I've had a lot of questions concerning the black and white quilt used in my title picture.  This is Sydie's quilt so named for our wonderful Newfoundland puppy Sydie.  She brought a lot of joy into our lives the short time she lived.  She was hit by a car one night.  Suddenly, all of our dogs were very excited and demanded to go outside, we had an electric fence around the perimeter of our property, so we opened the door and let them out, they all immediately ran to the road never slowing for the fence.  Fortunately, my daughter who tried to stop them wasn't hit by the truck speeding down our road as well.  Anyway, this quilt is in memory of her.  To find the quilt please follow the link.  If you have any problems please let me know.  If you create the quilt I would appreciate you sharing pictures with me here.  As always, this is for your own personal use.  If someone else wants it please send them here to get their own copy, please don't sell the pattern as well.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13796264/Sydies%20quilt%20block%20pattern.pdf

Sorry for not writing last week, but it was a week of lots of adventure and little computer time.  Our electricity kept going out (3 -4 times a day) making it very difficult to do anything on the computer, I would be typing away and boom we would lose power. (It happened so often it wrecked our battery back up). But you know, losing power was the least of it last week.  I lost a beloved uncle the last of my aunts and uncles.  The husband of a dear friend also passed away.  My older brother, a doctor who every year goes aboard with doctors without borders, let me know he is gravely ill, he is rapidly collecting fluid in his lungs (we'll know this week if it's cancer or TB from his travels). All of this occurred on the same day can you believe it??


 It looks as if I will be taking my 15 year old son to a boarding school in the United States soon, it will be so nice to be home! (Sometimes I am tempted to be like Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz", "There's no place like home" There's no place like home!) The schools here in India just didn't meet his needs.  We are looking at the Wasatch Academy in Mt Pleasant Utah. It seems to have a good program but I won't know for sure until I see it.  The problem is I am enrolling him but haven't seen it.   Makes for a very tense weekend for the mom!

We don't have any prepared foods here in India (at least not any that we care to eat) so I spend my time trying new recipes, I found a great recipe for pumpkin bread this week on the Taste of Home website: http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/Pumpkin-Bread-2

I love this website, I always find just the right thing to make!

Pumpkin bread recipe.

3 cups sugar

1 can (15 oz) solid pack pumpkin

1 c vegetable oil

4 eggs

2/3 cup cold water

3 ½ cup flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 ½ teaspoons salt

1 ½ teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Stir sugar, pumpkin, oil, eggs and water until well mixed. Combine remaining ingredients: gradually add to pumpkin mixture and mix well. Pour into two greased loaf pans. Bake 325 degrees for 75-80 minutes until bread tests done. Cool on a wire rack.

Last Week was quite the adventure!

Aside from our usual adventures in India of constant power outages and Internet interruptions.   This week was unique in that I learned I could face some of my greatest fears and survive.

It started out as a perfectly normal day.  I have a very small washing machine.  It does four towels at a time or a couple a pairs of pants etc.  Which is good that it is small because I don’t have dyer so everything is hung out on the line.  I don’t like to have the laundry hang on the line over night so every morning I do two or three loads of laundry and hang it on the line then every evening take it down and fold it.  On this particular day, it was four o’clock in the afternoon and I was standing on my baloney hanging a dress on the line, when I heard a noise above me (noise is a constant in India, I don’t think it has ever been quiet here since we arrived) and as I glanced up, a dark cloud was descending around me. In the space of a few seconds my thoughts were the following:

• ·      What in the world is going on?
• ·      Something is landing on me?
• ·      Oh no it’s bugs
• ·      Oh no it’s bees!

At which time I took off running into my apartment, literally flinging my clothes off as I ran.  Three bees were kind enough to hitch hike a ride in my hair but all in all the other couple of thousand were left outside on the patio.  After I calmed down enough to find my cell phone, I called my husband and told him, “Get home now!”  To be honest I didn’t calm down until the next day.

