Last weekend Randy & I were planning to hike up a local mountain on Sunday afternoon. However, the previous evening a huge dry lightening/wind storm had swept down on UB causing several big grass fires. So, hiking didn't seem the thing to do 1) because heavy breathing in all that smoke was not a good idea and 2) why go to all that effort if we couldn't enjoy a view? So...Plan B was to visit one of the few museums we've yet to visit after 4 years in Ulaanbaatar. What you see here is from our visit to the Bogd Khan's Winter Palace. This was the last residing Khan of Mongolia who was deposed in 1921 when the Manchurian Chinese invaded. The compound obviously resembles the Forbidden City in Beijing (shhh...); however, the residence was built in the 1880's and is decidedly European. You can get a sense of the dense smoke that was present that day (and the Mongolian attention to landscaping which is basically nonexistent) as well as the contrast between past and present with just a glimpse of the myriad of construction cranes present in UB right now. End note: the last Khan had only one adopted daughter who died during the "Cultural Revolution" (not what the common Chinese call it). We left wondering if anyone could lay claim as a descendant through DNA, etc. Hmm...
I'm so tickled to be a part of this year's Bloggers' Quilt Festival ! My entry was done in Outer Mongolia (literally! --read on). This quilt is one of my favorite recent projects that I named "Renegade Geisha's" --renegade because two of the geisha's don't conform to the rest (mainly because I ran out of coordinating fabrics!). Can you find the two renegades? ;) The quilt incorporates fabric origami and the quilt itself is from Fantastic Fabric Folding --many projects from this book were a big hit with the Mongolian class pictured below. Due to my husband's work, we live in Mongolia; and I was privileged to teach classes at a local quilting studio. I've included a picture of the class where we were working on the geisha blocks. The students spoke almost no English and I speak what I call Monglish--a lot of English sprinkled with Mongolian. Regardless, we all had a blast! ...and, I'm very pleased with this quilt of mine!
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