Bald Eagle Sighting:

We had another day of snow (what else is new here) on Saturday, but Sunday brought beautiful blue skies and warmer temperatures so we decided to take a ride out to the Farmington Bay Bird Refuge, due west of our house on the edge of the Great Salt Lake.  With cameras and binoculars in hand we were searching for Bald eagles who have been spotted roosting in the area.  Bald eagles are now off the endangered species register and there have been sightings of over a 1,000 birds in Utah during the winter months of November through March.

Flights Of Fancy

It seems the Coven quilters have been working hard this week!  This is my latest quilt.  Click here to read all about it.

Quilts and Such:

 

This is the fourth quilt I have finished this winter.  With one more to go I am feeling pretty good about my progress of not only getting quilts off the "to do" list but working on my machine quilting skills.  This quilt is 50" x 50", so not too large.  I bought it as a kit and when I say that, I purchased a package of fabric and a paper pattern to go with it.  I would not recommend using a purchased paper pattern for this type of quilt.  It drove me nuts and I refuse to look at the corners too closely for obvious reasons.  I added an extra row of blocks making it a bit larger than the original pattern and so I had to use the backing fabric for the inserts and binding.  Luckily I had a great piece in my stash for the backing and so didn't need to add even more to the old stash.  This is the "mother" of the quilt I finished first and put up on the blog recently.  I used the left overs and the rest of the backing on that quilt which was my own design.

 

I used this quilt to practice the free motion feathering stitch and I quickly got the hang of it.  It was fun to do, especially when you have a space that blocks the design.  It took me about 15 - 18 hours to finish the quilting - I don't even want to think how long it would have taken me if I had decided to do it by hand! 

AKHA CEREMONY - APPEASING THE SPIRITS

The day before we visited this village, a bamboo had fallen onto the spirit gate, which is a bad omen to the Akha.  They believe that this signifies a spirit's displeasure with them and that bad luck is about to befall them.

Chinese New Year and Quilts

Monday night we were invited to a Chinese New Year celebration sponsored by the  Kindergarten through third grades at Jenny P. Steward Elementary.  Ethan, who is in second grade and Ingrid in Kindergarten are participating in the Mandarin immersion program which has them studying 2/3 of the day in Mandarin and 1/3 in English.  They are thriving and all the classes put on a wonderful cultural exchange program including the first and second grade students (Ethan) showing how a dragon dance is done with enthusiasm. 

THE ARCHES OF JAIPUR

One of my outstanding memories of Jaipur and the surrounding area, is the beauty of all the different arches.  

You can see from the picture below, that the gates around the city centre were quite elaborately decorated.

Spring Thaw?

 Well January is finally over with!!!!!  The storms have gone and the snow is melting.  Here is Roger standing next the mound of snow that he created via snowblower and snow shovel.  It's good to see blue sky again.  To celebrate, we decided to head up to the cabin, spend the night and take a tour of the association on our snowmobile.