The Traveling Flower Vase

My neighbor spoils me on a daily basis. Look what she brought me the other day!

These falls colors are just so gorgeous, and I love the little bit of frilly white that breaks up the density of the fall colors.

For the past year, and maybe a bit more, we have shared “the traveling flower vase.” She started it! She gave me flowers, and I returned the vase with flowers in it for her. Now this vase goes back and forth between us. We each enjoy the flowers the other puts into the vase, and sometime after the flowers have faded, the one with the vase puts in new flowers and delivers it to the other.

It’s so much fun!

One of my favorite meals is best done in the fall when the butternut squash is nice and ripe. I cut one into cubes, add lots of chopped garlic and fresh rosemary, some REAL olive oil (not the kind with mixed seed oils added), and a bit of rough salt. I roast on a fairly high heat (375 or so) until the squarsh starts to carmelize a bit–which makes it so so sweet. I usually turn it all over once with a spatula as the bottom will burn if you don’t. Don’t cook it too long as you don’t want it to get mushy.

This month’s Tara Faughnan Blocks3 class is “Garnish,” a pickle dish quilt block form. Tara gave us extensive instructions on how to improv cut this block AND many templates of different sizes if we wanted to have a bit more precision.

Here’s where I am now–with blocks ready to be sewn together. Each “flower” will finish at 8 inches, for a 32-inch square…something? A table topper maybe. I’m going to hand quilt it.

I could keep moving around blocks forever I think, but I’ll stop here. I love how the warm black is working with the other colors in this month’s palette.

What interests me also is the pattern where two big blocks come together and form a circle. So I made one of those which I’m now hand sewing and will put on stretched canvas if it comes out ok.

How did it get to be Friday already?

It’s still very dry, and I’m going to have to water the flower beds again, as I don’t see any real rain on the horizon. I’ve given up on the grass for this year.

Have a great weekend!