Eli, our younger son, came home with a TON of graded papers and whatnot just before the April vacation.  Amidst the social studies, writing and math, was an art project from (I think) FCS (Family Commercial Sciences or something similar, what used to be called Home Ec).  Mrs. Burwell (FCS) and Mrs. Andersen (art) are great friends, and get together some AWESOME projects for the Camden-Rockport Middles School students.  Personally, I’d like to TAKE the art classes!

Anyway, the project was to create “Your Personal Portrait Flag.”  The handout notes “One way we communicate is through symbols.  Symbols can be ancient or modern.  A flag is a type of symbol that consists of several parts that represent different meanings.”  The sudents were to sketch their personal flag, reflecting on “four different aspects of you and who you are.”  The students were to answer these questions (taken from the handout):

1. 1. Interests-what things do you love to do?
2. 2. Abilities or skills-what things can you do well?
3. 3. Values-what is really importnat to you?
4. 4. Personality-attitude toward life, ways you behave, etc.

The students then answered the question, learned a bit about design and composition, were to find/create symbols, transfer the designs to fabric, paint the designs, then iron, sew and hang their flags. On the back of the handout, the child listed 1-4 items for each question, then came up with a symbol for each reply.  For pets, Eli drew a cat and a pug, a saxaphone for his music, a soccer ball and goalie gloves for sports and soccer skills, trees for his love of being outside.

How COOL IS THAT???? I want to do it!   At this point, I have to get some work stuff done, like a pattern ready to go to the printer, the first panel of a possible commission done, and other “must do now” stuff, but I think this would make an AWESOME journal quilt type of project….or even something larger…. great creativity stuff!  Hooray for Mrs. Burwell and CRMS (again!).

So, how do I know (besides the willow and oak twigs flushing yellow, and the maples sporting a tinge of red on the tips)?  The Library of course…. you see, it has this South-facing stone wall that gets warmed by the sun:

The Stone Wall at the library

The old part of the library is the building upstairs.  In the mid 90s, they expanded significantly the only place they could:  down, under the grassy slope.  Here’s the new entrance:

And the Amphitheatre park next to the library which, as you can see, is still quite snowy:

Amphitheater Park

Here’s the view across the street, over the rest of the slope down to Camden harbor:

Camden Harbor, early March

Well, the readers of Camden know quite well that the crocus at the base of the wall come up about three weeks before any other flowers peek their little green shoots above the ground.  Here is what I saw:

Buds on the climbing Hydrangea

And, for a tease:

Just a bit of green

And last of all, DRUM ROLL PLEASE:

White crocus!!!!

Actual BUDS!!! Soon, true open flowers…woooohoooo! Time to put away the snow stuff!

I had fun on two Fridays not long ago… I got to teach a very small class (of 3 students) at Quilt Divas in Rockland, Maine.  LONG time readers may remember that I was elated about this time last year to learn that my pomegranate notebook cover project, selected for a book by Lark Books, was on the cover of Creative Quilting With Beads. (by the way, only two copies left at my little store, but I have plenty of the beads available….they are hard to find so I bought a kilo!).

I hope the students had as much fun as I did.  Pam loves jewel tones and hand applique, so instead of doing the fusible applique thing, she did hers by hand.  Can you believe she had NEVER machine quilted before????  I can tell she’s gonna go gangbusters now!

Pam's cover, as she is beading

Judy also likes bright jewel tones, and had brought a range of batiks.  I think if this brown batik had been in stock (Judy bought it at least a year ago which, SOB, means it is likely not around anywhere) each of us would have bought a couple yards….

Judy's cover

I had a new idea, to piece the “table” area below the pomegranates, so Karen pieced up her bottom section. I love the summery colors (and we certainly need color…keep reading):

On the way to the final class, it had snowed yet again, so here is my little, old and bonked by reliable Subaru in front of the French and Brawn grocery that has been on the corner for over a century:

My green subaru on the corner

And the view down Main Street (PS…isn’t the building with the big round window in the roof cool?!):

Beautiful downtown Camden, Maine, Feb. 2009

On the way home, there was more beautiful snow on trees:

Even more trees and snow

Then I decided I had best dig out the trampoline.  Here is how much snow we got in the Wednesday/Thursday storm….that is my hand, and I wear ladies’ large gloves….that’s a lot of snow!

Lotsa snow...about four hand widths...on the trampoline

Wowie zowie…that was a snowstorm!   On Sunday it began to snow, and snow, and snow… when it finally stopped on Monday (yes school was cancelled for the day) we had 11 inches of fresh, WET powder in the driveway and a prodigious snowplow pile.  The photo above is of our house, from the street.  Here is my handy dandy quilting ruler in the snow next to the snowplow ridge…that is an 18 1/2 inch ruler, dwarfed….:

I always take pics of the St. Francis birdbath and the nearby pot.  The latter is large, and buried.  Here, you can see the snow is almost up to the basin!

Paul and Joshua in front of the snow-crusted garage.  See that little bitty orange thing sticking out of the snow?  That’s the 3 foot post to show the plow guys the edge of the driveway…..

Eli took Widgeon for walkies, cross country in the little woods across the street.  Are those not the cutest two things on six feet?  Widgeon LOVES the snow and doesn’t care if his tummy and dangly bits get all cold and red! Silly sweet dog!!

And coming over the plow ridge…if we have much more snow we’ll have to park in the driveway or have a bonfire as there is nowhere else to push the stuff:

Shortly after the Oscars began, the power went out.  For 21 hours.  Since we have a woodstove and gas range, this isn’t too big a deal.  Except the water pump is electric.  That means each toilet has one flush.  Ooops.  So what to do?  Well….melt snow! All this barely made a dent in the mound on the front porch steps:

Then there is the mailbox…see that lump in the middle…that’s it!

The boys were at first at a loss without iPod (battery gave out), cell phone for texting (ditto), laptop (ditto), internet….so they got out the board games and I treated myself to reading a fluff quilty novel! Paul slept or read. Then, at some point, I discovered we had a scant half-loaf of bread, so decided to bake some.  I had forgotten that while we can light the burners (they have knobs), the oven does NOT have a knob.  So I had 12 cups of flour (4 loaves) kneaded, risen, punched down, and formed into rapidly rising loaves.  What to do????  Well, I figured if I could find a metal box (yeah right) I could improvise an oven…Paul’s thermometer on the stovetop tells him when the surface is 500, where he keeps it.  I needed a 375 degree oven.  So….I thunk on it….the canning pot!   Down to the basement.  But the bread would burn on the bottom…hmmm… my sad iron trivet…kinda like this … under the pan.

And here’s the improvised oven:

Guess what…It WORKED!

And one of my favorite pics just because….the ancient bike on the deck:

Good think I like it, because we have a LOT of it!   Here are two pictures from a snow in late January, and many more from this past week.  Won’t say much…just share the pics!  Here’s the view before I went outside to see how much we got:

The answer:  a LOT!  Even before the street got its final plowing and sanding, the snow reached back up almost to the mailbox:

Mailbox

Then, looking toward the garage:

Looking down the driveway to the house

Here, looking down the street, with lotsa snow (slip slip slide) and ice underneath….

Here's what a mostly unplowed street looks like...snowy!

Sun Glow

The sun was hidden behind high thin cloud cover, and just glowed across the landscape…

Amazingly, there was no breeze and for several days the branches were crested with snow:

I love the tracery of the branches, and played a bit with Photoshop.  I think the two tweaked photos would make great  screens for printing…..

More branches and tracery...remember the Medieval cathedrals?

Photoshopped (posterized)