Pictures, Pictures who need Pictures, are the luckiest Pictures in the Wooooooorrrrrllld

 You can see Dru in all his fluffy-footed glory here. He looks like a golden bear with huge feet, when really he's getting sort of skinny in his old age.

 Jake was staring moonily into the camera when Dru blundered into him just as I snapped the pic.See how nicely trimmed Jake's visible foot is? The vet did that when she was seeing him for his eye infection.

 First page on my art journal. The princess used to be a boy advertising some kind of couture watches.

 A detail of the Storm at Sea quilt I started year and years and years ago. I finally finished it. The Storm at Sea class was taught by Kim Jalette at a class for our guild. She still teaches at Seminole Sampler, and I think she's teaching again at MAQ this summer. She's a good teacher, very organized and easy to understand.

 Detail of quilt I made for my Mom. The first time I've used a lot of batiks. I really like them. I actually made a two sided quilt, the other side is a bunch of Moda marbles my mom chose. I have to send these off to be quilted. I'm having both of them done (this one and the Storm at Sea) at the place Toni uses, just to try someone new.

That baby quilt I made with the Tiny Turning Twenty pattern and a bunch of fat quarters. It's hanging off my iron.

The Games People Play

What games do you like to play?

This came up because tonight I went to Toni's and played Mahjong. Well, we sat at the table with the tiles and slowly worked through the steps of the game, but it wasn't exactly playing. We showed each other our tiles and asked each other questions about how to play. It's fun, I love the sounds the tiles make when we swish them around, and while it is challenging, it's not like bridge. Bridge makes me feel like I am the stupidest human on the planet. I tried several times to pick it up but finally decided that a game that made you want to cry wasn't all that entertaining.

My favorite board game is Scrabble. I usually don't win because I get excited about putting down funny or clever words and don't pay enough attention to the double/triple word score blocks.

I also like games like Pictionary and Charades, which are both fun and funny. My sister's husband is the best person I've ever known at Charades, and he and Carmen have some kind of psychic connection - they can guess each others' clues when no one else has a clue. The other members of their team will be scratching their heads over the words they have, for example, Carmen signs "book" and has given the first word, "the" and Wilson shouts out "The Communist Manifesto". Those crazy kids.

Yahtzee is another good game that has saved my bacon more than once with my in-laws. It's something that Thomas and I can play with his family. It's called Knifel in German, and we all like to play and no one has to be able to speak the same language to enjoy playing together. Rose, Thomas' mother, gets Knifel/Yahtzee way more than is statistically likely.

I wish we all played more games, any kind of games, whether board games, card games, or word games. It's a great way to spend time with our friends and family, it gets the brain working, and it's way more enriching than watching another episode of Law & Order.

Happy Easter

Our contributions to the Easter dinner were deviled eggs (Thomas made those) and Liketa Died Potato Casserole from the book Being Dead Is No Excuse: The Official Southern Ladies Guide To Hosting The Perfect Funeral. I made those.


The entire dinner was delicious. We had ham, the eggs and the potatoes, green bean casserole, bing cherry jello salad (also from that same cookbook) and gingered carrots. The dessert was coconut cream cake. Jim made that and it was splendid, when they brought it out it looked like something from the front cover of a food magazine.

RIP Diana Wynne Jones

I heard just yesterday that Diana Wynne Jones, one of my favorite YA/fantasy novelists, died in late March. I welled up with tears when I read the news online.

She was a GREAT writer: inventive, clever, funny without being sarcastic, altogether just a treasure. Let me tell you, while JK Rowling hit the jackpot with the HP books, she's not half the writer that DWJ was. Rowling had that one great idea that she ran with, while DWJ wrote everything, a wide variety of books: ghost stories, adventure stories, faery tales set on their ears, romps with djinni, fire demons, and castles that couldn't stay still.

If you are interested in trying her out, I recommend any of the Chrestomanci books (start with Charmed Life), Deep Magic, or my personal favorite, Howl's Moving Castle.I understand she has one more book that will be published posthumously, Earwig and the Witch.

I was at the library the other day, looking in the SF/fantasy section, and right now, things are dire. Seems like half the books out are really paranormal romances about vampires or werewolves, and the other half are zombie books. Please, when will the zombie/werewolf/vampire craze be over? Make it stop! The only things I found that seemed like possibilities were in YA, and even there, you have to plow through volumes of z/w/v books to find the occasional interesting read. I also have a couple of books by Robin Hobb to try out thanks to my friend Samantha. I was interested to hear that RH is actually my old friend Megan Lindholm, writing under a different pen name!

I also have to go on record noting that after my big weather whine of yesterday, today dawned rainy and cold and was sunny and 70 by 3pm.

Okay weather, you have beaten me

The rain, in Maryland, does not stay mainly on the plain. It circles wherever I am, falling coldly on me as I try to go about my business. It seeps moistly into my socks through the cracks in my soles. It dampens me and my mood and my hair and my clothes. I give up. It's cold again, I've turned the heat back on on the 22nd of April.

If you knew how much it hurt me to report that. I have a rule that we don't use the heat in April and May, and this year that's been necessary to heat the house several times this April. My plan to keep the power bills low are being undermined. And since I am complaining about the weather, what the heck was that stupid Groundhog, Punxatawney Phil, smoking when he said winter would be over early this year? Hello people, winter looks like it's going right up to May this year. Grummel, grummel, grummel. Serves me right for getting meteorological information from a rodent.

I finished putting a border on the back for my Mom's quilt. Yay me. I have added several inches to my Tasha Tudor shawl and am approaching the time when I'll have to get help on adding the border. I can do it, I just need help translating the directions into something my brain can understand. I've also been painting pages for my art journal. I had fun today after the (wet, cold) dog walk. I cut a picture out of a magazine of a prettily handsome fellow. He was in some kind of clothes ad, or cologne ad, or an ad for expensive watches. He's now a pretty, pretty princess with long black hair, a yellow princess hat, and a blue dress. I overdid it with the gold eyeshadow a bit, so he's kind of a tarty looking princess, but for a first try at collage and using my paints, he makes me smile.

I think I will get my camera and sneak around taking pictures of things I want to share on FB and here. 

I am re-reading a bunch of comfort novels this weekend to get me through the cold weather. First I dashed through Year of the Cat, Gate of the Rat by Andre Norton, and now I'm in the middle of Getting Rid of Bradley by Jennifer Crusie. Speaking of Jenny Crusie, go over to her blog and read this fantastic entry about her dog Lyle. From his pictures, I am in love with Lyle, and think that maybe my next dog should be a wiener dog!

If you haven't yet read anything by her, I heartily recommend either Bet Me or Fast Women (my personal fave). This is JUST the weekend to read a smart mystery/romance/novel about smart, funny women. Just do yourself a favor and don't get sucked into the terrible Fortunate Miss Fortunes. I am sorry to say that it sucked donkey kong.