Spring storm

Yesterday early morning I just had to snap this picture as I was putting dishes away. I love my Fiesta dishes. They are bright and add color to any day. This morning I need the color!

The predicted snowstorm arrived while we slept and we have a couple of inches on the ground and it's still coming down. Our poor peach blossoms! I don't think they'll recover from this. It was the last of our fruit trees to blossom but unfortunately it didn't wait long enough. This is our fourth spring here. We've had just one bumper peach crop.

Tah Dah!

Well, I just finished knitting my first pair of socks! The picture is tastefully arranged to so that the first sock is hiding beneath the second sock. I'm just amazed that I was able to do this largely without personal instruction, and depending on the wonderful resources available online.

I couldn't believe it had been the end of January since I last blogged, and now we're coming up on the end of March--okay so just a few days past the middle really. I attended the annual retreat in Phoenix. Our guest speaker this year was a very entertaining Patrick Lose.

Thanks to wonderful donations from Sophie and Pat, I was able to get some quilts done for donating to Dr. Kaufman upon my return. I have another couple ready to load and quilt.
As I sit here and try to account for the past two months, I realize my time has also been occupied with doctor visits. I started and finished a round of shots of Synvisc in my knee. So far this seems like it's going to help. Perhaps when I go back in another four months to assess the efficacy, I'll be wanting to do the same for my other knee. Also am on the queue for surgery on my other thumb. While it's not the miracle cure, the "repaired" thumb is a lot less painful.
This quilt started life as a table runner, and I think it will comfort some newly diagnosed diabetic teen as it turned out to be a generous size after adding my big borders.
Spring seems to be just around the corner, and I hope we don't get any late frost that wipes out the fruit blossoms. We have yet to see apricots from our trees, and our lilacs haven't survived a bloom killing frost since we moved here three years ago.

Woolworks

The baskets in the previous post were for trash pickup, which is an almost daily affair in most towns in Brazil. The baskets keep the trash out of reach of dogs, etc. My aunts were horrified when I told them that trash pickup in the U.S. was weekly!



Pat and I had our quilting get-together, and were a little less productive because of a cold she brought from Phoenix. Being the generous person she is, she shared it with me. We were able to take these three and a couple of other quilts to Dr. Kaufman. Thanks to Sue who contributed more kitty blocks, and Rosie who had the perfect bamboo fabric for the pandas. Dr. Kaufman generously gifted me with a pair of her luscious knitted mittens after I shared with her that I'm trying to learn to knit socks. I've already had occasion to use them.

As the title of this post alludes to...I've been working with wool, and got quite the production going. It is the one bit of hand sewing that doesn't seem to overwork my hands. The felted wool is soft and doesn't require too tight a hold to work into submission!

Blog Giveaway

Gosh, it's been a week since I last posted. Lots of visiting, eating, and walking. I walk everywhere around in the town my dad lives in. I figured out what these oddities were soon enough, but I thought them rather interesting. As always people find a way to make art out of utilitarian objects. I made a flicker set of some of these wire and cement baskets around town. The first person to guess what they're used for will win a prize...what would you like a fat quarter after I get back to the U.S. or maybe a postcard from here in Brazil??

I made a flicker set of them here. Check out all the different shapes and sizes.

Today's featured fruit is jabuticaba. There is such a wealth of fruits here. The mangos are downright obscene in size. Happy Thanksgiving to all. I'm thankful that I'll be heading home in a couple of weeks. It's been great visiting my homeland, but I do feel I'm a foreigner here. Most of the time I'm on sensory overload. The noise pollution is unreal, and this is in a "small" town. Of course nobody here believes me when I saw I live in a town of only 200 people. I'm headed to another colonial coffee with my cousin, Edson, who is helping me make arrangements for travelling. Because this is a small town, I can't easily get to where I want to go by bus, without going out of the way first. Oh well!

Rare sunshine

The days go by with lots of excellent, cheap food. Yesterday afternoon my cousins and I went to "colonial" coffee buffet at the supermarket. There was such a variety of traditional savory dishes which I love. There is one in particular, emapada, which is a pie crust with hearts of palm stuffing, that is my favorite. They also stuff it with chicken or beef, but always the crust melts in your mouth. I picked up the tab, and for four of us eating rather well it was less than $15!

It was a rare sunny afternoon and afterwards my cousin drove us to different scenic spots around the town. The highlight for me was a park where I caught this Crested Caracara having a meal. We were able to get pretty close. I've been lucky enough to see one before in TX, but never quite this close. This morning while hanging clothes out on the line at my dad's I was treated to a rather large green parrot eating apples off the neighbor's tree! I must admit I get rather excited to see these birds in the wild. I've yet to ID the parrot though.

Sunshine again

Man, I wasn't expecting the cooler weather we had the last few days. I brought mostly warm weather clothes, after all it's spring here, and generally warmer. It was cold and damp last night. Today the sun has broken through, and of course, it's a bit muggy now, but I'm very much solar powered, and though I love the lush green of everything here, I get easily depressed without my sunshine.
The picture, though very inviting, is from Sao Paulo, a lovely park. They normally serve refreshments there, but it was the wrong time of day for it, and again, a rather gray day.

