Nebraska!-Benched

The city of Omaha created a lovely park in the downtown area, and the perfect weather gave us the opportunity to enjoy it.  My favorite feature of the park were the "art" benches.  I thought they were creative and fun.

Woodsy

Deep conversations

Ribbit!

Wired

The suburbs

Just pretty

On a sliding scale

Nebraska!-The Bridge

The evening of our first day out we went to see the Bob Kerry Bridge, the longest pedestrian bridge that connects two states.  The bridge crosses the Missouri River from Nebraska to Iowa.  It was a beautiful evening--cool with wispy clouds in the sky--and the bridge itself is a beautiful structure.  Such a lovely and pleasant way to end the day!

The curving path gave opportunity to have views from various perspectives

The path was wide enough for walkers and bikers to cross comfortably

The design was clean, simple, and yet striking

From below

The recent flood waters left interesting patterns in the shallows

Looking back towards the Nebraska side

A water feature/mini-amphitheater

A garden depicting the different local ecosystems

Catching a few rays of the evening sun

Nebraska!-The Museum

One of the things the holiday time afforded was time for my hubby to get his pictures from our Nebraska trip downloaded.  So I don't overwhelm everyone with pictures (I have visions of readers scrolling down the post with a glazed look in their eyes), I will spread them out over the next few posts.

The main reason we went to Nebraska was to see the International Quilt Museum.  It was of an architectural interest to my husband since the building had won awards, and of course the quilts for me.  So here we go...

The building itself was very nice done.  The brick work hinted at quilts without being too literal. There was a lot of natural light in the common spaces and touches of quilt motifs without being overwhelming.

 

One of my favorite features was they way they used quilt motifs in neutral, subtle tones for their donor walls.

The main exhibit featured quilts using the hexagon, not my favorite but I can't help but be amazed at the number of tiny pieces that went into these quilts.

This was my favorite quilt from the second part of the exhibit which featured Nebraska quilters.  This was a more recent quilt, and unfortunately the lighting made capturing the outstanding use of color in this quilt impossible.  The actual colors were black, purple, charcoal for the dark fabric; and khaki to greenish khaki for the light fabrics.  It was stunning.

 Upstairs in the conference/classroom areas were some quilts from the local quilters.

Nice use of color

My kind of quilt--simple design, space for fun quilting

A postscript:  Since our Nebraska trip, my husband and I made another trip to see the new Texas Quilt Museum in La Grange, Texas.  Again, it was the building (two historic building joined and renovated) and the exhibit that interested us.  Featuring 62 mostly award-winning quilts made in the past 25 years by Texas quilters, the exhibit was wonderful.  The space was open, airy, and well lit.  Unfortunately they didn't allow pictures, so all I have is a token photo.  Still, I would highly recommend going to anyone interested in quilts.

Next post:  The Bridge

Gifts-Part 2

To finally catch up on our family celebrations, I received a couple of lovely gifts from my dear husband, and my eldest son and his wife for anniversary/birthday:

The necklace was from my husband to replace one just like it that I had lost over a year ago.  It was one of my favorites, so I am glad to be able to wear it again.  The earrings from my son and daughter-in-law pair so nicely with the necklace.  I love jewelry that relates but doesn't exactly match. 

In my next post I hope to share some pictures from our Nebraska trip back in the fall, and that should bring me up to date, I think.   

Gifts

The holidays didn't go quite as we planned since both my hubby and I came down with colds just a few days before Christmas.  Consequently we weren't able to join the family for the celebration, making for a very quiet Christmas, but thanks to technology we were able to join from afar.  

To catch up, here are some the special things I have given and received for Christmas.  

First, from my dear husband, a lens for my iPhone:

I hope this will improve the quality of some of the photos I post here.

For one of my daughters I made what I will call a tote cloth since its original name is trademarked.  It can be used to carry produce she gathers from her gardens or kindling for her wood stove.  On a nice day, it could even serve as a picnic cloth.

This is the cowl I made my other daughter, but I will need her to send me a couple of pictures with it on to really show it off. (hint, hint :-)  )

One of my sons had my name for Christmas, and his family gave me a nice hefty knife to add to my kitchen cutlery plus a gift card for iTunes (yeah!).  

And my parents gave me a couple of quilting books to help me with skill and inspiration.

Every once in a while our family tends to do the unexpected.  At our Sunday school class Christmas party I made a steal during the white elephant gift exchange.  Even my husband was wondering what I was going to do with these.

I told him that I planned to wear them to the farmers' market, though they may not be as practical for that as I had hoped.  They aren't as warm as I might like, but they are something easily washable.  As far as people noticing what they are, that may happen occasionally, but I have come to learn that people really don't pay that much attention to each other.  And those who do will probably laugh to themselves, or make a funny comment.  The packaging gave me a laugh...construction, cooking?

I hope I didn't leave anything out.  If I did, someone remind me and I will add it to another post.  Having a cold made the holidays a bit of a blur.  Happy New Year, everyone!

Wool Gathering 2

The latest washing and blocking event included a cowl and a couple of hats that had been long awaiting this process. 

The pattern of this first hat was supposed to swirl, but for some reason it didn't work out that way.  Even so, it turned out to be a fairly nice hat.  

This is one of my favorite hat patterns.  It is simple, but interesting to make.  The goal of this project was to use up some yarn I had left from another hat, so with the hope that the hat would turn out slouchy, I kept going on the pattern until the yarn was mostly used up.  I like the way this pattern looks on me, but will have to do a different color.  As much as I love this color orange, it isn't something I would wear.  

This cowl pattern actually called for a heavier yarn, but I wanted to see how it would do in a lighter weight.  I really like the texture of this pattern and the way the lighter yarn made it drape.  

Needing more room in my wooly garment box, I sent these projects plus some others with my daughter to give as gifts.  She lives in a much colder clime than I, so hopefully they will warm some heads and necks along with hearts.


  

Wool Gathering

I have finally gotten around to washing and blocking several of my projects which means I finally have pictures to show.  First up is a shawl pattern by a favorite designer of mine--Jared Flood.  The pattern is called Terra, and the yarn color I used is Black Cherry.  Therefore I present to you Cherry Terra:

The yarn is actually a darker red with a hint of black in it (the iPhone camera is not the best in capturing color).  The shawl is large, and just the thing to throw over my shoulders when I need a bit of extra warmth.  Going through my yarn stash, I found that I have enough yarn in several basic colors to make myself some more large shawls (happy me!), and have gotten one started since.  

Knitting and beads--what a lovely result!  The shawl I made to wear to my niece's wedding came off the needles about three days before her wedding--just enough time to get it washed and blocked.  The name of this shawl is Dusk, and the combination of the yarn color and beads had the effect I hoped for--stars just coming out in the evening:

One of my husband's sisters really like it and requested a shawl for herself.  Because I thought this pattern didn't really fit her style, I sent her a link for another pattern from my Ravelry queue.  She approved, and over the holidays I will take some yarn and beads from my stash that I think will work well.  That will be my next shawl project after my current one. Doesn't look like my needles will be idle any time soon.