here - wish I'd been able to come to her book signing last fall.  After I read it, I'll put it in a raffle basket for the library along with other fun things for summer.

Tuesday featured a booktalk at the library about One Minute to Midnight, which detailed the Cuban Missile Crisis in you-are-there detail.  The reviewer, who is also the president of the library's Friends group, did a great job.  I don't usually read nonfiction, but she made me want to.  Afterwards, we had lunch at a French bakery, and my turkey sandwich with cranberry mayonnaise was delicious.  Because it was threatening to rain again, we headed up to Daphne to the movies again, this time seeing Hidden Figures.  Wow!  It was an inspirational, great story about black women who worked for NASA in Virginia where Jim Crow laws were still in place with separate rest rooms and even the office coffee pot the "way it was!"

We have discovered a very nice walking path along Mobile Bay, with park benches for lovely views and this sculpture by one of our favorite Vermont sculptors, Jim Sardonis.