Judy in the Dyes

Our afternoon temperature hovered right around 60 today!  WooHoo!  I wish that that would be how our winter would remain, but alas I've heard the weather forecast for the end of the week!  I know that I should enjoy this while it lasts!  I spent the afternoon dyeing silk in the studio.  I have a new favorite color trio, which you can see above, and I decided to dye a silk scarf with it.  Over the past year, my dyeing has been more structured, but I changed my mind with this one and let the dyes make their own decisions.  They do in the end, anyway, so why not let them start out that way!  I like how the dyes are splitting here, and I cannot wait to see how this scarf turns out after the silk has batched!

The first picture sort of reminded me of Florida with a very strong hurricane approaching from the Atlantic, but the above picture makes me think of vegetarian lasagne with lots of spinach............what do you think?  I hope that I will have some awesome results when I wash out the scarf tomorrow.  If not, you'll never see it again!  LOL

I hope you enjoyed a wonderful New Years Eve and Day.  The Eve was peaceful for us, culminating in a fabulous dinner at our favorite ecco in Midtown.  It is always such a pleasant experience there: the staff treat us royally and the food is fabulous!  They were offering a few specials for the evening, and of course we couldn't resist partaking of several: the oysters with Sturgeon caviar (produced locally at the University of Georgia in nearby Athens), foie gras with frisee and quince jelly, and the lobster risotto.  Oh my!!!  We rounded that out with a few other items on the regular menu and then when we tried to order their fabulous olive oil and chocolate ice cream our waitress Rosa told us that dessert was on the house.  She proceeded to deliver FOUR fabulous sweets:

We dabbled with all FOUR for a while, watching the passing scene and enjoying every bit of it!  The incredible olive oil & chocolate ice cream is the double scoop in the center front.  On the right is a fantastic beer ice cream on some sort of chocolate concoction.  In the center rear resides an awesome fudge-like chocolate torte; and on the left is yet another chocolate ice cream concoction whose name now escapes me! It was a fabulous meal....once again, ecco has won our hearts!


Speaking of winning our hearts: we enjoyed a good bit of New Years Day with Charlie and company!  Our little grandson is so adorable.... and his parents are pretty cool too!   Here's part of our meal:

The Hoppin John is on the right, seated upon a bed of rice with some grated cheese topping it off.  The collard greens are on the left.  I have to tell you that these were the very best collards I've ever eaten!!!  YUMMMMM!  You can find the recipe here but you'll have to scroll down a bit until you get to Andrew's Peanut Collard Greens.  We devoured our dinner!!!


Sadly, I took no pictures of Charlie this time around (he was truly angelic!), but I did get a lot of videos!  I'm putting them on YouTube, but haven't made them public just yet.  His Mom and Dad are slowly getting back into the swing of things: Dad is back to work and Mom is slowly but surely reentering her workplace.  I am amazed and ever so proud of them both: what great parents!  In spite of his grandparents, I think that Charlie will excell!

Hope 2011 is treating you well!

PEACE