sparklies!!

 
I received the neatest package in the mail from Auntie Tina! She sent me all kinds of beautiful jewelry for my costuming. Unfortunately a couple of the pictures got scrambled on my computer, but are these not gorgeous? The ones above were the ones that are going to inspire me to do a Victorian era outfit.

 
This set makes me think of earlier this century. I love rhinestone jewelry. I tend to wear it when I dress up (in real life I mean!)


 
I think these earrings might be my favorite. They're so sparkly!


 
The goody package also had the neatest antique laces, linens, and beading. I think it may have been a lady's lace swatch box. These are my favorite two lace swatches. I can't believe how tiny the stitches are on the top one. I can't even imagine how she did them!

Thank you Auntie Tina! 

one down, 24 to go

 


I think I've finally worked out my quilting issues. Here's the first square (diamond?) of the "Oh My Stars" quilt. The most important thing for me was switching to a smaller hoop. It means I have to move the hoop more, but it weighs a whole lot less! I also altered the quilting design somewhat so that it is a lot more connected for ease of quilting.

signs of spring

 


First flowers of the season...check! Naked toes....check! Must be spring.

The harp is still in the finishing stages. We're using a polyacrylic finish to avoid yellowing the beautiful pale maple (and it's working). Aaron's about to apply the last coat, whereupon he wants to let it sit for about a week to make sure it's good and hard. And then (oh yes, there's more) he has discovered some new evil called "rubbing compounds" which he assures me will add immeasurably to the quality of the finish (and not so incidentally to the time). Nonetheless, it's moving along. As soon as the finishing step is through, there will be big fun involved in pounding in hardware, stringing, and tuning, tuning, tuning. I love that part. Here's a glimpse of the joy that it is to have half-finished wood all over the house. It's not quite as close to the dresser as it appaers, but caution is nonetheless indicated. Note that we're putting various class notes to good use.

 


And here I thought I'd never use them again.

the promised land - part 2

 


Natural beauty. Perhaps if you live surrounded by it long enough, you don't see it. On our final evening in Utah, we were chatting with our waitress at dinner. She asked what all we'd seen while visiting, and we enthusiastically mentioned Antelope Island. She stared at us quizzically for a moment, then responded, "You went over there? Seriously? Whatever for?" She grew up there and has never been over to the island. I can't imagine not wanting to go. There's a lake. A really big lake. With an island. A really big island. Upon which is a mountain. A really big....well, perhaps not such a big mountain by Utah standards, but still. It seemed like an obvious destination.

 


There's a whole lot of history, both natural and human-type on the island. I'm not sure how much I absorbed of it, but in brief, the salt lake is really weird! Its salinity is something like 4-20 times that of seawater, depending on where at in the lake you are (don't quote me....it's close). The variation is partly due to man-made things like causeways. In some places there are 3-4 feet of salt precipitated on the bottom. At different points in history it covered way more area, basically the whole valley. For some reason I thought this would make the valley really infertile, but the opposite is apparently true. Also, the sand is rounder than beach sand (oolate they called it).

 


Oh, and there are actually two things that live in the salt lake...brine shrimp and brine flies.

 


In recent history, the island has been primarily used for ranching. (In really recent history, it's been a state park used for recreation). Various rather hardy folks have raised animals on the land. There's a ranch house to visit. This reads like a 4th grade essay, doesn't it? Ah well. History was never my strong suit.

 


There's a herd of pseudo-tame mule deer that hang out near the old ranch. They weren't terribly troubled by us.

 


One in particular, is more or less a pet of the volunteers there. Her name is "Whisper" and she has apparently been known to go inside the office to get her chow if they forget to put it out for her.

 


The thing we were looking for most of all while roaming about was bison. Apparently bison are not the same thing as buffalo...I was corrected. (Shhhh.....I still don't know the difference.) We finally spotted the herd at a distance while driving.

 


Then later, we came across this guy just kinda hanging out near the visitor center. Perhaps they pay him extra to pose for tourists. I took a number of pictures of him, but they were consistently of his behind. It was nice of him to stand in front of some pretty backdrop though. He probably gets a bonus for that.

 


I, as you might imagine, dubbed him "Bob."