Fortunately I wasn’t stung.  I have known since coming to India that the Lord was protecting me but never more so than that day.

view of the bees on the 6th floor

view of the swarm from my balconey

When my husband arrived home he told me some masons had been working on the sixth floor and had stumbled upon a bee swarm building a new hive.  (Actually what they had done was open a window were the bees were attached to the ledge and caused them to fall on me).  The bad news is what I thought was maybe a hundred bees was more like a couple of thousand.  For dinner that night we had comfort food!  My husband was kind enough to fix me some rice pudding and we watched one of our favorite tv shows.

view of some of the dead bees from my kitchen door

The really sad thing for me is, as much as I don’t want to have bees near me (or particularly on me) they are all dead.  Instead of moving the swarm (OK I admit it is something I have only seen on the Discovery channel on TV.) They poisoned them.

Not So Ugly Sunshine Sampler of 2009 is finished!

Wow, it was fun to design but even more fun to have it completed. This quilt was made for me!  In all my years of quilting I usually make quilts that I give as gifts, taught classes from etc.  But never in all those years have a created a quilt just for me!  I used only fabric I had on hand.  It was actually a challenge on the stashbusters list to choose an ugly fabric from your stash for the quilt.  The fabric I choose is the roses.  Not so much that it is ugly but because I had so much of it and had used it and used it.  I wanted to be done using it!  All the fabric came from my stash, even the backing fabric which I would show you but it's only a quilt back of white on white fabric.  It took so long to get it quilted and who would have thought back in 2009 that I would be putting the finishing touches on it in India!  It fits a king size bed, my husband is 6' 4" tall so no small beds for us, even with the king size he just fits!

Quilt Labels

When printing on fabric it is important to either purchase pretreated fabric or make your own, I prefer to make my own, and it gives me control over the fabric used and is cheaper!  I use a product called Bubble Jet Set and Bubble Jet Rinse. I learn about this back in the days when Simply Quilts was on television. I loved watching that show.  Now I hardly watch television at all any more, I can only watch so many home improvement shows, thank goodness for the internet (now if I only had reliable internet connections!)

Using Bubble Jet Set and Rinse:

Shake well and pour solution into flat pan I have a jelly roll pan that I have dedicated to this use.  Saturate fabric in the solution for five minutes.  Allow fabric to dry.  Then iron fabric to the smooth side of freezer paper, cut to fit your printer. Print on treated fabric, and let sit for 30 minutes. Machine wash (delicate Cycle) in cold water with a mild detergent. It’s important to use a detergent in this step.   I like to wash with "Bubble Jet Rinse", I have used it on 100% cotton and silk and they have turned out very nice. I have also  used flannel and a wonderful brushed cotton that were wonderful. I used a HP 2710 printer to print my labels.

( Most of the above comes from the label, I highly recommend reading the label anytime you use chemicals to be on the safe side.)

The first time I tried printing on fabric I was making a memory quilt for my daughter Stephanie, I had ten different pictures of her as a baby assemble and went to town with my editing software and designed a page to print.  Something else I recommend is to fill a page when you do this. Saves money!  Microsoft Word is a great program for laying out your pictures and most of us have it.  Anyway, they printed beautifully, I was so excited to start cutting them out and making the blocks.  Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that you needed to have treated fabric.  I mean, really, printer ink can ruin everything when you are refilling it why wouldn't it stain the fabric I wanted it to!  Well, to make a long story short, some water was spilled in my crafting room and the pictures ran.  I never did get back to making the quilt once I learned how to create the fabric!  Guess I better put that on my “To Do” List!

Here are two examples unfortunately, I didn't take pictures of the others, the quilts yes, but not the labels.  I only do these labels for gifts so....

This label was made with HP Quilt Labels software
I was able to add the picture and a verse for my
daughters

Used clip art and a font in word to create this label, inked it with pigma marker
colored it in with prang crayons.

