Winding Down and Heading North

Although I've titled it "Winding Down", in actuality the last month of our stay in Jamaica was a flurry of activity on several fronts. Our friend Binghi has been helping out around the place for a long time, but in the last month he really got into learning the art of mosaic from Tom. It's not clear who was having the most fun - Binghi learning the art, or Tom teaching it!

We hired our friend Tai Jean to do some finishing masonry work on the extensions to Tom's shop, finishing up the tile storage room and the back storage room (named Goko's Room in honor of Tom's mom, who always had a box of "useless things too good to throw away"). That got a lot of tile and other stuff out of the shop and makes it much more spacious.

Another friend, Calli, had been commissioned to build us an armoire for the bedroom, and Tom and Binghi worked at getting some of the wainscoting in the bedroom done. This inspired Barbara to do some finishing in the kitchen, painting the areas under the cupboards. Where she found time with all of the gardening and playing with the local kids is a mystery. The armoire is beautiful, and frees up a lot of space in the closet - we had seriously underestimated the need for storage space in the house.

Tom went into a mad flurry of tiling, completing some of his most complex work to date - "Marilyn Mastodon" in the living room, a section on the porch inspired by Ruth White's design for the next Tompkins County Quilters Guild raffle quilt, and "Dreaming of Being a Mermaid", both on the porch.

Just before we left Binghi got his shop open again (it had been closed for more than a year due a dispute with the power company), much to the relief of the local community who had missed it badly. We had our little going away celebration there, and then headed north to the worst snow storm of the winter. Yuck!

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