Hou Leng

I was out for a walk a few weeks ago and wandered into a Pier 1 store.  I love looking at all the home accessories and picking out all the things I would buy if I was furnishing my house from scratch ... it's kind of a game I play.  I also watch for things that catch my eye that would make an interesting quilt or part of a quilt and take a picture of them with my phone.  Later I go home and see if I can draft up something cool with it.

This time I saw a pillow with a peacock on it.  I've been wanting to make a quilt in blues, greens, turquoise, and this one fit the bill perfectly.  It's not exactly like the pillow of course, I changed it enough to make it mine and added the chinese character.

 

The peacock is well known as a symbol of pride and beauty, so I've done it here with the chinese character for "beautiful".  The quilt is 24 x 18½" and is named "Hou Leng" which means "very pretty" in Cantonese.  It's all hand appliqued and hand quilted with variegated blue thread.

ok so ... I have very vivid dreams almost every night. Often, unfortunately, they're nightmares of the past (you can find a bit of info on that here), flashback type stuff that wakes me up terrified. But when it's not that sort of dream, I dream about a group of animals, and apparently I talk about them in my sleep. 

It started with Gustave, a snail, and has progressed to quite a few critters now, each with their own personalities. To date we have 8 hedgehogs, an owl, a snail, a chameleon, a turtle and a rabbit.  They call themselves TOMH&R (pronounced tom-har) ... The Order of Mostly Hedgehogs & Raoul.  To find out more about them take a look on their own blog here.

Keep in mind that every post/adventure, including every critter involved, happens in my dreams ... if I didn't dream it I don't write it.  Gord often asks me what about this, or did this happen ... I just tell him if it didn't happen it isn't there, I won't elaborate on them.  Not yet anyhow ....