Happy New Year!

I can't believe I've been home five days already and we're four days into the new year and the new decade. I hope it's all good for you.

My holiday trip was a "go with the flow" experience. On the day after the big snow here in DC the Capitol Limited was four hours late out of the city because of frozen switches. It made up time and got me into Chicago in time to make my connection to the California Zephyr, but that too was late, two and a half hours, into Osceola, Iowa. Luckily, it was a window of opportunity for good road conditions. My sister and neice drove 70 miles from Ames to pick me up.

Then it was snow and ice off and on until it, luckily again was clear roads when I came back on the 29th. We were only able to gather about a third of the expected family for the celebration: those south and east of Ames. What with weather and stomach flu, I didn't see any of my little grand-neices and nephews while I was there. The youngest was aged seventeen. I did have a good time with those I did see, though.

Coming home was a bit of an ordeal. The California Zephyr was four hours late and didn't make it to Chicago for my connection. So they unloaded us at Galesburg, Illinois, (I found this photo by Stephen J. Brown online of the Zehpyr in Galesburg in a nicer season) and put us on a Trailways bus to Indianopolis, Indiana, to catch the Cardinal to DC. The bus was tight seating, they ran movies with no personal headphones so I had to block out the sound while reading and the only food was a brief stop at McDonald's during the six hour drive. Luckily I had a Zone bar in my purse. The Cardinal has a wonderful scenic route through the New River valley in West Virginia. This picture was taken at Thurmond, West Virginia, through a dirty window. I somehow didn't get a picture of the actual river, which is renowned for white-water rafting. I enjoyed  the scenery, but didn't enjoy trying to sleep in coach because there were no available sleepers on the train. I got home at 9:30 pm on the 30th instead of 1:00 pm as scheduled.

I hope this story doesn't discourage anyone from train travel. It would have been much worse to be stranded in an airport or trying to drive through all that.

I always take needlework with me. This time I finished a crocheted toy train engine for my great-grand nephew Sam. Isn't it something that steam engines are still popular toys and stories fifty years after they were replaced by diesel! A diesel engine just doesn't have the same character. I used a free pattern from Irka in Argentina.

Yellow and green teddy bear

My friend Ken got my laptop working, so I transferred the picture of my yellow and green teddy bear to my pc, and here it is! It was a gift for my great-grand nephew, Alex.

This is one of the projects I completed during my cross country train trip last summer. I made several kits to work on while traveling. The others were Christmas ornaments.

My trip started in Washington, DC, went through Chicago to Los Angeles with a stop to tour the Grand Canyon. This was my first visit there and was breathtaking no matter how many photos I'd seen of the place. But the biggest thrill was seeing California condors flying wild in the canyon. I remember my dismay when they took the last condor out of the wild in the 1980s for captive breeding. It worked! The 60 in the canyon are about half those now flying free.

Then I visited a friend near San Diego, another in Portland, Oregon and back across country to Portland, Maine for my granddaughter's fifth birthday party. I was gone a month and 4 days. What a pleasure!

Here are pictures of two of the ornaments. The other one was for the gift exchange in my crazy quilt group and was drawn by Susan Elliott, who posted about it on her blog: http://plays-with-needles.blogspot.com/2008/12/bear-hugs-for-christmas.html