Brightening up the music room ... spring visitor ... another project ...

My music room walls are pale blue, the ceiling is white. The wall behind the piano is dark blue, but there is little of it that is painted as there is a double-door closet in the middle of the wall. All the art in this room is one of two themes: winter/snow or birds. I'd been thinking that having looked at the blue walls for 4 years (yes! almost exactly... just a few more days to the anniversary) I wanted to brighten it up a little bit. So I visited my stash of finished quilts and found just the one; it works perfectly! All the color I could want now drapes the corner of the room I look at when practicing piano...



Happy, happy!

The snow is gone. There has been goodly amounts of water flowing down the mountain sides and Halls Brook has been roaringly alive the past few weeks.



Well! March seemed to take an eternity this year, but it is past and we are now enjoying April showers. There has been a good deal of mud around, but the glimse of greenery--and even some flowers!--shooting up out the ground tempers one's feeling about the dirt. The Fritillaria are coming up for their second year! I remember reading that they had trouble surviving our New England winters, but some bit of luck has sustained these two. Also seen peeping above ground are daffodils and crocuses. The crocuses have bloomed, the daffodils are a ways off still.



The ritual of bringing the bird feeders in at evening time has begun. A clamor on the deck last week alerted me that the winter pajama party is over for the bears. She (or he) has grown this past year--if this is the same bear that was around last spring. It was drizzling rain when I went out to take a few pictures: I was on the deck, she was below, enjoying the contents of what used to be a bird feeder. It made me a little nervous that she went around to the other side of the house and poked her head into the kitchen entry room. Oh dear. I opened the kitchen door and made some sound; they don't like hearing human voices. She backed out quickly and went along her way.



I have started another quilt, and truth be told, I don't like to have multiple projects (of the same type) going at the same time. I like to bring a project to completion before taking on another. However, this quilt will be made of wool applique and the technique is totally unlike piecing cotton, and lends itself to being worked on at a different time of day than piecing. Therefore, I consider it a good idea to get started. I like piecing in the morning or afternoon when there is plenty of light. I like hand sewing in the evening, when it is quiet and the day's labors are done. The wool applique will all be hand sewn. I'm following a pattern; there will be multiple blocks in the finished quilt, including one large central block. This is my first block in progress:



You can see the basting thread (white) on the pieces I have not yet button-hole stitched into place. This is a large project and will take some time. I found the pattern at a quilt show over the weekend. A very inspiring show, it was.

Work will begin soon on the kitchen entry and it's only 4 days away from my 4 year anniversary moving here. Another post on that to come.