Hello all!
I’m sorry I’ve been AWOL, sort of, these past days.
But I’ve been…busy.
The screened porch, my “outdoor room,”got tiled. My neighbors tiled theirs, and they held my hand about organizing getting mine done. It’s so pretty, and more on that in a separate post soon. The concrete sits right on the clay here, and it was so ugly, so stained and dirty looking.
I have been having so much fun with this month’s “Block 2” block in the online class with Tara Faughnan: Log Cabins. And with learning how to install blocks on stretched canvas frames. Here’s the one I mounted yesterday–using the fabric palette I pulled in early November. It’s…so handsome.
With my sweet neighbor in tow, I found Michaels’s yesterday, and they had such a lovely selection of these stretched canvas frames. And the prices were terrific! They even had a “buy one, get two more free” sale, so I came home with 3 of the 12-inch frames as well. The frame above at 18 by 24 was perfect for this piece. Michael’s has 3 levels of quality to choose from, and the cheapest one is perfect for my needs as it is thinner. All of them are coated with acid-free gesso.
I will take a picture of ALL of this month’s completed projects when I finish the last one I’ll make this month. My goal is to finish it today.
It’s time to return to the design wall projects. And, I do have the third quilt in my half-rectangle series underway. It uses the half-rectangle “hourglass” form I learned in last month’s block class, which featured the hourglass block. And today I’ll try to finish the “Crosses” scrap quilt that is all laid out and about half sewn together. (The adorable backing for it came yesterday and is already washed. I’m nearing the end of sewing down binding on the second quilt in the series so I’ll soon need another hand-sewing project.)
Both of my quilt groups met this week: one at night and one the next morning. In the modern group, our “make the Churn Dash block modern” challenge quilts were due. It was so fun to see the awesome creativity our members produced. I will do a separate post on mine soon.
I was very late to the morning quilt meeting as it was also the day to retrieve the raw milk, which comes every other week and which sells out now in a few hours. The delivery was running late, so we all just…waited. But, success, and I delivered the milk the next day to my two sons’ houses, which sometimes includes short visits at each house or outside in the driveway. I absolutely thrive on raw dairy and have for over 20 years now. (In my book, commercial dairy is a dead food that is almost, now, a fake food. No wonder it disagrees with so many people.) In two weeks I use 3 half-gallons, and I freeze one of those as an emergency back-up and just switch the frozen one out when I get the next three jugs. See the gorgeous cream on the top? Yummy!
And now it’s time to shop for the Thanksgiving dinner. I’ll provide a green salad, roasted Brussel sprouts, and the roasted carrots/sweet pepper/garlic dish I like. I went out to Chucktown Acres farm with DIL Corinne to get our organic, locally raised turkey, and they had raw butter as well, so I came home with three containers. Two went to the freezer and one went with Corinne to be used in the mashed potatoes–a dish the children have requested.
We’ve had a cold spell. Or what gets called “cold” here in coastal South Carolina. I turned on the heat this week and am in warmer clothes. And it’s been too cold to have my noon meal out on the porch, which I miss. But the cool weather is great for walking, and it is sunny and so cheerful outside. I’ll need one more grass mowing I think, but that should do it.
And, now, hurricane season is over for the year! Here, we dodged a few bullets that proved to be terrible for others in the region–and that’s a story that is still ongoing. Western North Carolina is suffering terribly.
Louisa Enright's Blog 