Jeremiah

Walk in all the ways that I command you,



so that you may prosper.

Jeremiah 7:23

Skywatch Friday: The Light and the Blue

From Mar 26, 2011

From Mar 26, 2011

Hartford is one of my favorite places. The light in the canyons of glass towers casts a magical glow over everything.  Despite all the new buildings, though, the old ones continue their story of the city's youthful, powerful exuberance of the 19th century. When I walk there, I feel I get a sense of what a skyscraper was like as a new idea. It's fun.



Skywatch Fridayhttp://skyley.blogspot.com/

www.sandycarlson.net

Beautiful Photography by Emily Followill

We previously featured our friend Emily Followill's photography in this post. She recently photographed this cover home for Traditional Home magazine. Interior Design by Amy Bergman. Take a look...













Great job Emily!

Fiji at last

For many years Fiji was one of my desired visiting targets, and when staying in Singapore a visit to Fiji was not a too far-away dream. I never reached Fiji, but yesterday Fiji reached me.

Fiji (or The Republic of The Fiji Islands) is located between 176° 53′ east and 178° 12′ west. The 180° meridian runs through the 3rd largest island, Taveuni, but the International Dateline is bent to give uniform time (UTC+12) to all of the Fiji group.

The majority of Fiji's islands were formed through volcanic activity started around 150 million years ago.
Fiji was suggested to have settled by Polynesians before Micronesian, but there lacks evidence that this happened either in oral and geology, except that of Ma'afu.
The first settlements in Fiji were started by voyaging traders and settlers from the west about 5000 years ago. Lapita pottery shards have been found at numerous excavations around the country. Classic' Lapita pottery was produced between 1350 and 750 BCE in the Bismarck Archipelago.

The current flag of Fiji was adopted on October 10, 1970. Its bright blue background symbolizes the Pacific Ocean, which plays an important part in the lives of the islanders, both in terms of the fishing industry, and the huge tourist trade. The Union Jack reflects the country's links with Great Britain. The shield is derived from the country's official coat of arms, which was originally granted by Royal Warrant in 1908.

Good Bye Old Friend

 So it's about time.

Good Bye dear friend, you have served us well for sixteen years through many states and great adventures.

 Mama's new ride!

March 31st


1492: Queen Isabella issues the Alhambra decree, ordering her 150,000 Jewish subjects to convert to Christianity, face expulsion, or buy retail.


1958: In the Canadian federal election, the Progressive Conservatives, win 208 seats out of 265 in the parliament. But the other 57 guys got whatever they wanted because they had control of the puck and the beer.


1970: Explorer 1 re-enters the Earth's atmosphere after 12 years in orbit… and boy did it need to use the bathroom!

ABC Wednesday K

There are several quilt blocks which come from Kansas or Kentucky, and some with a biblical reference such as King's  Cross, but today I  challenged  myself  to do this one,  which  is  called    Key West Beauty.

At first I thought this was going to be fairly simple to cut, and fairly straightforward to put together. There are no inside seams to place, and I thought the angles in the center were all 45º. But the green and the blue meeting in the center are different angles. I printed the block out and used a method called paper piecing to do it. With paper piecing, you place the fabrics one at a time in sequence and stitch on the printed lines of the paper to get the seams exactly right. I did it in four sections like that, then put the four together.

Have you ever seen the same pattern with different colors in different parts and not realized it was the same? Different values--intensity of color or lightness to darkness--in different places can make a block look very different with different parts coming into dominance. Check it out in this comparison sketch of the Key West Beauty in two different sets of fabrics.

Find ABC Wednesday here.

Rikke 30 and a light birthday party

My youngest daughter has passed the 30 years milestone. Congratulation.
Pregnant with our 5th grandchild (due july) and busy with job and Maja. (and Tor Marius)

Instead of birthday-cake with candlelights and because Maja loves waffles it was a different celebration this year.

Too much dinner and some waffles too many, will hopefully result in a speedy sleeping this evening.

But first playing with dad. An ever lasting happy story.

ABC of Chippenham: King Alfred

The building in front of you is the Chippenham Museum, not far from the Buttercross which we looked at for the letter B. What makes this of interest for the letter K is the plaque on the wall, which you can just see to the top left of the lady walking past.

You see the legendary King Alfred was here: he of burnt cakes fame. He was king of Wessex - one of the realms of England during the Dark Ages - and one of the more famous ones of those times.

During these times Chippenham was a villa regia aka a royal estate with a hunting lodge. The king would bring his court here to stay for hunting in the surrounding rich forest and also preside over matters of justice. The Anglo Saxon Chronicle states that the Anglo Saxon Witan, or parliament was held in Chippenham in 933.

