Back From Beyond

Good Morning Friends,

It was time to come home. The power, phone, cable, and Internet all went out around noon on Friday. The first 24 hours we had fun being resourceful. The Cornish Game Hen we cooked on top of the wood burning stove was quite tasty. The recipe wasn't good enough for the Wilder Family Cookbook, but it was good.

I have two of these HEAVY old irons that I was trying to use to applique. Where there's a will, there's a way! I would keep one warm on the wood stove while working on these little leaves. Well, I've never had trouble with carpal tunnel syndrome....but I will now after using these heavy irons. The bottom line is I completed only nine leaves using the starch method of applique with this iron!




It was getting harder and harder each day to walk down out back to take these pictures. I finally resorted to wearing Joe's boots that were much taller than mine. But they were so big that my sock ended up wadded in the toe of the boot every time. I've fallen and I can't get up has true meaning for me now. It's hard to extricate yourself to a standing position while trying to protect your camera. Zinny was absolutely no help at all. She just pranced around me doing her little doggy laugh and thinking it was very funny being eyeball to eyeball with me.



Joe says the bird feeder resembles Marge Simpson's hairdo. It was the equivalent of gathering around the water cooler in an office. We had every bird in the neighborhood eating at our feeder contently waiting their turn.

Every candle we owned was pressed into service. Working on applique by candlelight is definitely not an option. Reading by candlelight was also ruled out very quickly. We played a game called Rummykub....great fun but hard to make any distinction between the colors of the tiles. Either we have old eyes, or weak candles. We went for a walk, in the dark to check out the rest of the neighborhood that was also in complete darkness except for the one cabin with an extremely annoying generator that pierced the solitude of the evening. Zinny had a great time romping in the snowbanks dropping out of sight on more than one occasion.

We came back to the cabin, had a glass of wine by the fire, then headed for bed without the benefit of an electric blanket. But not to fear, I have so many quilts around the cabin, on beds, on walls, on the back of couches that we were nice and toasty.

After 24 hours without power we decided to come home. Much longer than that, we probably wouldn't have been such good sports! The power is still out as of this writing. Over 5,000 customers are without power caused by 50 separate outages. I'm thinking the food in our fridge is history.

The past ten days have been some days that we will remember for a long time. We had torrential rain, sleet, thunder and lightning and snow. Driving home, the emergency broadcast system came over the radio, and we were headed into a potential tornado! Surprising weather for California.

I hope all of you have a wonderful day. I'll be warm and cozy working at the shop tomorrow. Hope to see some of you there.

As always,
Lynn