Happy Thanksgiving

 

This year I am so thankful for my health and my family.  This has been a medically trying year for my family.  My mom had surgery, my DH had surgery and I had both foot surgery and  gum surgery.  Finally I can say that we are all on the road to recovery and looking forward to a better  medical year in 2014.  I am also thankful that both my DH and I have jobs in this difficult economy.  I hope that everyone has a safe, happy, and healthy Thanksgiving.

One more block almost finished

Frosty nights is almost finished.  Had hoped to finish this  block today, but got sidetracked doing other things.  DH is out of town and in addition to working on this block, I did some yard work; not much because it was rather chilly today.  Also did some prep work for Thanksgiving, this year for the first time I am cooking Thanksgiving.  It is our year to celebrate with DH's family and his mom always cooks.  I offered to cook never thinking she would let me, to my surprise she did.  I am excited, this is my first turkey dinner.  Thanks to the Pioneer Woman I think I will be successful. 

Snowy Days Revisited

Back in the summer  I started working on this wool applique project.  It was one of  the projects I had prepared to work on while recovering from my foot surgery.  I finished three of the blocks then my ADD kicked in and I put it aside to work on something else.  Well today while working in the sewing room I found it and decided that I really needed to finish it.  I have already completed the fourth block and have the other two ready to stitch.  One reason I really want to finish this is because all of the wools that I am using are my own hand dyes.  (I am still having so much fun dyeing wool.)  Hopefully I will be able to get the other two blocks done and get it finished before winter is over with.  Wish me luck!

Out the window

This afternoon when I came home from school, DH had the sliding glass door open it was such a nice day.  I looked out the window and saw our Japanese maple in full autumn glory.  It is absolutely beautiful, the leaves range from a cheddar yellow to a rusty red color.  This is one look that inspired my colors for the new Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt.

In addition to the beautiful maple tree I also saw my bottle tree.  Bottle trees are a southern tradition, these trees are used to ward off evil spirits.  Instead of a metal tree which I have the tradition is to use an old tree in a yard and place bottles on the broken off branches.  I don't have one of those so DH bought me a metal bottle tree and I had fun emptying the wine bottles to fill my tree and ward off all of the evil spirits.

Happy Veteran's Day

My dad was a proud member of the U.S. Navy.  He served 3 years during WWII, I can only image what he went through.  The war was one thing that he never wanted to talk about and I never heard him talk about it until I took my DH home with me for the first time and my dad started talking about what it had been like to serve in the Navy in the war.  After that he didn't seem to mind talking about it so  much and shared many wonderful stories about the war.  Thanks to all of our Veterans. 

New Bonnie Hunter Mystery

I am always excited when the new Bonnie Hunter mystery is announced.  This year the tile is Celtic Solstice and it promises to be great as her myesteries usually are.  I love to do Bonnie's mysteries, but sometimes I am not crazy about the colors that she chooses.  I don't feel too confident in  my ability to choose colors sometimes and am always afraid to pick other colors.  However this year I am doing my own thing.  Las weekend while at the cabin, I went on my usual walk and just happened to look up.  I saw  dark blue, rust, cheddar and olive green, that is when it came to me that I would use those colors for my mystery quilt.  It isn't that different from the colors that Bonnie chose, just a little darker.  I think  this will work, I will even be able  to go darker with my neutrals since they won't be competing with a pale yellow.   I hope these colors work out.  What do you think?



What it is November?

Can you believe that it is already November?  I can't.  Where has this  year gone.  I am finally feeling better from my gum graft and think that I will survive.  That  means that I need to start thinking about Christmas.  I have a lot of my shopping done, but need to finish.  Each year my goal is to be finished with all of  my shopping by Thanksgiving.  I think I will make it.  Aside from starting to worry about Christmas, I have been busy dyeing wool.  I absolutely love my wool dyeing and wish that it was  full time job.  Oh well, maybe someday it will be.  While dyeing wool yesterday I decided to walk over to the estate sale that was going on across the street.  I found a couple of things I had to have, the first was an old sled.  I have seen a lot of pins on Pintrest where people have used these on their porch or inside to  decorate for Christmas.  I  have long thought this would be a good thing to have but in all of my antiquing I have never come across one.  This one was the very first thing I saw at the estate sale and to top it off it was only 5.00 can you believe that?  I will definitely use this this year for Christmas.  My other purchase was a table that you will see later.  Hope everyone is having  a wonderful November.