Thursday, January 8, 2009

Winter World




January brings the snow
Makes your feet and fingers glow.
February's cold and sleet
Freeze the toes right off your feet!

This old Flanders and Swan song, hit it just about right for the weather here
in Edmonton. Since mid-December we've been in a deep freeze. And I mean really DEEP! Down to minus 40 deg. Celcius (where the Fahrenheit scale meets it) overnight and with wind-chill factored in. Daytimes not a lot better, averaging minus 18 C. or so. When the temperature has risen to minus 10. deg.C it feels positively balmy! Snow has fallen "snow on snow" as the old carol says and we are living in an almost white world. There's no doubt it's winter in Edmonton!

Christmas was a bright spot in an otherwise dark world, with the lights and the warmth of family and friends making it possible to ignore, if not enjoy the weather. And now that the festivities are behind us, it's back to quilting. One consolation of the cold is that it's great weather for quilting. If you have all your supplies on hand you can just hunker down and be creative. And when you get tired of that, you just cuddle up in a cheery quilt and read a good book.

Having completed some Guild projects, I'm back to my queen sized "Thirty-years of Fabric" quilt, and am just about finished putting the top together. This is the easy part. The more difficult phase of basting and quilting it is to come. Each time I've finished a queen-sized quilt, I've said, "That's the last big quilt I'm going to do." But here I am working on another one!
I guess I just never learn.

Having begun this post with grumbling and ranting about the cold weather, I'll finish this on a warmer note, for next month I'll be in Singapore. So in my next post, you may very well find me grumbling about the too hot and humid weather in that tropical city! But no doubt, I'll be enjoying the fabric shops and market stalls and with any luck, I'll be able to meet some quilters as well. Keep tuned.

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