On my favorite yahoo groups, Stashbuster we were discussing making labels for our quilts.  It may not seem like it but someday, someone will hold your quilt in their hands and wonder who made the quilt? How do I know this, because when my father died, my brother and sister were using an old ragged quilt to line the trailer in moving furniture.  They had no idea that that was the last remaining quilt that our grandmother Ruby Stultz Tillotson had made.  How did I know this fact??  Because I loved quilts and asked my dad.  They didn't realize what they had until I had rescued it from the trailer.  So ladies, LABEL YOUR QUILTS!

Guidelines for backing quilt

When I am backing a quilt I take the finished measurements of the quilt top.  For this example I will use a 60” square top. I add 5” to all four sides if I am having the quilt quilted on a long-arm quilting machine. So, I would need backing to cover and area of 70 X 70.  Most fabric is roughly 42” wide.  Because there have been times when I have purchased fabric that wasn’t as it should have been for the purposes of my calculations I use 40” wide, which provides me with a margin of error.  I always think it’s better to safe than sorry when purchasing fabric, I can always use extra but not having enough creates some problems! Each yard of fabric is 36” so 2 yards is 72”.  If I purchase 4 yards of fabric, I can make a quilt back for a quilt that measures 70 X 62.

      
40 + 40 = 80"
36 + 36 = 72"

5" add to each side for attaching to a long arm quilting machine. You sew the selvage edges of the fabric together to create a large piece of fabric.

Of course you can always buy the quilt backs, which come in a width of 108” by how many yards you desire.  Those work great although I really hate ironing them!  Another problem is they are limited in the colors and designs that are available so one might not meet your needs hence “piecing the back”.  When you are using two, two yard pieces of fabric be sure and check to see if there is a direction to the fabric so that both sides are going in the same direction before you sew them together!

Another favorite way to create a backing fabric is to use up some of your stash a make a patchwork back!  Sometimes they turn out just as wonderfully as the front and it’s hard to know which side you want as the top!  To do this I usually start with a square, the size varies depending with what I want to create.  It can be as small as you want up to 40” if that’s the look you want.  Then I just add strips of fabric to the sides until I get to the desired width. I also like to add the label before the quilt is quilted.  That way the label is quilted right into the quilt. Here are some examples of what I have done.  

the front of the quilt

left over fabric on the back

Using left over fabric to piece the back of the quilt.

the front of the quilt

This quilt shows the label quilted into the backing of the fabric before quilting.  Again I used fabric leftover from the front of the quilt.

If you have any other questions please don’t hesitate to ask me I would be happy to help you!

Stashes and Anniversaries!

I thought I would throw in a few tips from over the years about organizing my stash!

I always kept a bushel basket beside my cutting table and all my scraps would go into the basket (for me a scrap was anything I could not easily cut into anything else with ease. So left over parts of 2" strips etc).  That basket was fair game for my children.  They could use anything in the basket that they wanted.  (All my girls are sewers today because of that basket). I love string quilts so when the basket would get to full, I would randomly grab scraps to make a block, when I had enough blocks I would put them all together to make a quilt. I loved the book Liberated String Quilts! What's great about these is if you have different types of fabric you can have baskets for each type and when you have enough make a quilt.  I used a lot of flannel, cotton and corduroy.

As far as my stash was concerned, the best for me was to organize it by color. My colors would go from light to dark.  It made it very easy if I was designing a quilt for a class at midnight to find what I needed for the quilt.

I have always shopped my stash first then added what I needed from the quilt store! 

But my stash grew because there was always something wonderful coming into the store that I had to have!

I found a great article on the net for working on your To Do List 

http://www.ivillage.com/managing-your-do-list/7-b-309711?nlcid=hh|01-04-2011|

I also found a great recipe I thought that I would share with you for brownies, it's called whatever floats your boat.

