January Bead Journal Project Completed

Life is getting back to normal, but I have to say, I do miss traveling around the USA in my little RV.  We have one of the smallest ones you can purchase – a Winnebago ERA, but it gets great gas mileage 17.5-22 miles per gallon, and it has all the comforts of home – except for a bed with a real mattress.  Oh, it has a fold down bed, but when you get to be my age, you really, really, really miss a good mattress.  😉

Anyway, I’ve completed my January Bead Journal project and am happy with how it turned out:

It’s supposed to depict the clouds in the sky and falling snow.  We got an amazing 4′ of snow the first 2 weeks in January and it made quite an impression on me. 

Originally, I was going to tat a lot of snowflakes like this one:

but the beads didn’t show up enough for my taste.  By the way, that snowflake is less than an inch square and I used 30wt sewing thread and size 11 seed beads to tat it. This IS a Bead Journal Project though, and I wanted the beads to be more prominent. 

We’re only supposed to show pictures of each month’s piece as we make it, but it’s hard to disguise the applecore shape I’m using.  Y’all can pretty much well guess how all 12 months will eventually be assembled. 

Y’all is definitely a new favorite saying of mine after visiting Georgia.  Savannah was the first city we visited in our trip south.  I fell in love with the city.  The people were wonderful, the city is clean, and the historic district is wonderful. 

We took a trolley – you’ll see the green sticker on my jacket in an upcoming photo – and that is a great way to get an overview of Savannah.  The trolley took us to 15 different locations, and while being driven through the city, I was able to take a lot of photos.   The drivers were constantly imparting information about the houses, cemeteries, squares, etc… and we learned quite a bit about the city.   We could get on and off the trolley all day long so we were able to take house tours and stroll through some of my favorite squares.  It was a wonderful way to tour the city. 

I took a LOT more close-up photos of the houses when we got off the trolley and walked through some of the squares. The Georgia architecture is very different from Upstate New York’s architecture.  We toured the Telfair’s Owens-Thomas House, the shops along the waterfront had wonderful things for sale, and ate at Paula Deen’s restaurant – The Lady and Sons.  See my yummy chicken pot pie:

And I had to get the obligatory picture in front of the restaurant and purchase a few goodies in her shop.  If you look closely, you can see the reflection of my husband taking my photo:

I dearly and purely wish I had scheduled more time to visit Savannah.  It is on my list of cities I want to visit again.  My husband loved it too.  He’d happily go visit again. 

We ran out of time before we could visit Savannah’s College of Art and Design.  It was a short walk from where we boarded the trolley.  The students have helped with restorations throughout the city.  Let me tell you, I looked at those college buildings with such longing.  Heck, we ran out of time before we could do a lot we would have liked. 

The city, the people, the food – all combined to create a memorable start to our vacation.

Hugs…