As we approach solstice, I think we can all relate to the idea of lighting a candle in the dark (well, here in the Northern Hemisphere anyway!).  As Arlo Guthrie noted on a favorite album, Precious Friend, you can’t have a light without a dark to put it in.   Though this song comes from the tradition of lighting the candles at Hannukah, it is a light that we all share.

One of my holiday traditions is to watch my DVD (started with casssette tape, added the CD, then the DVD) of the Peter Paul and Mary Holiday Concert.  If my family is lucky, I do this when I am alone out in the house, because I belt out many of the songs as loud as my not-so-great voice can!

And another favorite from that concert–The Magi:

Yesterday on Facebook I posted a youtube link to a favorite carol.  Then I decided it might be fun to post here, as well, and every day for the coming week share one of my favorite carols from my Christmas Vocals playlist.  I have more pieces that are instrumentals, but I’ve decided that while the instrumentals are great in the background (like at Christmas dinner), I prefer SONGS–the kind with words where I can join along (at least when alone in the car so I don’t break someone’s ears!).   Today’s carol is a new one, by quilting’s own Ricky Tims.  I’ve lived in small towns since 1998, and I can’t imaging going back to living in a city (even a small one) or suburbs.   Love the scale of life, the pace of life, the unexpected joy of running in to someone I know.

And photos from yesterday and this morning.  We have a glorious lot of snow this year before Christmas, so yesterday I walked the dog down our driveway (which is long, 3/10 mile) to the mailbox so I could shovel out the plow heap and get mail.  This was the view along the way down:

Walking down the driveway. Our house is in the middle of a large rectangle. The other lots are on the outside, ours is in the middle, so we have a 3/10 mile driveway that is a narrow strip between the two neighbors, then it makes an “L” around the bottom of our lot up to the house. This is on the bottom of the L, looking to the straight part between the log house on the right and the other one (hidden) in the woods on the left.  The willows had grown from shrub to Godzilla (each one) and were threatening the swallow cars on the driveway, so they got a major buzz cut recently.  LOVE the look of the stubs (and fear not, they will recover and grow with wild abandon again).

After clearing the plow pile by the mailbox, on the way back up the sunlight streamed through the woods (now on the right as you walk back uphill) and lit the beech leaves. I LOVE how the leaves refuse to let go all winter, only dropping when new growth pushes them off.  There is a quilt in the tenacity of the beech tree.

My favorite tree, a very old, prolific apple. It is on the right as you walk uphill (left looking down, as here). This tree is SO going to be a quilt!  Maybe this winter if I don’t goof off!

And this row of evergreens (opposite my beloved apple tree) planted by the former owner on the property line. Usually we have wind with the snow, so don’t have the frosted look too often.

And taking a step or two beyond the apple tree and looking uphill, you see the big meadow, the hedgerow/stone wall in the middle left, there’s another meadow (i.e. not-mown place) and the house at the crest of the hill (just to the left of the sun). Midday in Maine as we approach the solstice.

And this morning from Route 131 in Appleton, looking southeast. Isn’t that sky and sun and rays glorious? When I was about 4, we returned to the US from Argentina and stayed with my gramma a while. I had to go to Sunday school and learned all about angels. I also saw escalators for the first time (early 60s) and was enchanted as they didn’t have those where I had lived in Argentina. I wondered how angels got from Heaven to Earth, then saw the sun rays and figured they must be escalators for the angels. So forever after, Angel Escalators–even my kids know that’s what they are.

Enjoy your holidays.  Don’t let the hustle and bustle of the season distract you from the beauty around you and the joy of being in a place and with the people who make life wonderful.

And for those of you not on FaceBook yesterday, here is yesterday’s, Emmanuel God With Us by Amy Grant, which my dear friend Deborah Boschert shared with me years ago and has become a favorite.

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If you have to run errands, take time to smell the roses on the way. This photo is for Jacquie, with a detail below:

At Portland Architectural Salvage I saw this fireplace piece with the owl andirons and had to take a picture for Jacquie, who loves owls! (Waving over to Vermont!)

OR, in the case of doctor’s appointments in far-away cities, do fun stuff!   Last Monday I had to drive to Brunswick (75 minutes) for a 20 minute appointment.  But it is right near Freeport, home to L.L. Bean.  So I did some Christmas shopping and thanks to MANY credit card points, got a couple great bargains.  The next day, I had another longer drive:  nearly 2 hours each way to Portland for a final check-up on my feet (a year ago I had arthritis in my big toe joints removed and can now bend my feet again!).   So I visited Portland Architectural Salvage, Micucci’s Grocery, the Old Port Specialty Tile store and the Portland Museum of Art, and finally Whole Foods (the Key Lime cheesecake is awesome).

Jacquie: isn’t this a fine owl! He looks a lot like my sketch that I posted a few days ago.

There weren’t any great deals at the Salvage shop; it has clearly been discovered by the young 20-somethings fixing up their cool downtown Portland apartments and condos!  But there was plenty of free inspiration.   I just LOVED looking at the lines of doors stacked up and the abstract strata design in this close up:

Love the patterning in the peeling paint on these doors.

There were several ogival panels, too, that I am guessing came from a church.  What awesome quilting or applique designs these would make:

There were several of these panels (which I think cost about $400 each!). This is a perfect example of my fill-the-space exercise in my quilting designs class!

And more inspiration in the form of old heat registers:  you know how we have ugly rectangles with straight lines through which dry air blows heat at us?  Well, a century ago those openings for the heat to reach you were much more interesting:

An old heat register. This would actually make a cool “window” in a garden gate, or in a custom door with an arched top, wouldn’t it?  All that rasty old paint would need to get stripped off, but what a beautiful design!

