Winter scenery

I thought I should come back and let you know I'm still alive. I don't have any new sewing projects to show you (Christmas kinda got in the way there), but I am now working on a couple of things. Courtney finished a project that I forgot to post about, however I'm going to see if I can get her to write a guest post about that. She didn't come here yesterday because she was home sick, so maybe next week we can get caught up.

Our winter weather's been crazier than usual this year! We had a very warm November, which boasted these lovely mushrooms on the 28th!

Two days later, it looked like this around here.

It was a bit hard to take after being so spoiled with the warmth, but it did make for some pretty photographs. Minor compensation.

Then we had an extremely cold December, with the temp going down farther than -20°F one night, which produced lovely frosty decorations on the windows.

I had posted the photo below on Instagram, and someone who works for ABC TV asked permission to use my photo on TV! I said yes, of course, but whether it got used or not, I'll probably never know, because I didn't see it. Anybody remember seeing this?

Here are some more frosty pretties.

Believe it or not, we had heavy RAIN on Christmas Day! It was also very windy and near freezing, which resulted in a power outage for a couple hours or so.

We've also had some colorful skies, like this sunrise on December 30th...

... and plummeting temps brought these sun dogs a few days later (I had to take the pics from two different windows, so I spliced them together)...

... with this amazing scene that evening after the sun had just set!

The cold is good for something nice to look at, if nothing else!

One more scene, not so nice to look at...

... was these persistent turkeys sneaking across our backyard. Ugh. This was the first time we've had them during the winter. NOT my favorite birds! ;-Þ

Back to this

We had so many nice days in January that it seemed like spring was getting close. But February has turned out to definitely have its ups and downs. And way downs. It didn't get much above zero yesterday. Here are some living room window frost shots I took earlier from one of the cold days:

Cool, huh? (Pun intended.)

At least the warmth in January has made the winter seem much shorter. And hey, spring begins next month! Officially, anyway. Mother Nature might have other ideas - ha.

First frost

Right there in the middle of the picture... can you see it?

We had our first frost of the season Saturday morning. It wasn't very heavy and didn't seem to affect my flowers or anything in the garden. That spot in the photo is a little shallow hole out in front of our deck. I guess it's one of those "low lying areas" that the forecasters sometimes predict frost for. ;)

It's been really chilly the past week, with highs in the low 50's, but thankfully it's warming up to the 70's later this week. I like cool weather, but it's been a little too-much-too-soon! Hey, it's still officially 'summer', y'know?! Saturday I mowed that grass... at 60° with a pretty good wind chill. Needless to say, I was bundled up.

Golden hour beauty

I know... what am I doing taking more frost photos?! Aargh... enough frost (and COLD) already! But the sun was hitting it just right Sunday evening, and I couldn't resist. Don't they just look like some kind of etched works of art? 

Enjoy! (And click to enlarge for extraordinary beauty!)

Just more frost

Since we're headed back into the deep freeze (below zero again, believe it or not - aargh), I thought I'd bore you with some more frost photos. I took these on Valentine's Day, practicing with my new camera. They're a bit different from past pics, though, because I used my new 50 mm lens. I do love the blurred backgrounds.

Such wonderful, intricate designs in God's handiwork!

From the sewing room window

It did it again. It wasn't predicted, but it did it anyway. We had another blizzard yesterday. The forecast said it was going to snow a little and blow some... but it got to rip roaring a lot stronger than they'd said it was going to, so they upgraded it to a 'blizzard warning'. It didn't start early enough to cancel school, so the kids went... and then left for home again at 9:00 a.m. Aargh. And it's now well below zero again.

Meanwhile, I've been getting some sewing done. Heaven knows, it's better than looking out the window. Here's what I see from my sewing room, and I had to scrunch down a little to get the trees in there. 

It's a pretty gloomy view, isn't it?

BUT... look closer! There's a garden growing up from the bottom of the window!

(Click to enlarge... they're much prettier that way!)

Hey, a person has to look for the bright side, right?

We had a blizzard

We got our predicted blizzard yesterday, but it wasn't quite as bad as we thought it was going to be. We got a little new snow, and winds gusted to over 40 mph at times, which had the new snow and any loose old snow up in the air. Thankfully, we'd had just a bit of rain one night, which glued most of the old snow down.

The temperature dropped pretty fast, and it left us with some frost designs on our windows again. I did a little more practicing with the new Canon camera. These photos are pretty, but not as crisply focused as I'd like them to be. I don't know if the problem is me or the camera. Probably me. I'll keep practicing. :)

I also tried taking movies for the first time with this camera, to show you the blizzard. They turned out okay, but they were in HD (high definition), and the files were HUGE! They'd have taken forever for you to load to play, and much longer for me to upload to Blogger. So I deleted them. I'm not sure if there's a setting to lessen their quality and make future files smaller... I don't think so, but I'll look into it. The Panasonic, my old-new camera, isn't too great with videos, plus it leaves too much background noise on the video clips (kinda like someone's cranking the film reel by hand or something!). So I'm hanging onto my old-old camera, the Kodak, which does blog-quality videos very nicely.

Even though it was blizzarding yesterday, our faithful mail carrier still made it through. Look what she brought me!

Now I have no excuse for not getting those bag projects made! At least not a zipper excuse. ;) Zipit is the best, and I love how she always includes a free zipper pull (designed by her husband) with every order!

(How many zippers did YOU order, Annie Dee? ;) )

Don'tcha just love it when....

.... you're having really COLD weather and your friends send you emails that say "I don't mean to rub it in, but..." and then they proceed to rub it in by telling you how warm it is where they are? And then they even send photos of places where they're enjoying all that warmth... like Disneyland, or Arizona? Yep, that's what I've been getting lately. You know who you are! Ha! 

I'm just kidding! I don't feel "rubbed in" at all... I love getting your emails and photos. Keep 'em coming!!

Anyway, how cold has it been here? Yesterday morning it was this cold:

That was when I took the pic around 9:00 a.m. It was -22° when I got up. Not as bad as they'd predicted, though, which was -26°!

Of course all that cold has left us with plenty of frost again. This was on the inside of the window:

There were also some pretty designs in between the panes of glass:

But really... I got enough of frost-photo-taking last winter, so this doesn't really thrill me. In fact, I'd rather not have any frost to take pics of at all!

Winter WONDERland

I took this photo moments ago. The temperature was -12° when I got up this morning.  It's all the way up to -9° now. Yes, those are little frost formations on the glass on the right side of the pic. Looks like a flock of mini-birds taking flight, doesn't it? :) I didn't take the time for close-ups.

(Click photo to enlarge.)

I WONDER how long this winter is gonna be.....

For those of you waiting for pattern test results, check back on Monday! I have all but one thing finished, but just haven't taken pics yet. Soon!!

This is just so wrong!

I'm sure many of you remember all the various frost photos I posted last winter. Fog + very cold temps = frost. Normally that occurs during the winter... NOT in the fall when there are still leaves on the trees and bushes. But here ya have it, folks... frost on the lilac LEAVES from yesterday morning:

With snow in the background, no less:

Who'd have thought I'd be doing frost photos again so soon?! At least that clear sky and sunshine made it all go away. No thanks to the still-frigid temps.

This is so wrong!

I found these forming on our windows yesterday afternoon! It was 6°F when I got up this morning! Boo, hiss!!! And brrrrr!

I was trying to get a good shot for my final camera class assignment. I'm not sure whether I'll use any of these or not, but which one do you like best?

Tomorrow's the first day of spring. Will someone inform Mother Nature of that? Meanwhile, I think I'll go sew some more doll clothes.