No Excuse!

Well! there goes another day and nothing.....Well, the big mistake was reading instead of quilting or carving. You ever pick up a book and start reading, and find that you cannot put the book down? And worse yet, as you near the end you wish there were 100's more pages? Now that's a good book! I always have a book that I am reading. But seldom do I use the book other than to put me to sleep. Yet I still manage to read and finish about 3 books a month. But last night and today I will destroy that average. The book that I am reading is titled CRUEL JUSTICE, by William Bernhardt. You may not hear from me till I finish this book. But then that will be tonight...

Friday Posting - Delayed till Saturday!

No extensive posting today. Too sore! All that ice chopping and snow shoveling done me in. I hurt all over! Even what little hair is left on my head hurts........Maybe tomorrow will be better.

Just An Update!

Of course the weather is still the big story here. Ice just about every where. In between the various layers of snow is one inch or more if ice. That's on everything. As soon as the snow stopped yesterday, I started chopping and shoveling the cars and the driveway out. At my age, I am thankful that my wife opened the door and yelled for me to stop and rest after every 15 minutes. However, at that rate it would have taken me until June to get the cars out. I did put in several hours yesterday afternoon, then started out again this morning. After I got about half the drive chopped and shoveled out a neighbor with a snow blade on his truck finished it up for me. I still will have a hard time getting up tomorrow morning. Awe, the joys of getting old.

I did however, get some more work done on several Noah's Arks. Tomorrow I'll finish assembling these four arks. Just have to make the leather hinges for the roofs, and antique the finish on the arks.

I also started "roughing out" the pairs of animals for the arks. These arks will get 16 pairs of hand carved animals each. That's 32 animals per ark. It's a wonder that I still think it's fun to make these.

Birds At The Window

Well, the TV weather folks got it partly right this time. Snow, sleet, rain, ice, and the switching back to all snow. Started out with 3 inches of old snow on the ground. Next we got 2 inches of new snow on top of the old. Then there was sleet and rain, which put about 1/2 inch of ice down on top. Now it's snowing heavy.....The birds are in a feeding frenzy. First photo is of a Downey Woodpecker at out window feeder.

This is my favorite bird, a Carolina Wren. These little birds are the the most curious things around. They are fearless! If I leave a door open to my shop they come in and watch me.

We have a large number of Cardinals that feed at the window too.

This is a Tufted Titmouse. They too are fearless, when it comes to eating.

And the ever popular Chickadee. They are always around.

These window feeders are a lot of fun. The following photos were taken in less than five minutes.

Carvings and Whittlins

It's always fun to look back through your photos of what you have done. I share these photos as an example of the types of carving and whittlin that I like to do. I really enjoy carving small stuff, as illustrated in this first photo. These carving are placed on the top of a penny, to show there size. As you can deduce, carving is easier than painting.

These two Gnomes are quite a bit larger. Both stand 6 inches tall. The Gnome on the right I call Napoleon Gnome. The one on the left is Marvin Gnome (from Marvin the Martian cartoon fame).

These carvings are examples of what can be carved from Cottonwood Bark. Cottonwood trees have a very thick bark. Cottonwood trees from out west in the mountains have bark that is up to 8 inches thick. This bark is very easy to carve, and finishes very nice with just wax. I say it's very easy to carve, but I should say it cuts very easily. It is very soft and unlike wood it has no grain. It's very flaky. I sometimes describe carving it as carving wheaties flakes stacked and glued together with a cheap glue.

Mini Quilt In A Bag Swap!

This is the mini 20" x 20" quilt that Kelly made for me, for the "Mini Quilt In A Bag Swap". How this worked, was that the participants were paired up. Each pair traded a bag of fabric and trim. And each person had to make a 20" x 20" mini quilt out of the materials sent by their partner. This was a fun swap, even for an ol' man like me. And you can see the big pay off. A super fine little quilt. Thank you Kelly! It's a great little mini.

Step-by-Step Instructions????

I just finished up a communication to the editors of McCalls Quilting magazine. The point of the communication was the lack of clarity in some of the articles that feature step-by-step instructions. The magazine, to its credit, rates the "how to" projects by their level of difficulty. One star is beginner, two star is intermediate, three star is.............I consider myself a solid intermediate. However, others may think otherwise. I like to read all the articles, but pay particular attention to the beginner and the intermediate articles. I have noticed that the writers and/or the editors are increasingly making great leaps between the steps, and leaving out information that is needed by the beginner and the intermediate quilter. Additionally there seems to be a lack of clarifying illustrations that would help the reader. I am sure that an advanced quilter does not need this level of detail, but the beginner and the intermediate level quilter may.


I shared with them a technique that may serve them well. With this technique the writer or the editor would have a person that is at least one level below the articles intended audience read the article, and underline anything that was confusing or they did not understand. Have that same person try to complete the step-by-step instructions precisely as they are written. This done, note where difficulty occurred and make clarifications.

Anyone else have trouble with step-by-step instructions?