Next I went to find Micucci’s, an Italian grocery that also wholesales gourmet foods to various places around the state, including Megunticook Market in Camden where Joshua works in catering.  I found a jar of chestnuts, torrona, and other delectables, and I also discovered the tile store was two doors away.  I had seen ads for this place, and OH MY.  Now, to win that lottery so I can re-do the bathrooms….

At the Old Port Specialty Tile store, I saw this mosaic by New Ravenna Tiles. I WANT. I want Want WANT!

Then before I went to Whole Foods on the way home (I call that place the hundred-dollar-a-bag store, my foot doc says locally it is called Whole Paycheck, but my they have good food and stuff you can’t find unless you order on the internet), I treated myself to visiting the PieceWork exhibit at Portland Museum of Art. I joined the museum when I signed up to visit the Winslow Homer house at Prout’s Neck, and I promise I WILL share pics from that visit a while back.  I was beyond thrilled to see at least EIGHT textile works of art as well as several mixed media.

I first saw this installation piece—it is easily 9 feet tall and much wider–at a gallery in nearby Belfast, Maine.  I was thrilled it made the cut for the biennial exhibit, which is of works by people living in or with other significant ties to Maine.

Library by Abbie Read

The signage for the mixed media work above

You could spend an hour or more poring over the artworks within the artworks.  I kept taking pictures, fascinated by the materials and messages.  Here is just one of the detail photos:

Detail from Abbie Read’s Library.  I love the start chart with which she has lined the box, the carefully cut twig and the niche she has created within the box.

I left SO inspired…all I wanted to do was head to my studio!

And a slide from my Adult Ed class on the Native Peoples of Maine, the Wabanaki, looking at how they lived both before and after the arrival of Europeans in the early 1600s.

So you can see, I am VERY BUSY.  Can someone please find me another 27 hours a day so I can make some art??????

As I mentioned a short while ago, I’ve been ridiculously busy.   Between birthday (Joshua), Thanksgiving (all of us), wrestling (Eli and Paul), laundry, dog walkies, fundraising for the Cross Country and Track teams, follow-up doctor’s appointments in distant cities, it seems like the last month has evaporated.   I have managed to do some doodling (I *REFUSE* to call it zentangling, as I’ve been doing this sort of stuff since about 1973) and some sketching and visiting cool places in Portland, Maine…..  here’s a taste:

My decorated cat is my favorite new piece of noodling around. Our cat Tyger had an unfortunate incident and ended up with a short tail as pictured here. My friend Kathy said I should QUILT this…I’m thinking she is right!

I like the owl, sort of. The bottom tail feathers and feet are too dark compared to the rest, but I rather like his eyebrows and the blank spaces. Initially I thought I would fill him in completely like the cat, but I like the quiet spaces.

Both the cat and owl were done in my  new Stillman & Birn Epsilon sketchbook which has 100-lb “plate” (very smooth) finish paper.  I used HEAVY black ink (Pitt permanent) and there is very little show through (you can see a bit from the reverse side on the cat page).   With regular sketch paper I wouldn’t be able to do ANYthing on the back side of the paper.  TOTALLY love this sketchbook and paper.  It is heavy enough for light water media, so I think this may become my sketchbook of choice.  They also have a plate finish in heavier paper, and the journals come wirebound and hardbound, ivory or white paper.  Nice!

Birds in Colored Pencil with Val Webb. Have been taking another online drawing course. I am learning a lot, including that I am not a fan of the waxiness of colored pencil. So for this lesson on black birds, I used graphite. Apart from the fact that I totally forgot that the spine/rib of a bird’s feather is *straight* (not rippled as I drew) I am pleased with my ability to get the proportions and value reasonably well done on this sketch.

And over Thanksgiving break, Max (younger brother of Eli’s wrestling coach) was home and came to chop down some trees.  Sigh.  This was a BEAUTIFUL tree.   Plopped right in the middle of the yard.   ????   Then, when we had to do some extensive ditching alongside the driveway to deal with water run-off, we discovered the previous owners planted this tree SMACK ON TOP of the power line to the house, which was about 24 inches below ground.  HELLO?   Can you say “root damage?”   Out there alone this tree could easily get toppled by a wind gust, ripping up the main power line to our house.   So down it came.  Ditto for the two trees the previous owners planted right on top of the power box and meter and the one tree right on top of the water wellhead.   WHAT were they thinking?  WERE they thinking?  They did so many things correctly (because the house is well-built and we love it) that it makes one wonder.

The 20+ foot spruce tree c omes down….

Since we feel like it is nearly criminal to cut down trees, we are sad.

I’ll share more about the trip to Portland in a post soon!  It involves old stuff and art!

Hullo out there!  Just popped numbers 1-36 into the random number generator at random.org.

The winner is 27!

27 is the Grand Prize winner, and my list of comments tells me that it is Nancy! Nancy, please get in touch and we’ll work out shipping!

Thank you to Quilting Arts/Interweave, Mistyfuse and Havel’s for donating prizes, thank you to my intrepid bloggers and reviewers for making this SO much fun, and thank you to all of you who read my blog and those who participated!

And (sorry, but I must do this…) if you didn’t win, you can still order from me or download/order from Quilting Arts / Interweave.

To order a DVD, visit my Store page or  order either the DVD or a digital download at Quilting Arts’ Interweave Store.

Now..ONWARD to the Holidays!