1/2 cup of butter melted

1/2 cup of coco

1 cup of sugar

2 eggs

2 teaspoons of vanilla

1/2 cup flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

1-2 cups of chocolate chips (or vanilla chips or butterscotch etc)

Combine butter, coco and sugar until the sugar dissolves.  Add eggs one at a time.  Stir until combined, stir in vanilla, flour and salt until just combined (don't over mix) at this point you can add nuts, toffee chips, whatever you like.  Pour into a greased 8" square pan and bake at 350" for 25 minutes.  You can double the recipe for a 9x12 pan and bake 30 minutes.

You can find the recipe and more yummy goodness here:

http://www.food.com/recipe/whatever-floats-your-boat-brownies-32204

My husband had an interesting experience yesterday at work.  A mouse ran up the inside of his pant leg and tried to burrow under his sock!  It was the first time he was wearing his new hand knit 100% wool socks, that I made him for Christmas!

 Today is our 28th wedding anniversary.  Seems like only yesterday we were heading to Washington DC to get married! We have lived in 18 homes, 6 states and 2 countries.  Though it all I am so glad that he is the one sharing this journey of life with me.  Back when we have been married 3 years I wrote him a poem and find that it applies even more today then it did then.  Here it is:

"I don't crave mansions of silver or gold,

Or worldly platinum and wealth untold!

For they soon tarnish as they grow old.

A wealth far greater that I cherish,

It rises with me when I perish,

A wealth far greater that I hold,

Each time my husband I behold!

I found this recipe on line after searching for a recipe that only made one loaf.  Since I mix the bread by hand, one loaf is easier to make, plus it tastes great right out of the oven.  I made some changes to the recipe adapted it to ingredients I have on hand! I haven't been able to find sour cream here in India but I can purchase the richest fresh cream, so thick and heavy like sour cream, so that's what I use and the bread tastes wonderful. I also like to add vital wheat gluten and potato starch ( either powdered or I save the water from boiling potatoes, both work very well.  The flour available here seems to have a lower protein than what I am use to so these are the adjustments I have made.  We will be having the bread tonight with Bruschetta, I can't wait! 

Yummy Bread Recipe

2/3 cups cold water

½ cup boiling water

1 tablespoon vital wheat gluten (optional)

1 tablespoon potato starch (optional)

2 Tablespoons orange juice

2 teaspoons salt

2 teaspoons sugar

½ cup sour cream (I use heavy cream instead)

2 teaspoons instant yeast

4 ½ cups flour

Stir in waters, salt and sugar in a bowl, add sour cream then yeast, vital gluten, and potato starch.  Stir in flour.  Let dough rest ten minutes, Knead dough, let rest 10 minutes (repeat 2 more times)

Cover and let rise 1 hour. Bake @ 375 degrees 

As an added idea, we took a small piece of the dough, rolled it, coated it lightly with mustard, place a piece of gouda cheese in the center, wrapped it up and baked it until the bread was golden.  It was a delicious taste treat!

All Bran Muffins

All Bran Muffins Recipe

I have a wonderful recipe to share with you today.  It is a variation of the original recipe featured on the Kellogg’s All Bran box of cereal. My mom use to make these for us when I was a little girl, they are a great source of fiber and delicious to eat!

1-¼ cups flour

½ cup brown sugar

1-tablespoon baking powder

¼ teaspoon salt  

2 cups of All Bran Cereal

1 ¼ cup milk

1 egg

¼ cup vegetable oil (or ¼ cup applesauce)

¼ teaspoon cinnamon

¼ teaspoon nutmeg

Raisins (I used mixed dried fruit like blueberries, cranberries etc)

Nuts

To begin, place the cereal in a bowl, cover with milk and let stand while you assemble the other ingredients.  Combine the rest of the ingredients except the raisins and nuts.  Stir in the cereal mixture.  Once all the mixture is moist add the fruit and nuts.  You’ll notice I didn’t specify amounts on the fruit and that’s because I mix in what looks good to me (most recipes call for 1 cup but I find that sometimes that’s too much fruit) also it greatly depends on what I have on hand.

