Week 32, Project 365

The weeks are just whizzing by! I'm glad to see last week in my rearview mirror. Whew! Not only busy but I wasn't getting enough sleep either so by yesterday I was a great big heap of grouchiness. About eight hours last night and hopefully another eight tonight will put me back to rights :-)

Project 365 keeps marching on too, through good weeks and bad ones. And we've all had plenty of both, haven't we in the THIRTY-TWO WEEKS we've been at this so far. Can you believe that? 32 weeks! Mind boggling.

I actually posted this first photo the other day. But I really, really like it. I'm thinking of making it my screen saver. This is what we see if we walk about a block to the lake and look left. This was an exceptionally clear day and we could see the mountains in the distance. I'm not a big fan of parmesan cheese in a green can. It's not even close to the real thing so why bother? Especially when it's so easy to buy a chunk of parmesan or reggiano or sardo and grate it yourself? Ivan keeps my Rubbermaid bowl filled with freshly grated cheese which I use a LOT in cooking. On one of our walks this week we passed this hotel. Carlos Paz is in a tourist area and while we do have a number of traditional multi-story hotels, we have even more of these smaller facilities with between 10-20 rooms. The landscaping is always meticulous, they invariably have a pool and sometimes a game room with ping pong tables, a television and books, and quite often a little café. We prefer this style to the big impersonal places. Ivan attended an auto auction this week. Thought it might be a fun experience, and it was. He was amazed at how high the bidding went, especially on this older car that had been used as a taxi. Even with a ton of miles, it still went for the equivalent of $5000 U.S. Car prices are double or triple here what they are in the States. Across the street from where we get our hair cut is this little pork market. The name cracks us up -- roughly translated it means "not the pig's fault" -- pretty funny in light of the swine flu epidemic. Friday I was too tired but Ivan and some friends went to a free concert in town (nothing starts before 9-10 pm). Most of those in the ensemble are also part of the symphony in Cordoba. Here's a clip of tango music they played.

I have more quilt projects started than you can shake a stick at. I do occasionally finish one too :-) But here are the three most recent starts... I've seen this concept (a watercolor cross) on a few quilt blogs and thought it would be a great project for the little house we're renting for our meetings. Right now there is absolutely nothing on the walls. I plan to add a thin black and then a wide purple border and it will be ready for quilting. This design was inspired by some very cool fabric I saw online. I thought it would be fun to have a little Café quilt for the kitchen. This constitutes only part of what I envision for the finished project. And the last is the start of my shoe quilt. I love, love, love shoes but because of back problems cannot wear heels. So I decided to make a "dream shoe quilt". These aren't sewed on; I used fusible webbing on the back of fabric and will later anchor them down with thread. I bought a calendar last year full of fun shoes and boots and picked out about 20 to use as ideas for various quilt blocks. This is a project that will likely take me a couple of years because working with tiny bits of fabric makes me twitch. So I don't work on it very often. Make sure you stop by Sara's and see all those who linked up to Project 365 this week!