Late night? Early morning?

Well another night that I can't sleep. I was asleep, but Lady, our dog decided to bark at something, who knows what, and woke me up.....then I lay there trying to go back to sleep and instead I am hungry. So as I write this I am eating a bowl of shredded wheat cereal.

I have been wondering what I should write about, since it has been a few days.

I have been able to get back to some of my hobbies, things have calmed down on the construction front, so I have been able to return to my 'sane' quilting and to the crazy quilting I have been working on for my DIL, Michele. I took up quilting about 3 years ago now and just love it, then last Feb. Michele asked me to do a CQ (crazy quilt) wall hanging for her, so I have been working on that for about year. I didn't know I would like the needle work so much, so of course her wall hanging is not the only CQ items I am doing. Today I, also, started a baby quilt, for Tesa and Tommy's new baby boy (local friends). Webshots Community - kcoglo's Photo Home Page
You can go to my webshots page here and see several different subjects; quilts, CQ, building pictures and some of Wyoming near our place.

The picture above is something new I have been doing. An artist friend of mine is doing an article on quilted tags...you know like a luggage ID tag? The differance of course is that these are quilty and artistic, I have never done anything abstract before, I am rather pleased with this one. There is also one in the works that is done CQ style, I'll post it here when it is done. I think pictures are alot of fun for a blog.

My other intrests include, gardening, interior design, stained glass, scrapbooking, mosic, painting, soap and lotion making, study of herbs. I am sure I will get around to talking about them, as well. The soap and lotion thing is getting going, I hope as a business and I plan to launch a website (one of these day...soon I hope).

How do these things relate to homesteading, they are definitly a part of this life, most people who are homesteaders are DIY types and alot of the time these become sources of income for the homestead. In the early days quilts were very important items, they had the job of keeping the family warm, gardening of course fed, soap and lotions were also hand crafted, herbs were used for cooking and for medication, scrapbooking would be more akin to keeping the family records in the Bible, and just as beautiful scraps of fabrics turned into wonderful blankets or rugs to warm the home, scraps of other things like glass turned into things to beautify the home. Today is no different, except that we have easy access to the supplies to do these great things.

I hope to learn to ID and harvest mushrooms this spring, and to learn the local plant life so I can use the herbs for my family. I had some really wonderful native herbs at our old place that I can't get here, I will miss them, but I have a whole new world of herbs here to discover.

Well, I think that is it for tonight.
Until next time.
Gail