Place in a greased muffin tin (or use the handy muffin papers to save on washing difficulties)

Bake in an oven preheated 400 degrees for 20 minutes or until the muffins spring back to the touch.

I like using the applesauce because it cuts down on the cholesterol and as we are always looking for ways to cut the fat it’s one of my favorite ways to do so.  Enjoy!

Now for the latest update on our new addition, she continues to wiggle her way into our hearts, particularly Dave’s! She now bounces to the door when he arrives home from work and nothing will satisfy her except he stop to pick her up! 

She also loves lying at Tim’s feet when he is playing “Minecraft “ on the computer.  It’s quite fun to see how he has stepped up to help and train the Chloe’.

Of course I am coming to think of her as the pesky little puppy, she must have attention, and she must have it now!  Seriously, I love cuddling with her on the couch, she keeps me very warm during the cold Indian winter.  Although winter here is not cold compared to Utah standards, it is still quite cold especially when you consider the fact that there is no heat!  Everyone I have asked about it states, "It's only cold for 2 months, it's not worth it to put in heat."  To which I reply, "Tell that to my feet!"  

Because it has been so cold I haven't been in the mood to sew much, however, I have been in the mood to knit and crochet.  I have been able to complete  2 rosey earflap hats, the pattern for which can be found here: 

http://suzies-yarnie-stuff.blogspot.com/2010/11/rosy-earflap-cap.html 

I loved this pattern it worked up quickly (an hour per cap!) If your looking for a cute last minute Christmas gift this could be your answer!

Because these worked up so quickly I was also able to knit up a pair of socks for Dave in a nice comfortable wool! He will love them and with the marble floors here they will go a long way towards helping keep him warm this winter!

I used yarn from Light Brown Hare which fortunately ships internationally! The yarn knitted up wonderfully! I really enjoyed working with it.  You can find her yarn here:

http://www.etsy.com/shop/lightbrownhare

Have a great day everyone!

                     Our New Puppy Chloe’

The world’s cutest Lhasa Apso!

As you can see from the pictures we have a new addition to our family!  Chloe' can to our house December 11, 2010.  She was 42 days old at the time.  Dave bought her back from Mumbai, when he was there on business.  She is a Lhasa Apso.  A totally new breed to me, I don't I'd ever had the opportunity to see them before except in pictures.  They are a popular breed here in India and we wanted a dog that would stay small as we live in an apartment and I just couldn't do that to a golden retriever.  In fact, this is the first time since I was 8 years old that I have been without a Golden!  Technically, I still have my golden but she is half a world away living with my daughters as she was too old to make the journey to India.  The vet did not think she would be able to survive the trip.

Gabby

I sure miss her, she is the smartest Golden I have owned and at 50 I owned a few in my life!

Chloe is the smallest puppy.  And for such a small puppy she has quite the ferocious personally!  She wants what she wants now!  But already she loves to just be near us and when we work at the computer she lays on her blanket at our feet.

When Dave arrives home from work these days, the first words out of his mouth are, "Where's my puppy!"  She is definitely Daddy's girl.  She is also very attached to Tim! Hmmm, but then she really just loves to have attention.

Like a baby she eats four times a day.  And not surprisingly she has worms. I am concerned about taking her to the vet as she hasn't had any shots yet and I don't want to expose her to whats out there in the world but we will be doing that next week as soon as she is old enough to have them. We had a pound puppy that we adopted that died of Parvo once and I never want to have that happen again.  Despite the fact that we gave her the shot, it was too late she had already been exposed to the  virus. We are looking forward to many happy years with this pup.

