Yellowstone

We spent the weekend at Yellowstone National Park. Ever since I first saw Yellowstone, 10 years ago, I have wanted to see it with snow on the ground. The park is closed to wheeled vehicles at the moment- they don't plough the roads - so we took the snow coach for a tour into the park as far as old Faithful - getting there in time to see the geyser erupt. Actually that was kind of disappointing as there was so much steam coming out that we could hardly see the water and the sky behind was kind of grey as well which didn't help. The eruption was about 125'- not as tall as it is sometimes. We'll go back and see it in the summer when the sky is blue. The park looked beautiful and I am putting up some pictures for you to see. One of the most amazing sights was all the snowmobiles - literally hundreds of them gathered at every rest stop and major attraction. I was getting worried that all the snow would be gone before we got to Yellowstone - not at all it has been coming down in buckets and travel up there was quite difficult. The snow is back here in Idaho Falls with about 4" coming down in the last couple of days.

Journal quilts

I am taking a set of classes at the quilt store 'The Quilted Daisy' on journal quilts. The idea is that you make a small quilt - no bigger than A4 - a month and it records what you were thinking about or looking at that month. The classes are aimed at teaching the techniques to be used for this and we are encouraged to get away from traditional quilting and use any materials that suggest themselves and any form of stitching. You can read more about this here

http://www.quiltart.com/

Here are my first efforts for February.
The small one is a postcard version to send to my quilting friends, Under the Edge Quilters, back home.

The trouble with all this is that I don't think of this as quilting at all but rather as free machine embroidery. I have to keep quiet about this when I am in class and it really doesn't matter as long as I enjoy doing it and I am learning and being inspired. I have been playing with a lot of these techniques for some time but have never really had a focus for my efforts. So here goes - one a month for the next year!

where did the snow go

It has been pretty warm here for the last few days. Well above freezing during the day, and all the snow has been gradually melting. The ground has been getting soggier and soggier and then, today it rained hard and the snow is nearly all gone. We have been hearing about significant snow falls, traffic chaos and schools closed, back in Great Britain - seems to me it could be warmer here just at the moment. Where did all the snow go?