Friday, January 17, 2014

Wrapping Up the Week

Yesterday was a drippy day outside so I sat at my sewing machine for most of it and before I knew it...the day was gone!

I worked on stitching around fusible-web appliques...a tedious task! A good audio book helps a lot. I finished up Charles Dickens, "Tale of Two Cities." I read it in high school and didn't remember any of it. It is set during the French Revolution so I found it much more interesting this time...though like all stories that I've read from that time period...very sad, harsh and brutal. In case time travel becomes possible someday...remember to avoid Paris during that period!

Here's my UFO project. Blocks from an Alaska Shop Hop quilt. There have been some gorgeous designs for these over the years. This is from 2009. A loon and a killer whale. I don't think I have seen either in their natural state in Alaska...have to work on that!


Here's the final design I'm working toward. Twelve more blocks to top-stitch.


Worked on my polar bear ornaments. Did a new stitch, tacked loop, for the yellow fringe...so cute and easy!


We had another frozen option for dinner last night, a tart...like a pizza. Sorry for the fuzzy photo...


This was great for a light dinner. I paired it with a green salad. Cooked in ten minutes and was less the $5. It was a little soggy in the middle...a pizza stone would be nice to have...already have four in Alaska so I'm not going to buy one here. 

I finally figured out how to pick a good bottle of French wine! Look for a label that indicates someone else recommended it. See the gold circle...it got a little award. 


We like this one even better from a couple of nights ago.


I do not get headaches from French red wine like I always do from U.S. red wines. In fact, I just don't drink red wine from the U.S. anymore. Both bottles were just under $10 Euros a piece...$13 U.S. 

We have a pilot friend on a Paris layover to join for dinner tonight. It'a amazing how many friends we get to see over here that we haven't seen in 10 or more years! It's one of my favorite perks about living here. 

4 comments:

Karen - Quilts...etc. said...

I wonder on the wine - LOL - I love wine but I am kind of allergic to it in that I get headaches and my sinuses get terribly stopped up - I went on a wine tour once and mentioned it when they wanted me to take a taste of the red wine which is worse for me in the allergy - the lady said a lot of people are like this and it has to do with the wood cask's that the wine is aged in - makes me curious.

Calicojoan said...

Ohhh I have that one in my pile of UFO's too. There are lots of Loons on the Longmire Lake in Soldotna, and I was fortunate enough to see a group of 3 whales in Resurrection Bay in Seward one year. It was way past time for them to migrate. They were teaching a baby to hunt. They gave our boat quite a show for about 30 minutes. It was worth 10 times the price of admission! I miss Alaska so much! :-) Pizza and wine...the dinner of all good quilters! LOL!

Cathy said...

I loved that quilt when you showed a picture of it when you got the pattern. It's looking even better now that you are working on it. It will be a stunner when it is done.

Audrey said...

Your Alaskan quilt is well on its way. During our trip to Alaska in 2012 we saw only one loon. That was different for us as we have three or four families on the bay just in front of our house each summer. We missed their calls and antics. One spring a diving loon surfaced beside our canoe startling my husband and I so much we almost tipped. It seems he was trying to impress his lady friend.