
Those few of you who have been long-time readers may remember my personal love of snowflake designs. In fact, I may have referred to this site before ... but it bears repeating. There is a professor at CalTech who specializes in studying snowflakes - and if you click on the pretty picture above (which happens to be the largest snowflake ever identified, at almost 1/2 inch in diameter) you can go look at all the glory of his website. Science and Art are NOT mutually exclusive. :)
Do you have favorite icons - images or themes that you gravitate towards using? I like snowflakes, leaves, feathers, seashells, foxes, birds, and hearts (along with others I cannot remember at the moment - oh, labyrinths:). Spirals ... equilateral triangles ...
OH, gingerbread houses and ginger-people is another one ... here is a cool site with a lot of truly unique gb houses, including this one which is my favorite (at the moment, anyway:):

Treehouses ... very cool. My most favorite part of the Lord of the Rings movies (besides the charge of the Rohirrim) was the high tree landscape for Lothlorien. So. Beautiful.
Where was I? Hmm. Today was sunny, sunny and cold (my husband said it was 22 degrees Fahrenheit when we outside to go to work this morning) ... and it was the scheduled December party meeting of Village Quilters. VQ meets once a month (on the third Thursday, from 10 a.m. to about 1 p.m.) and always includes a potluck lunch. This month they pull out all the stops, though, and the winter holiday party is always fun. We bring fat quarters (four), wrapped nicely, and play the 'Left, Right' game to swap them. Good for lots of giggles, always. My prize was four Xmas prints which made me happy (one kind of fabric I very rarely buy) - now I have fodder for making a small wall hanging. :)
My friend Patty is a member of the guild, too ... as always, she brought chocolate to the luncheon (I nearly always bring fruit). This time, besides her usual yummy mini-candy-bars, she brought mini-eclairs. My mouth waters just remembering them. :)
It was a great time with lots of friendly, happy chatter ... as always. It brightened up my day - my entire week, really. Always a plus, especially this time of year. I hope I'm not the only pseudo-Grinch out there? I used to love Christmas as a child ... and as the mother of small children ... but, as the years have gone on, I have soured on the whole consume-consume-consume environment. My winter s.a.d. mixed with what is apparently an ongoing grieving process, means that I do not enjoy this month much. Yes, I do try to be kind (always) and do for others whenever I can (especially charity) ... but those are not exclusively Christmas goals for me. Shrug. I could be very, very happy on a beach right now. Just sayin'.

I love color ... and have long subscribed to a blog site called Design Seeds. This was today's post - they had me at purple! :) I have had color on my mind this week ... as I am contemplating fixing up our house ... here is a choice of color swatches I picked up when I was at the home improvement store earlier this week; these are paint colors I am thinking about for our front entryway:

As you can tell, I am thinking 'warm' - mostly because the front of our house is protected from the sun (and sunlight) by six big trees. It is pretty nice for energy expenditures to cool the house in summer ... but the incoming light is a bit too cool for me. At the moment I am leaning toward the pinker end of this scale .. but it will be a couple of months before I make a final choice.
Speaking of pink, you might recognize some of the hues above in my now-completed new pair of fingerless mitts. They still need to be washed and blocked, but here they are (yes, not very good photos - dark outside tonight - I will take better after they are blocked:):


The ball of hand dyed sock yarn (Knit Circus) I used was ombre, from gray-purple through hot pink to yellow. Pretty flashy, eh? :) They fit more loosely around the fingers than I like so I will look for some narrow elastic or elastic cording to insert/sew into the upper hem edge. They are warm, though, and I like the looks. :)
So, that's the way it is today, here at Chez Schiffer. Warm and happy, despite the cold and wintery seasonality.
:) Linda