Horned Larks and Meadowlarks

It's the day after Christmas, and we decided to do a little birding. We didn't expect to see much, but it felt good to get out anyway. It was a sunny 23 degrees and slightly windy. That last storm left us with a lot of snow. We went out Highway 472 to Stanley and then up North 41. It's a windswept stretch of wide open space. Beautiful in it's own way.

We had fun watching road-hugging flocks of Horned Larks. In fact, at first we got such good, close-up looks that we tried to make them into anything but Horned Larks. That's a bird that we usually just see darting away in a flock, identifying them by their behavior, more than their field markings. Gosh, they are pretty little birds.

Horned Larks

We also were surprised to see lots and lots of Meadowlarks. It was startling to see their vivid yellow and black markings. Meadowlarks always say "summer" to me, and it's so weird to see them in the middle of a snowy winter.

Western Meadowlark

We headed over to Galisteo, a quaint little New Mexico town. We discovered a riparian area there last spring when several rare birds like the Blackburnian Warbler were spotted there and reported on the Rare Bird Alert. It's a wonderful area to hike around down by a nice little stream. 

We noticed a new sign by the wooden bridge. Is it just me, or is it odd to have a memorial sign that says nothing about the person, not even when or where he died. But it sure had the names of the Council members all over it. Hmmm.

Well, we didn't see many birds. Robins were drinking from the stream and Ring-necked Doves were lurking around in the bushes, but that's it. That's ok, though. It was a beautiful day to be out enjoying the fresh air and quiet sounds of nature.

Lorene enjoying a winter day.

How I made my latest hand bag

Since I haven't gotten to work in my studio for a while, I thought I'd look through my pictures of some of the work I did last summer. Here is the process I used for my latest bag. I'm glad I decided to take pictures of the steps that I took.

First, I started with random digging through my stash of scraps. I like to look through my scraps rather than full pieces of fabric. It's more inspiring to me.

Then, I layed out the scraps on my design board until I liked the composition.

When I landed on an arrangement that I liked, I sewed them together. This formed the background for the quilt piece.

After the background was sewn and pressed, I started to layer other elements on top. In my collages, I use small pieced scraps, raw edge fabric scraps, as well as things like yarn, string, buttons, or any 3-D do-dads I can find laying around my studio.

Then, I carefully carried the collage to my sewing machine and free motion quilted over the whole piece. When the quilt sandwich was assembled, I had to decide whether to  bind it to make a wall piece, or turn it into something else like a bag.

I kind of wish I had left it as an art piece, but I wanted to practice creating the elements for a bag. Here's the finished product. What do you think?

Working Hard

I’ve been at La Mesa now for about 2 ½ weeks and I’m totally loving it. Who knew that working full time would make me so happy. It’s scary and challenging, but it’s right where I want to be. I am so happy to be on staff at La Mesa. What a great crew. Everyone who works there has been really friendly and welcoming to me. The atmosphere is refreshingly positive.  It makes me realize how I had gotten used to “making the best” of a somewhat toxic, negative work environment. I love being part of a new team who is committed to creating a culture of respect and helping each other to be successful. 

Today we had the whole sales crew in, and I won’t lie – we just aren’t that busy with customers right now. It seems that everyone is out Christmas shopping, and RV’s aren’t actually at the top of their lists. So, being the busy little elves that we are, we decided to decorate the windows of our showroom. At first, there were only a couple of us painting, but by the end of the morning, I think everyone on the sales crew got into the spirit and picked up a paintbrush for the cause. We really had fun. It turned into a wonderful team building activity. I’m the newest addition to the team, but since we just opened recently, the oldest member has only been here for a couple of months. After the bitter cold and snow of the past couple of weeks, the bright sunshine was a welcome sight. We were all happy to be outside. 

After we finished the windows, we were treated to a catered “quarterly luncheon”. Holy cow, what a spread! I got to see the whole staff including service, detailers, and transport. We had Christmas music and raffle prizes and lots of camaraderie. What fun. All in a day’s work.