During the ninth century, the kingdom of Wessex was under threat from Danish Vikings, who'd already captured the other three Anglo Saxon kingdoms. In 878, the Anglo Saxon Chronicle says:

This year, about midwinter, after Twelfth Night, the Danish army stole out to Chippenham, and rode over the land of the West Saxons, where they settled, and drove many of the people over sea.

In 879, King Alfred defeated the Danes at the battle of Ethandune, which is thought to be modern day Edington near Westbury. He then chased them back to their stronghold at Chippenham and lay siege. Thus peace was restored to the kingdom of Wessex and it's this defeat which went towards him earning the title King Alfred the Great.

Whilst the remains of buildings dating from Saxon times have been found close by where the pictured commemorative plaque is displayed, there's no real proof yet that this is indeed where the royal hunting lodge actually was.

However, a couple of mentions in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle, one of the key documents we have of this poorly documented time, shows that Chippenham must have been of some importance. There's other evidence too, but that story is a better tale for next month :)

This is for ABC Wednesday and is the eleventh in my themed round of posts about Chippenham.

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Government Gas Guzzlers
A new study shows that federal government vehicles guzzled more gas last year than the previous 5 years... and since these were cars driven by government workers, they burned that gas mostly spining their wheels.



BP Problems
Managers at BP could now face manslaughter charges... although it's not clear whether it's because of the big oil spill or because higher gas prices are really killing everyone right now.



Assad "Conspiracy"
Syrian president Bashar al Assad says his country is the victim of a "worldwide conspiracy." Looks like MSNBC has its replacement for Keith Olbermann!



Dean's Plan
Howard Dean says the Democrats are quietly rooting for a government shutdown. The rest of the country is loudly rooting for a shutdown of Howard Dean.



Obama on Oil
In a major energy policy speech today, President Obama will say he supports more off shore drilling... mostly so he can sue the oil companies when they have accidents.





March 30th


1842: Anesthesia is used for the first time… with the exception of all the times somebody had to read Beowulf.


1863: Danish prince Wilhelm Georg is chosen as King George of Greece… because Greece and Denmark are so naturally alike.


1961: The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs is signed at New York, thus ending that state’s drug problems forever.

We're eating cactus for dinner.

But I forgot to take a picture.

Inverse sailing

Have you ever tried to look at the world a bit up-side down?

It can be quite rewarding.

Old, renewed and new in my world

It was a surprise to me a few weeks ago when along the back roads I saw this familiar orchard in this state. Orchards are torn out for a variety of reasons. As trees age--these were probably forty years old--they are less productive and it can be financially beneficial to take the few years necessary to establish a new orchard. Add to that the new varieties of fruit that have replaced the old in the tastes of the consumer. If I recall correctly, this orhard was either Red or Golden Delicious. Although the Goldens are still a favorite apple of mine, You see a lot more Fujis, Galas, Braeburns, and others in the supermarket.

Today I passed that way again and found the progress:

So, will it be a new variety of fruit that goes in? I cannot imagine Janet, who  is the owner of that property, subdividing for houses there. I guess I will have to wait and see.

Further up the road on that first trip I found a team of workers installing the posts for a new vineyard. I do not remember what crop was grown in this area before. Today the posts and the wires that they support appeared to be completed, and a cleaning up of bits of branches and such that were remaining was underway. Vineyards are common in the Yakima Valley, and wine grapes have been replacing juice grapes more and more over the years that we have lived here--earning the area the name of Wine Country.

So that's some of what's happening in My World today. I need to take the camera out to the site of the new library, for which I showed the ground-breaking a few months ago. Progress is really taking place there, and I have been asked to volunteer to help move books in July--having had experience in moving libraries, though nothing so large a project as this.

What's happening in other parts of the world? Check My World Tuesday.

Back in Norway after 5 weeks in Andalusia

This morning we wake up in Oslo with new snow on the ground outside our windows. Should we have stayed for another week or so in Spain? The snowfall was however very light and during the day the "heat" from the nordic sun has managed to get rid of the white color

The image from the beach on our last evening can be one comparison to the snow and cover some of our memories from this year´s winter long stay at Costa del Sol

The hotel pool has not been open for daily swimming activity due to no Safety Guard on duty, but the Water Mirror shows at least the clear cky.

Goodbye and thank you Carlos, Ana and all you other personnel for some nice weeks. We will return, and have left a lot of things in the hotel´s basement locker for next time. This free service makes it even more attractive to use the facilities at Myramar Hotel, Fuengirola year after year. Maybe we will travel with only hand luggage in the future.