Christmas!!?? It isn't even July.

Monday we made borscht for dinner. It hardly seems like a spring menu item but it tasted good. It went with the project I was working on. I cannot show you the front but I can show you the back. :-D

I finished this ornament for a designer for the Just Cross Stitch Ornaments 2010 issue. I wanted to use a funky Christmas print for the back but I was against a deadline and could find nothing locally. I used this print that I had. When the ornament issue is out, I can show you the front.

The other two pictures show the cording that I made for the edge.

More Signs of Spring

Yesterday I saw these early peony shoots in the garden. They are the first. The temperature is warm. We have had no snow during March; the last time that happened was in 1887. Yes, that is supposed to be 18 and not 19. Hmmmm, is this an indication of global warming? We did have rain at the beginning of the month but it is dry. Generally we have rain in April, you know April showers bring May flowers.

Yes, there will be four star flowers in the Quaker motif. All of the elements are in multiples of four. Yesterday I surprised myself with the progress I made and I stitched no longer than usual. It is just that I seemed to have an electric needle for the day.

Springtime Tulip Quaker

The lighting is a little dark but I think you can see the design, another Quaker motif. The lattice in the center is in white to look like a garden. Because this is spring, I am using an overdye with spring colors. There are lots of flowers in this motif. I have a short deadline by which to finish it and am a little undecided about the finishing.

At last, Trace- ability Final -

When we Geocache, we just look for the cache and sign the log that is in it. Then we replace the cache the way we found it. Larger caches may have things in them. If it contains little trinkets, protocol is that if you take one, you leave one. A cache may have a trackable Travel Bug (TB) or a trackable Geocoin. They may have a specific mission which one can find in their logs. There was a Geocoin in the final cache which I took. I took it because I had put a TB in one of the four Trackabilities with the clues.

We were caching right under these huge dishes. I was not certain it would be a good idea to take a picture of them because the entire area seems to be a little secretive. There is no name posted on the building. I assume it is something involved with telecommunications but who knows? I wondered if someone would come out, take the camera, and chase us away. But nothing happened. We were not even fried by microwaves.

Yesterday our new freezer was delivered. They brought it out quite a bit earlier than we were expecting it. That worked well because the hard part was putting all the frozen food into it. As it was, we worked until it was late. The best thing to do was to bring home some take-out Chinese. My hands became so cold that they still were not warm to eat dinner.

Today we took a bulk mailing to the post office for our church. On the way home we checked out an estate sale as a treat. There were some nice things: clocks, pocket watches, depression glass. I would have been happy to bring several things home but the prices seemed high and they were firm prices. From there on the way home, I found another cache without my GPSr. I knew in general where it was and there it was.

After lunch we treated ourselves to another local estate sale. This one had lots of books. I found four cookbooks.
Focaccia - This book has a different cover but I am certain the insides are the same.
Olive Oil Cookery
Olive Oil Cookbook
Flavored Breads
And the best part was that we were able to negotiate a total price lower than the total of the marked prices. The cookbooks were all marked with individual prices higher than the prices of the non-cookbooks so the lower price seemed more fair to me.

It seemed a little chilly this morning. It was not so much the temper- ature but the wind, a very strong wind. It seems a little strange to talk about wind chill in the spring but that is what was a work. It was hard to walk when I had to walk into the wind. There never was a time or place that I could walk with the wind squarely to my back.

This is Traceability #4. As you can see this is where we took the picture of the Canada geese. It is the only place in the area that has water in which they can swim. We now have all the clues we need to be able to find the final cache. Because we know the co-ordinates of where we parked the car, we know the final cache is very close to the car.

More Signs of Spring

Yesterday I walked to an appoint- ment in the morning and was greeting by the strange call of the redwing blackbirds. More than anything else, the return of the redwings is a sign of spring. The receptionist at the office said they first saw redwings a week ago.

This is the site of Traceability #2. Its hiding place is inside the hollow at the base of the tree on my right. We had to walk around a marshy area to get to this spot. The direct route definitely was not the best way to go.

Woooohooooooo, yesterday hung the sheets outside to dry for the first time this year. I do not know why I did not think of it sooner in the day.

Here is Traceability 3. Yes, I know but this is the order in which we found the caches. We were actually looking for #2. We were trying to find a dry way around the swamp to it when the GPS gave an indication we were close to the location of another cache; I was gingerly edging my way down to the swamp to see what the terrain looked like. The GPS beeped out just as a wild turkey ran into the swamp and took flight. The message indicated we were within steps of #3. Actually all I had to do was reach out my hand to touch the tree it was hiding in. Can you see the cache in the second picture? In the series, each cache has a plastic template with holes in it. The idea is to trace through the holes and like magic, the numbers to complete the co-ordinates of the final cache will appear. In the first picture, I am holding the template for Part 3.