Hey happy 9th day of december, only 15 more days until Christmas!  I have a table runner that I have been designing that I must finish this week, hopefully I can get back into sewing.  It has been so cold here and there is no heat so I spend my days curled up with knitting watching classic television and old movies.  I am told it will be even colder in January.  I have a space heater on my Christmas list but since the electrical here is so poor it wouldn't be as safe to have one as I'd like.  I also have a puppy on my Christmas list.  We will see what Santa brings me!

I thought I would talk a little about marking quilts.  I use an old stand by.  I use shards of soap.  We use Dial soap, my husband loves it's antibacterial properties and as it gets down to the end I save the slivers and they are wonderful for marking darker fabrics, I haven't had a problem with them leaving stains yet.  I also like the price!  I also use a soft lead pencil for marking applique work, it rubs off and I usually turn it under when I am sewing.

I took a look at "Go" advertised on the Quilt Show, I couldn't believe they wanted $1200 for the thing.  Then you still have to buy more dies.  Does anyone have one of these. Is it worth the money?   I still like to preserve my money for fabric (I just buy less and have to love what I buy) so anything that would make that big of a hit in my budget would have to be a real time saver.

I found a nice blog this week that I thought I would share with you.  You can find it here:
http://www.crazyshortcutquilts.com/margueritas-blog/

She has a nice videos some nice crazy quilt patterns which are always a great way to use up fabric!  Have a great week everyone and I'll see you next week.

My latest swap yarns for my sock yarn
blanket!

Decorations for Dewali at our hotel!

We've had a busy couple of weeks.  We traveled to Mumbai and stayed at the Oriental Hotel in West Bandra.   These pictures came from the front steps.  I love the drawings and think they would make great quilt designs.  Dewali is the festival of lights and they really celebrated.  Lots of fireworks!  They were even throwing fire crackers in the stairwell of our apartment building.  Something that was very startling to me!  The tradition is to give gifts of fruit and nuts.  India has a lot of holidays that are just cool.  My favorite is Brother/Sister day where you give gifts to your brother or sister depending on which day it is!

 I made this Christmas stocking for my son, Mike, who is currently serving a mission for our church in Los Angeles, California.  I will be mailing him a package this week with some wonderful indian things like a beautiful leather wallet that is embroidered.  The women here do amazing work and I am lucky enough to live near where it is all made.

My children are coming to India for the holidays. It will be wonderful to show them all the sites and just be with them.  They are very excited to have the opportunity to see where we live and meet all the people here.  I am sure we will spend several days visiting the markets not to mention the sites here in Bhuj.  We are also taking them to a wild life park which I am sure they will enjoy.  I sure do miss being near my children.  Mike will miss out on India this year but he will be coming here after his mission.

Mike has been having great success teaching people the gospel of Jesus Christ.  I am still amazed and grateful that someone took the time to teach me the gospel 29 years ago.  What a difference it has made in my life.  It has truly taught me that "Men (and women) are that they might have joy"

Here in India there is a limited supply of food items, I managed to get a hold of some ground sirloin (no hamburger here) and I made a meatloaf yesterday. I thought I would share the recipe because it was so simple:

3/4 c Applesauce

1- 1 1/2 pounds of Ground beef

1/4 catsup

1 Tablespoon Parsley

1 Package of onion soup mix 

1 egg

1 cup oatmeal

combine well, bake in a loaf pan at 350 degrees for an hour and there you have it.

Now since I couldn't buy applesauce I made my own:

6 large apples

1 cup of water

1/2 c sugar

1 t lemon juice

1 cinnamon stick

Place all ingredients in a saucepan, bring to a boil, turn down to simmer about 20 minutes until tender, remove cinnamon stick and then mash with a potato masher.  It tasted great and couldn't be easier.

Pinks and Browns Triangles

920 Pink and brown half square triangles

One of my last UFO's.  I have been carrying this quilt around in my many moves since 2005.  I started it in Barrington, Illinois at Touch of Amish Quilt Shop.  It uses Triangle Paper 2 1/2" half square by Quilt Time. Each page yielded 24 squares.  I will be assembling them in 6 x 4 row blocks and them putting the blocks together to make a quilt.

