First quilt finish 2014 --- Northwoods Diva

This quilt was made for my cousin Laurie Anne, who lives in Northern Wisconsin. She is indeed the Northwoods Diva. In the quilting I put her name and Northwoods diva. It is well hidden and was such fun to do. This was a fun finish, I can't wait to get the time to do more quilting. 

If you look closely you can see the Laurie in the upper right corner Northwoods follows. You will see the N for Northwoods it is above the e in Laurie. Down and at about a 45 degree angle you can see the capital A for Anne. Of course all of this is backwards since picture is taken of the back of the quilt. Please excuse the stray threads. This was taken before they were clipped,

If you look closely you can see Brainerd Lakes area. My mom and all her siblings were born in Brainerd Minnesota.

There is no picture of the finished quilt,,,,, this is the best I can come up with. What kind of a quilter doesn't photograph the finished quilt? I guess that would be me.
 

Closeup of some of my quilting
You can see how pretty these prints are close up

Just say no!! and Winter storm Pax

Just say No!

When is enough enough? When is a knitting pattern too much hassle? and no fun anyway?

Over the past 4 or 5 days I have had a battle with a particular knitting pattern. It looks pretty and easy. Looks are deceiving.

Apparently at one point I found this pattern exciting enough to set it up on my Ravelry project page.

The chart was not readable, and the directions although clear were not easy.

I decided that I would have to beat this pattern, it would not beat me. So I did finally beat the pattern with the able assistance of DD Jennifer.

But in the end I decided to frog it instead of thinking I needed to complete what I had started. Why not? My yarn, my time, my decision.

It was liberating to just be finished with this and add one less unfinished knitting project to my life.

There are literally hundreds of patterns that will be just as pretty and more importantly FUN!

Closeup of the offending pattern

I won!!! 

As a fiber addict you can see that I have my priorities straight, knitting first and the storm of the decade, second.
Yes, this is the result so far of winter storm Pax.
We are still not out of the woods, At the moment we have snow and predictions are for rain this afternoon. More ice. I am grateful that we still have power and can just enjoy the snow day. All the kids are safely in their respective nests and hopefully none will have to work today.

Ice on the tree in my front yard, this poor tulip tree does not know what to do, I has budded several times this winter, poor tree.

front yard, this is a rare sight for South Carolina.

View from our screen porch. Very pretty, what you cannot see is the layer of ice under the new snow.