December 1, 2012

Happy December...The Holiday Season is upon us...the mad dash...the hustle and bustle...I think I'll just spend my time...

with the birds.  :)

Yikes! Thanksgiving is Next Week!!

First, I want to thank all of you for your sweet comments regarding the earthquake.  :)  All is well---no damage---and my stomach finally came back home a few days ago.  LOL  We don't live in an area that experiences this kind of activity, so it was a real novelty.

I am making plans to go spend the weekend with my quilting niece, Glorie.  It has been WAAAAY too long since we indulged our fabric addictions together.  :D  We aren't good with the camera when we're together these days---they are too few and far between and we will burn the candle at both ends, but I will have it with me and maybe I'll remember to pull it out and document this occasion.  After all, it really has been a long long time since we got together to play, and we really do need a few photos for posterity's sake, right?  ;d

Earthquake

We just had a bonafide earthquake here in northeast TN.  Who knows where the epicenter was but our whole house and everything in it shook like a ragdoll in a dog's mouth.  What a totally wierd feeling---my stomach is still quivering.  This was my first experience with something like this.

Just heard it was 4.3 magnitude in southeast Kentucky

Happy Halloween

Happy Jack for a Friend

and these lovely lovelies are a gift from SherryQ to moi---they are soooo wonderful.  See the little sack?  Well, that WAS a pound of chestnuts.  And a pumpkin pincushion, and a needle-felted witch's hat pin, and a hand-done card---AND all of it wrapped in the most awesome October silk scarf.  (Ummmm the chestnuts were only here a couple of days.)  :D  Thank you bushels, SherryQ, for your thoughtfulness and most especially for your friendship/kinship/sisterhood.

Tonight is Friday Nite Sew-In again, and I am unofficially participating.  I have some quilting to do on a little wallhanging that is a birthday surprise for tomorrow, so maybe I'll be able to share a picture of it next week.

Can you believe Halloween is NEXT WEDNESDAY???  And that Hurricane Sandy is heading to the northern coast after dousing Florida??  Batten down the hatches!

Friday Nite Sew-in

and more color from the mountains...

The Hills Are Alive With...Color

From my lake-side porch---mountain across the lake

Looking out my kitchen window

From our lake-side porch

Beautiful Asters that make me smile

Barberry, zinnias, tickseed, marigolds

Sweet little Marlee enjoying the glorious Autumn sunshine

Cotoneaster and Asters

Randy is my quilt holder :) This is before the last outer border

After outer border

I fell in love with a quilt done by Annabella at Life's Rich Pattern http://kechquilts.blogspot.com/ , and decided I just had to make one for moi.  It is ready for layering and quilting.  I have NEVER made a quilt top of any size in three days.  I started the top on Monday and finished the piecing today.  :D 

Flannie was over on Sunday and we made some pumpkins

Whoaaaaa the fish are breaking and the Egrets are lined up waiting for dinner

There are some big stripers in this lake and they make quite the wake when they are feeding.  Really makes us want to go fishing.

October

"October is the year at rich maturity, a happy woman arrayed in festival dress and ready for a dance with a giant come down from the hills attired in a red, red shirt, buckskin pants and moccasins beaded with frost.  October is a brisk wind in the treetops, a whisper among crisp leaves, a breath of apple cider, a gleam from a jack-o'-lantern, and the echo of laughter under a full moon."  Sundial of the Seasons, Hal Borland

It's Mums, and pumpkins, and burning bushes, and barberries, and wienie dogs---

Happy Fall

Love these little baskets

Fall gift from sweet Julie K

Berries on the Hawthorne tree

Happy Fall, Happy Autumn Equinox---the quarter moon has been so beautiful on the lake.  Wish I could get night-time photos with my camera.

September 11, 2012

We have traveled from September 11, 2001.  The beauty of this morning, the crisp, blue and green, I still remember the exact same brilliance to that morning eleven years ago.  The disbelief can still take my breath away, and stop me in my tracks, eleven years later.  The pain remains...the memories remain...

                              The Voice of Autumn
"The owl has hooted in the evening darkness.  The voice of Autumn has echoed across the valley.  There is no mistaking it now, for although the green world is still green, it has the gleam of dogwood berries turned scarlet and the sine of goldenrod in the fence corners and the glow of little white asters on the meadow.  There is the cider smell of windfall applies in the orchard and the wine tang in the vineyard.  You can close your eyes and know what is taking place.

Ripeness is fulfillment, and it comes not at the peak of Summer.  It comes when the season begins to ease down the long hill toward Winter and ice, when the days shorten and the stars of night begin to gleam in longer darkness.  Ripeness is a summation, of long, hot days and simmering sun and warm rain and the flash of lightning across the Summer sky.  It is the beauty of blossom brought to the succulence of fruit, the soft green of new stem toughened to the firm fiber of the reaching twig, the winged seed of the maple now rooted at the grass roots and finding sustenance in the soil.  Ripeness is September, warm at midday, chill at dusk and covered with cool dampness at dawn.

The change is more than a matter of sunlight and day length, for there is a rhythm in all growing things, a rest and a resurgence.  The seasons belong to that rhythm, as do the day and the night.  But so does the apple, and so do the goldenrod and the asters.  The peak is past.  The wave of the great rhythm now begins to ebb, and the cricket sings, the owl hoots, the crows call querulously.  You can hear Autumn from any hillside."  (Sept. 9-Sundial of the Seasons-Hal Borland)