A Gift For You

Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas!

This seems the perfect time to share with you my latest commissioned portrait and to wish you all a very Beautiful and Joyous Christmas!

Catching Up

Finally I finished a couple of birthday gifts that are woefully past due. I will get them in the post on Monday. My beautiful young friends just turned twelve and nine. Their birthdays aren't over until their packages arrive from Newfoundland.
I made this shoulder bag for a dancer. The inside pocket is extra large to hold her dancing shoes. I started making these shoulder bags last summer and have started making them to sell. More on that at a later date. Note the felt button.






This is what I call a sweater skirt because it has been up-cycled from a sweater and turned into a skirt, scarf and wrist warmers. The card goes with this gift, I drew it from a planter I have in my window.




A huge on-going project is our house.


George and I have been doing a lot of work on our house the last few months. I have been fixing plaster walls and doing a lot of painting. When I realized that I would have to wait until next year for a wood floor I decided to have fun painting the floor. Here is what I came up with. I plan to paint the entire first floor this way.
My goal is to try and get the main living space as comfortable as I can so I can host knit night soon :-)



Another highlight for us is Pepper, a kitten we adopted last week. She is fearless, this one. I have two adult cats that were not pleased with her arrival but she is holding her own.

More of Conrad and the Red Ball

I have been trying to put this video on the blog for a week, finally I uploaded onto Youtube so that you could view it. Conrad lives at the Portland Zoo along with his sister Tasul. The Portland Zoo has a nice web-site where you can see more of these delightful polar bears. I tried to set-up the link for you but wasn't able to get it to work properly.

The Red Ball

Photos of the Oregon Coast

Just north of Florence, Oregon you'll find some of the most beautiful coastal scenery in the world. I was there on a gorgeous day in May.

Thank-you for being so patient!

Thanks to all of you who checked in from time to time and please accept my apology for the long silence. I was away from home for a spell, most of my time spent in Oregon, on a much needed visit with family. I divided my time between Portland,(I love that city), and Florence, which is on the coast and also where my mother lives. I had a lovely time and I have lots of pictures to share and a couple of fun videos to show as well.
Sadly, my sweet old Moses seemed to wait for me to come home so he could leave this world. I am grateful that we had a beautiful last week together and he left us in peace. I loved my Moses and he will be greatly missed. I share with you the last few photos of him.

A Light Moment

One of my life's pleasures is making gifts for children. In fact that is the root of my craft movement. I have five children who I always make gifts for and then there are some children I just feel need an apron and so they get one too. I love being able to spread a bit of joy around. These children are wearing custom-made chef hats and aprons that I created. I am pretty sure they are making banana bread, Colby's fav.

Where is the ice?

Usually by now the bay is full of thick ice, but this winter has been quite mild for us. The skiers are a bit disappointed and I would be too except that I have been ice-skating at the arena quite frequently. I absolutely love living on the beach in the winter because it is so quiet and breathtakingly beautiful. I never tire of the views from my windows.





And my dog, Moses, loves living on the beach too!





While I was taking pictures of the bay I also thought I should take a few photos of my sweet Moses. Doesn't he look dashing?

A Visitor On the Beach

We caught sight of this harp seal as he was fishing in the bay one morning just before Christmas. We could hardly believe our luck when he came to shore right in front of our house. At first we were really quiet and careful not to startle him and then much to our surprise he came out of the water and rolled around in the sand. He attracted the attention of the neighbors and as people got closer to him and he didn't seem afraid we thought maybe there was something wrong with him, that maybe he came out of the water to die. But except for a bum eye he looked healthy enough and he fished in the bay and rested on our beach for three days, leaving Christmas morning.