 

the promised land - part 1

 


Utah was amazing. We spent three days skiing and one day exploring. The focus of this post will be on the skiing, and it'll be mostly pictures. After all, how many times can I say "the skiing was fantastic." Well, that's one time so far I guess. It really was. The snow was...snow...not ice. The mountains were tall and steep. The skiers and snowboarders were in control, all of them. Any one of those factors would have been great, but combined they were remarkable to an east-coaster like myself. Maybe I'll research job opportunities in Utah.

I forgot the camera the first day, but here I am the second day on the mountain at Alta. No goggles yet, but I'm wearing the wonderful rental boots that inspired me to drag Aaron all over the city later that night in search of a pair of my own. Since I've already forced many people to listen to a long boring story of the wondrous-ness of those boots, I'll omit it here.

 


The mountains were rugged. This doesn't really do justice to it, but I didn't take a whole lot of pictures at the top (too windy and too interested in skiing) so unfortunately I don't have any pictures of crazy people jumping over rocks. Rest assured, there were crazy people jumping over rocks. There were also tracks that mutely assured me that there were even crazier people there earlier, jumping over even crazier rocks. We rode with a guy who would have been happy to show us how to get there. Um, no thanks!

 


We were really lucky this day because the weather was doing what the locals called an "inversion" which apparently meant that the air layers reversed, trapping smog in the valley and putting warm air up on the mountains. So beautiful! For us anyway. You know, the lucky people on top of the mountain.

 


This is the only shot we got off of the back side of the mountain (towards the city) that day. Over my shoulder, you can see a bit of the Great Salt Lake, as well as Antelope Island, which has a mountain on it that is larger than the largest of the hills around here. Actually, I just made that statistic up on the spot, but I think it's probably true. Everything was on a different order of magnitude out there.

 


The other resort that we visited was Snowbasin, which was really nice. And when I say "really nice", I actually mean "really swanky." In place of a hamburger stand, they had a mountain chalet with chefs in white hats. The instructors knew all kinds of people by their first names. The rental shop people were really happy to help you try several pairs of boots. And when you went to get on the gondola, the lift attendants took your skis for you. That resulted in a brief tug-of-war the first time, as you might imagine. I was really confused as to why the ski patrol was confiscating my skis. Sigh. One of my favorite things about Snowbasin was eating lunch on top of the mountain. At close to 10,000 feet, it was possible to get out of breath doing strenuous things like, say, getting up to get another cookie, but it was well worth it. The cookie, I mean.

This picture shows Aaron thanking his boss for sending him to Utah, but mostly shows the view out the window. What a great place to eat. (No, nobody minded Aaron being on his cell phone. Sadly, all too many people were calling the office on the gondola. Then again, maybe they owned the office, who knows?)

 


Finally, the only picture we have of the two of us together. We kinda liked the moose for some reason. Oh, and I'm wearing my new pink goggles. Because pink is SO my color. Actually, the goggles and I were virtually inseparable. I was possibly wearing them on the highway. And possibly wearing them in the hotel lobby. And possibly considered wearing them on the plane. (I settled for putting them in my carry-on.)

 


More tomorrow - pictures of antelope island, home of the friendliest mule deer ever, plenty of bison butts (they were shy), and no antelope at all as far as we could tell.

my harp has feet

Progress on the harp hasn't exactly been stellar as of late. Mostly, we were too busy planning to go skiing, going skiing, and recovering from going skiing. However, I've got a few shots of some of the work.

Here's some gluing and clamping of trim. The bottom strip of trim has 5 screws through it, so there are little plugs that go in and then get sanded down.

 


We did a test fitting of the neck and pillar with the base. This really was a two-person procedure, exactly as the kit directions indicated. I love those directions. The fit just required a bit of trimming on the bottom. Dexter found this incredibly boring. I believe what he's saying here is, "uh, people....walk?"

 


Here's my favorite bit of the harp. Don't ask me why, but I really like the little bun feet.

 


We have since moved on to finishing, and are about halfway through. I forgot to take pictures, but I'd imagine the 2nd and 4th coat look a lot alike on the camera anyway. And last of all, for you mom....I found this on the camera. Apparently even the dog can solve the puzzle. I, alas, cannot.