 I used assorted pink and brown fat quarters as well as fat quarters of off white back ground fabrics.  To use the paper I ironed one pink with one off white right sides together and then ironed the triangle paper on the wrong side of one of the fabrics. I also added pins to help keep the paper in place.  I then stitched on the the dotted lines until  done.  Using my rotary cutter I cut them apart and watching tv peeled the paper.  Then I pressed them all open towards the dark fabric. About this time we moved to Utah so they went in a shoe box and there they stayed until now.  I spent the last week, sorting and pressing and deciding how to assemble them in a pleasing pattern.  I hope to have them assembled by the time we head to the US for Christmas.

my new sewing machine, I purchased it here in India.
I didn't want to risk my much loved Bernina 1230 on the
strange currents here in India.  So far so good, it sews a nice even stitch.
It does make a lot of noise though.

my next project Dresden Star

My recently purchased Indian fabric.

In keeping with a tradition I started when I started stashbusters, I am patiently waiting to start my next project "Dresden Star" until I finish a UFO.  With only 3 more UFO's to go after the pink's and brown's I am very excited.  I am going to make it with fabric purchased here in India.

Navratri Festival

A huge festival in town and the noise was incredible. The festival was Navratri which means nine nights, it honors the Mother Goddess-Divine Shakti.  She destroys evil and grants boons to her children.
Here of pictures of the sea of humanity that walked by our apartment building on the way to the festival.  It is estimated that 800,000 indians came to town for the festival and it turns out we live on the main entrance to town.  They walked passed us at all hours of the day and night. Lots of music, loud speakers encouraging the pilgrims as they walked along.

They played music and danced until all hours of the night, and they didn't stop during the day.  Making it very difficult for us to sleep. I understand that there is a lot of dancing and beautiful traditional clothing worn. Dave of course had no interest in heading into the sea of humanity for a closer look and so I can't attest to that being true or not. : > )!

 Dave needed to travel to Mumbai for business so Tim and I joined him.  We stayed at the Suba Galaxy hotel near the airport.  All three of us stayed in the same room on 3 twin beds, Tim's was a pull out chair.  The hotel had very good air conditioning and was clean.  The beds were thin mattress on wood so think very hard, no give at all.  But it was nice to be in Mumbai, it afforded us with a chance to attend church and to hang out with other Americans.  We played charades for the first with two other American families, the Williams and the Dickens.  It was wonderful to be able to talk and share ideas with others who are having a similar experience.  Although I was struck by how different the vegetable markets were in Mumbai, there was a much greater variety of vegetables and of higher quality than we were able to get in Bhuj.

A Muslim Mosque 

We had a wonderful driver by the name of Robin, who worked for Only Friends.  He spoke English and took Tim and I to see the various sites in Churchgate.

The Mosque is a beautiful site on a peninsula. The walk way was filled with people heading to and from the Mosque.

 I love this plaque in the Hanging Gardens.  Good health really does bless the generations.  It's interesting I did a life clock.  If I live in the United States, I will live until I am 79 years old, but with changing nothing other than the fact that I now live in India it cuts my life expectancy to 67 (only 17 more years to go).  Which is funny because my housekeeper says Americans aren't healthy and we need to be more like the Indians, but then she also says her bread is healthier because it's made with wheat?  Gee, since we are using the same flour to make both the breads, her comment just doesn't make sense to me.  After all, wheat flour is wheat flour or is it. ; > ).

Here are some more wonderful pictures we took.  This the view from the Hanging gardens down to the beach.  I think the thing that struck me the most was
how clean everything was in Church Gate.  Unlike
the rest of Mumbai there wasn't trash littering the park or the beach.  I loved looking at the incredible buildings.

The gateway to India

SeaLink Bridge