Not much knitting or quilting done today – or running for that matter. We are skiing over the Easter weekend. It’s a family tradition. Spring skiing is a delight. Warmer temperatures and blue, blue skies. We’re in luck as there has been so much snow in the Alps this winter that the snow and therefore the skiing is just about perfect. Unfortunately everyone else in the vicinity has also realized this so there are lots of fellow skiers to stand in lines with.  Those that aren’t here are certainly headed down to the Ticino, the Italian part of Switzerland. Last night there was a 3 hour wait to get through the St. Gotthard tunnel to the south. I’d have to want to go somewhere an awful lot to want to wait in a line for that long (and I’m glad we didn’t have to!).

I’m hoping that a day’s skiing (or four, for that matter) will equate to a couple of good hard training runs – as my first race of the season is next weekend. Oh well, what will be will be. One shouldn’t expect too much from middle-aged ladies on the sporting front anyway. (Especially those with a few too many kilos in strategic places!).

This was the view today as I sat outside and ate  my lunch:

The tiny black dots that you can just about make out are skiers doing scary stuff. Those are black runs over there!

And then from the top of the Gemsstock looking over into the Italian Alps. It’s pretty spectacular, isn’t it.

We almost always ski in a little town on the St. Gotthard pass called Andermatt. It isn’t a big tourist resort and so still keeps its charm. My husband’s family come from this region, so he spent many happy holidays here when growing up.

Beautiful eh?

Just incase you’re getting withdrawal symptoms, here’s a photo of one of my latest quilts. I used Dutch chintzes and reproduction fabrics from Den Haan & Wagenmakers that I bought as a gift box in Amsterdam many, many years ago. (If you’re ever in Amsterdam the shop is well worth a visit). The fabric is very special and very different to anything I’ve found in regular fabric shops.  The quilt is machine pieced and hand-quilted and was finished in next to no time as I was glued to the Twilight saga (twice through) on audio book at the time. I can’t for the life of me remember the name of the pattern – something to do with waves I think –  and my reference library is at home. Maybe one of you knowledgeable readers out there can remind me of it. There were an AWFUL lot of triangles!

Happy Easter everyone!

Helen

This entry was posted on Friday, April 2nd, 2010 at 3:55 pm and is filed under Places, Quilting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.