Photos in my camera

I seem to always be grabbing my camera to take a picture of something "for my blog" and then they sit in my camera.  So, today I'm emptying my camera!

November 13 - our first snow of the season - this was taken when I woke up that morning.  I went out later to run errands and it was more impressive where there were bushes and such to catch the snow than it was downtown.  Right now, the weather is saying possible snow tomorrow too.

 I'm pretty sure I posted a picture of this in one of my California posts, but this was my favorite souvenir (aside from lots of nice wine) from that trip.  It's a trivet with the logo of the Ravenswood Winery on it.  I loved the logo plus which I knew it would look great in my red, black and ivory kitchen.

I said I would post photos of my two purchases at the Rappahanock Arts Festival so here they are.  I need to get the etching framed, of course.  It is the work of Margaret Rogers and I had a hard time deciding what to buy - I loved almost every single piece in her gallery!

This leaf is ironwork from Nol Putnam.  As I said in my post about that trip to the festival, he has done numerous large pieces for the National Cathedral in D.C. and I'm delighted to own even a small piece of art created by him.  This was apparently his last year in the festival and he plans to "retire" although with an artist of his caliber, I'm pretty sure he will still be working.

This next picture shows (barely) where I think I'll be displaying these two pieces.

The etching will hang where it's taped here and over on the other side where just the side of a lamp shade shows is where I think I'll hang the leaf.  I think the light shining up from the lamp will set it off nicely and I plan to hang it at a slight angle with the leaf pointing down.  And then I think that wall will have all it can handle!

 I woke up one morning and looked out my windows to make sure the world was still there and it was, but I saw that brilliant yellow-green on the street and thought "my gosh, what are they doing there!?"  I got my binoculars and saw that, in fact, the three trees standing there were bare naked and had apparently during the night just dropped all their leaves - they obviously hadn't really blown off cause there they were.  It was kind of intriguing really - did some kind of signal go out?  "Ok, guys when I count to three, we're all going down, right?"  At any rate I took two because the shadow shifted throughout the day but never was the whole place in bright sunlight.  Walked past there a day or two later, and, after Googling to make sure, I can tell you they are gingko trees!  Who would have thought it?  I apologize for the fuzziness - I zoomed in quite a bit...

 This is my latest finished cross stitch - miniature, of course.  It took me forever partly because there were 21 colors and lots of stitches, but mostly because I just didn't work on it regularly.  I started a little Christmas one yesterday and hope to have it finished today or tomorrow.  It's much simpler, obviously, but also, I 'm just kind of in a cross stitch mood.

And, finally, I've posted this picture before but I keep it and look at it every now and then just to have a little smile.  After waking up to a fairly nasty, anonymous letter delivered to everyone in the building and then getting an e-mail telling me one of the residents had a bicycle stolen out of our garage, I quite needed a little smile, so when I saw this in my photos file, I thought I would post it too.  Her expression pretty much covers how I felt after reading the letter!

Hope everyone has a fantastic Thanksgiving.  I'm going to be brining for the first time ever - got a small roasting chicken because that same Ravenswood Winery sent me an e-mail for a brined roasted chicken that uses half a bottle(!) of one of their wines in the sauce.  I'll be posting about that, no doubt. :)

The tasting continues!

Heather and I both like pinot noir wines and a couple of people at the Raymond Winery had told us that we needed to head to Sonoma for some of the really good ones and we figured pinot noirs or not, we should head there anyway just cause it's there.

So head we did and our first stop Monday (according to the numerical order of my photos - I certainly can't keep track of them all!) was the Ravenswood Winery  We decided we liked the looks of the Sonoma area more than the Napa Valley area (at least what we had seen of it by then) because it was much more country and fewer little towns with many, many shops to lure tourists.  Lots of wineries though - no lack there!  The Ravenswood Winery's logo is three ravens forming an interlocking circle with all their feet filling in the center and I really liked it.  Also, they had Edward Gorey gift cards and a book of letters between Edward Gorey and a friend (I forget his name) and since I really enjoy Edward Gorey's books and artwork, that gave me a reason besides wine to like the winery.  But the wine was good too.  In fact I think this may be the one winery where I joined one of the club plans although whichever winery it was, the main reason I joined the one I did was because their cost to ship a case of wine was about half what all the other wineries we visited charged.

 This is Ravenswood's nifty logo.  Heather had to tell me those were feet in the center - I was trying to have them be forks or something!

And this was just a neat tree which the picture numbers tell me was either at Ravenswood or the next winery we visited which was a quick stop on the way back to Napa and I have no idea what the name was at this point.  But it was in a lovely setting so here are some pictures - too bad I didn't take one of their sign.
I took the first picture just because we were so tickled at someone decorating their property with little Roman or Greek ruins.  It was a neighboring property of the winery.  The winery itself had a lovely little pond out back and a beautiful view of the mountains rising in the back with a man-made waterfall (dry at this time of year) and a tiny little chapel they had built up above that.

 Didn't realize how blurry that picture was but I'll leave it cause it's just kind of cute.  The one below is a cropped view of the view from the backyard of a winery we stopped at on our way back to Napa.  The tiny little white dot up on the hill is the chapel.  Notice how different the light is here - it was close to 6:00 p.m. and it really makes a difference in the colors of the hills when the sun is low.  This whole area - Napa and Sonoma - really reminded me of Italy.  I was there in October each time and it was very much the same kind of light.  One of the vintners told us that the longitude or latitude or whatever of the Napa/Sonoma reason is like within 1 degree of Tuscany.

If I remember rightly, we had dinner Monday evening in the hotel.  I  can't remember what we had but I know it was much more enjoyable than the one time we ate food at the San Francisco Hilton!

The next batch of pictures are from our Tuesday morning wine tasting - late Tuesday morning mind you.  This was the V. Sattui winery and it was really something.  Very much for tourists but I would imagine a lot of locals would shop there too because they had an incredible deli with artisanal cheeses, their own cured meets, pates, etc., prepared foods, beautiful sourdough baguettes (I've yet to have any ho-hum bread in California) and so on.  Made me think I should drive to California sometime just so I could come here, pack up a cooler and drive back home!  Just really hated leaving all that deliciousness behind.  They also had good wines and we had a delightful lady take care of our tasting.  She had the energy of about 10 people and just jumped from wine to another.  We were supposed to try 6 wines and I have no idea how many we actually tried - more than 6 that's for sure!  I think at this winery I may have added a 2-bottle order to Heather's ever growing selection of wines which will be winging their way to her house.  Or maybe this is where I joined the club - I am so far behind and it was such a whirlwind of winery visits that I really have no idea and will just have to be pleasantly surprised whenever I get whatever I get.  Anyway it was a fun visit and I kind of wish we had bought some cheese, meat and bread there and then sat outside to eat it for lunch.  Here are the pics:

If Heather ever has time and reads these posts, she will probably have to straighten me out.  I seem to have really lost track of when we did what and where!  I do know that after agonizing where to have our last dinner in Napa and calling various places for reservations and not getting them, we ended up going back to Cindy's Backstreet Kitchen for another very nice dinner where we split a half bottle of a wine called Charbono (that's the type name, not the winery name).  Neither one of us had ever heard of it and the waiter told us that it's not too well known and very little of it is made.  It was so good that when we got back to the hotel, Heather started a search for where we might be able to find some and changed her flight time!!! so we could go Wednesday morning before heading back to the airport to a winery she found that produces it!

And I should be asleep by now, so good night from my "hear the ocean" apartment.  I love it!