Winters Queen

It is a wonderfully rainy day- great for the plants and us, but lousy for taking photos. Still, I wanted to share Winter Queen, as she is finished. Each of her snowflakes has a Sterling Silver spacer bead, inside which nestles a 2.5 or 3mm Swarovski bicone, held in place with a 13o charlotte, supposed to be silver plated, but the plating comes off with wear. Each snowflake is different, and is done with circular peyote stitch. Her bodice reflects the different colors of the dark we know in the Northern Hemisphere's Winter, as well as the phases of the moon, which stands out so clearly without leaves to obscure its faces.Dark blue swirls for the winds of Winter, swirling the snowflakes.

As always, click on any image to enlarge.

I hope you enjoy her.

Winter fun!

SNOW! Finally, snow for US! Enjoy the pics..

Ahhh, Florida in the Winter

Nothing like a trip to the semi-tropical climes when it is freezing in the mountains. Of course, it was colder there than usual, but still beautiful. Stopped overnight in St Augustine, which still has my Heart, to visit North Beach and ramble about town in the early morning, visiting old memories. Then it was on to Osteen, which is more like the Florida I remember from the early 70's- unspoiled wilderness, for the most part, warm folks, lots of palmetto scrub, palmetto trees, and wildlife;deer, raccoons, rabbits, hawks, eagles and....plecostamus???!!! Seems someone once thought those fish would be a great idea to clear the algae from Lake Ocachobee, but they are now burrowing into the dike, and putting the boat-bottom cleaning businesses out of business! Plus, they die in cold weather, and even the buzzards won't eat them! Strange.

Click on any pic to make it full size.

Had a wonderful visit, and lots of new memories to keep me warm, until the sun again shines here in the mountains of NC.

Big Snow

About 6 inches worth, but then the temps warmed, and the rains came,

so it is slop city out there now...still, was pretty last night and I am glad

the dogs and I walked in it during the real snow.

It's Snowing! It's SNOWING!

Well, sort of anyhow...looks like South Carolina and Georgia

are getting most of it AGAIN!

What's with that? I move to the NC mountains, expecting it

snows here, but nooooo, can't let her have snow!

I grew up with snow. lots of it my entire young life, until

I moved to Florida in 1972. I am used to snow, I LIKE snow,

can drive in snow, and don't view it as a life-threatening event

that you must go out and buy bread and milk

(MILK? If you lose power, you can't refrigerate it and

if you put it outside, it freezes...plus, who runs out of bread???)

for, in case you are snowed in for weeks and weeks...c'mon!

If you look at the weather patterns where we live, most of

our weather comes from the Gulf. Warm. and wet. We have

higher humidity here than in the northern mountain areas,

like Boone, and if you watch weatherunderground.com you

will see that temps and humidity often are the same in Winter

as Wilmington, NC area, where we moved from....so not fair!

Summers ARE cooler here, thank goodness, but where is my SNOW??

Here is a pic of Tippy, just a year old, looking confused at the

dusting of whatever on the deck and the spidersilks hanging f

rom the tree by the corner of the house, where the poor spiders

woke up and hatched this week, while the temps were in the 60s.

Poor things!

Hoping we get more snow, but you know what they say around here

....."it can't snow here...doncha know it never snows in Hell?"!! (

referring to how hot it gets downtown in Bryson- they chop down

all the trees in town, and it being in a bowl(valley) and lots of asphalt,

it gets in the high 90s all Summer-thank goodness we live out of town

and up the mountain, with lots of trees).

Crossing my fingers for REAL snow! But NOT holding my breath.

Winter Quarters

Come Fall, I have to butt up against the idea that the plants really do have to come in for the Winter, and I have to move out of my sunny studio area, into the living area that has the heat near by. I tried staying in the sunporch last year, and while the plants love it at 55 degrees with lots of sun, my fingers went numb!

So, being glad that I like moving furniture- no, really!- I got myself moved into the warm area before it gets cold- taking off the stress of having to move both that AND my forest back inside at the same time. DH calls it 'cozy'- I call it Heaven!!