This was another park where I went my second day in Brazil. It had beautiful stands of bamboo, and so thick and lush that it dwarfed my friend. It was in the city of Sao Jose dos Campos. We strolled the park and saw a lot of birds and then enjoyed a fruit slush made with Acai. It was quite tasty, but I have no idea what the real fruit is like as the slushy was made with a fruit paste which was mixed with guarana...the national soft drink also make from a fruit, loaded with caffeine, and of course sugar. At least for those not inclined to consume high fructose corn syrup, it is not a problem here.

Party Sunday

Yesterday I wasn't able to get online, except late in the afternoon, and using my cousin's computer wrote a quick email. I can easily lose myself online, and didn't want to be ignoring my cousin's hospitality.



I drove my dad's car to my other cousin's husband's family farm. They raise sheep, have a few horses, and I don't know what all. There is someone that lives there and takes care of all that. They use the huge BBQ pit there and it is well equipped with picnic tables and always a happening, party place. There is a variety of meats, and as soon as the first, choice cuts are ready, they start serving. Then there is a full sit down meal when the rest of the meats are done. This goes on for an hour or more.

I entertained myself with a long walk around the area looking for birds. I got the see the Buff-necked Ibis on the ground, and it was great to get good long looks at them. There is a pair that roost in a pine across from my dad's house, and it seems so strange to see these big guys up in the indigenous pine which are really quite extraordinary and only grow in this area.

Days going by

Not much on the crafting front around here, though yesterday I did buy some twine to either crochet or knit a rug. When I was here before the twine was only available in an off white, and now there is a wide variety of colors.

Last night was a birthday party at my cousin's house for her son. They are big meat eaters here the farther south you go, the more meat they eat, with Argentina being one of the biggest consumers of beef...or at least it used to be. The party was a BBQ, and a lot of the houses here have a permanent built-in place for BBQ with a big fireplace style chimney. The meats consisted of several cuts of beef, including T-bone, chicken, and farm raised javelina. It was all good, and though I normally don't eat much beef, I had to at least try it. The javelina was quite good.


The birthday cake was store bought, as my cousin's aunt no longer makes cakes. Her cakes were well known throughout the family. I share a name with her, Hilda, and here I'm always referred to as Hildinha (little Hilda...I wish). Phonetically it is HILL DEEEN YAH, only the H is silent at the beginning of words.

The birding here is great. This morning I took off in the morning mist and just outside of my dad's house there was a rather large flock of Guira Cckoos. They are raucous, and were flying from rooftop to rooftop. Then I got a look at three Buff-neck Ibis, which I want to see better, since they were just flying by. The Rufous Hornero is common here, and maybe tomorrow I'll get a picture of one. They are also rather noise.

Traditional dessert

The day dawned with gray, a slight fog, which I'm told is pretty common here. But as my dad and I walked to his favorite restaurant, the sun broke through, and now I'm complaining because it is too hot. I'm wearing shorts. Don't see too many women my age wearing shorts around here. Oh well, at least they pick me out easily as not being from here, and are willing to forgive my missteps!

The food is well made, plentiful, and cheap, in comparison to ours. Restaurants that serve buffet style or buffet, by weight, are the norm, and I ate a wonderful lunch of fresh salad greens, with little hard-boiled cornish hen eggs decorating it, and I sampled a lot of the dishes, brown rice and beans, gnocchi, farofa, golden fried potato pieces, and friend polenta. A nice variety of delicious food for $3.50. I didn't realize they also had little tiny shot size plastic cups of caipirinha, the national drink. Lunch included dessert, and I had "pineapple stroganoff," which was fresh pineapple in a light creamy sauce. My dad could have actually had some, as it wasn't super sweet which is the norm here.

This plate of "sweets" was at a friend's house. The little wrapped yellow ones are my favorite, "quin din de ya ya," made with egg yolks and coconut. The white ones are coconut taffy. My grandmother used to make them, and they are sort of like divinity, but just melt in your mouth, and also coconut. The brown ones are little squares of "doce de leite" or condensed milk squares. I think I ate a dozen of yellow ones over two days. I think there is a lone "doce de abobora," or squash sweet, which I never liked. Anything that can be cooked with sugar and made into a solid is done here. They also make the same thing with sweet potatoes...I prefer my sweet potatoes fried!

More Fruit

It's supposed to be spring here, but it's pretty cool, and very wet. It rains a lot during the night, and very damp and drizzly during the day. Actually cool, and I brought lots of short-sleeved shirts and shorts! Of course, like at home, they say the weather is crazy and not normal.

My dad and I walked to a larger grocery store, maybe about a mile from his house. I got two huge mangoes for 50 cents, almost a pound of apple bananas for $1.50, and a guava, which was a little out of season for another 50 cents.

In my dad's little yard there is a lemon tree and an orange tree. There aren't any oranges yet. The lemons are orange colored, and look rather ugly on the outside. I thought they were oranges past their prime... The flesh is orange colored, but they are indeed sour lemons.

And here is the cut lemon and guava. The guava wasn't as nice and ripe as usual, and so a bit of a disappointment. It surprises me that there are lots of different yuccas around in yards here, and other succulents and cacti. There is a huge prickly pear that is flowering on the walk I took yesterday afternoon.