Ships at the Louvre

I love these ships sailing right out of the Louvre building. I wanted a better picture than this but I was standing in a crosswalk and despite the fact that I had the green signal, a taxi started honking at me to move. Ah well. This is near the Porte des Lions I've shown in previous posts.

One of the figureheads is a busty woman:

The other is a goat:
I love how they've even got the rolling waves portrayed and the fish.

I've finally seen evidence of the Tour de France coming into town. On Thursday I saw a guy wearing Team CSC Crew clothes carrying a clipboard down near the Place de Concorde and yesterday all the barricades were up. Plus the grandstand set up for Bastille Day is still there. By the way, completely forgot to tell you that Bastille Day was utterly quiet here. We didn't go out to see the parade or fireworks and didn't hear them at all. Not even kids setting off firecrackers in the streets.

I've got friends visiting, so you may not see much from me for the next week. Not quite sure what we're going to be doing, although 70% chance of rain today and tomorrow is not enticing.

Christmas is Early

The mail carriers have been working extra hard getting packages to me. Look at what the mail has brought me: Blocks made by students in my First Ever Quilt Class. I am so overwhelmed that I barely know what to say. Thank you all for these marvelous blocks - I am so thrilled that you've played with the letters and made these blocks to reflect your own personalities.

From the top we have MJ in Michigan, Tracey in CT, Comicbooklady, Keryn, Quilt Diva Julie, Hedgehog, Tanya, Mereth, and Wendy.

I won't go into raptures about these marvelous blocks (and I know there are more coming!) but do check out my sidebar and go to everybody's blog (who has one) and tell them what a great job they did - they've posted their individual blocks. There is some amazing work here - I'm learning from my students.

Keryn and Mereth very kindly included some fabric hand-dyed by Lisa Walton. It's gorgeous and I love it. So does Lily.

A bit of photographer geekiness. I had to turn off the automatic flash in order to get this shot of Lily. I think it looks great and I didn't even jiggle the camera too much.

We've had some sun here and there. Not enough, but that's another story. I had the best light the other day when I was near the Louvre. I've taken pics of these ships coming out of the side of the building before, but here are some more. It was three in the afternoon and the light was golden (that's cuz the sun is going down early this time of year) - it looks completely different than on a sunny summer afternoon.