October

I don’t know why I feel compelled to write a post about a month that is long gone, chronological consistency I guess. But first, a couple of small finishes! This is a table runner for our coffee table at camp, taught to us by one of my quilt chapter members in a spring workshop. The pattern is Waverunner by GE Designs, purchased from Cut Loose Press; and perhaps Cut Loose Press owns the rights now, not sure. 

My table runner is 14 x 42, shorter than the original pattern to fit my table. I quilted it in a variegated blue thread with a panto called Riptide from Urban Elementz, a favorite of mine because it is not dense and is pretty easy to quilt. 

 

The backing is an odd piece I acquired from somewhere, scrap bag maybe. I had no idea what to do with this crazy print, but it works just fine for a backing, and I had exactly enough.  

This one is called Beach Buoys, an original pattern (I think) by Seams Sew Perfect in Madison. This was a kit I bought a long time ago on a shop hop, and it's a little wider and a little shorter than the Waverunner. I plan to hang this one at camp. Love that striped binding. 

 

I quilted this one with the same Riptide pantograph. You can see the quilting a little better in this photo. 

 

I usually hang my minis and small vertical wall hangings like this one with a sleeve on the back and the 3M Command strips, the kind that stick to the wall until you release them. They've worked extremely well and haven't damaged any walls; but we have cedar boards on the walls at camp, so Command strips weren't going to work. 

I remembered I had seen someone use folded triangles in the corners of a mini for hanging; so I added those, and now I can slide the lattice strip right up into those pockets. All I have to do now is tack a picture hanger to the wood strip, and that'll work just fine.  

The backing was pretty perfect for this one too! 

September was filled with many gorgeous days, and we had beautiful weather as well in the beginning of October. We shut down camp for the year about mid October, and my son and his family wanted to come up one more time before we closed. 

That weekend coincided with my new daughter-in-law's birthday, and I had J Marie Bakery in Augusta bake her this lovely cake for her birthday. DIL's favorite color is purple, and the pastel colors in the cake were just so pretty. 

 

I love how the flowers trail down the side of the cake. It was a surprisingly tall cake, lol. 

I came back up to camp the following week to start the fall cleaning. Every last thing gets cleaned at camp in the fall, and there's usually a mountain of laundry by the time I finish. 

We've had three small above ground garden beds every summer for the last three years that have produced very well. Even in the second week of October, the tomatoes, bell peppers, and green beans were winding down but still producing. The first day I was up there that week, I picked all the ripe cherries, a few green beans, and all the peppers worth picking. 

 

The cherries don't last long because we usually eat them right off the vine, but there were bunches of bell peppers. We had so many this year that we didn't know what to do with them. Then I discovered you could saute them, and they're fabulous cooked that way. 

Last summer, we discovered you could saute radishes too, and we had bunches. I hate raw radishes, but I can eat 'em all day long sauteed. Who knew?

Unfortunately I waited until the next day to pick the rest of the swiss chard. Too late, the deer visited that night and ate all the leaves off my chard. 

The following night the deer came back and ate all the stalks too, lol. We haven't seen a deer here in five years; but not only were they up to camp, they seem to be all over the place. We caught six of them on the outdoor camera traipsing through our yard one night at home, and there were two young ones wandering around in the neighbor's yard one day. I heard they ate all the neighbor's hostas, but they didn't touch ours.  

They also ate every last leaf off the green bean plants...

 

... and they did the same thing to the peppers. Ate all the leaves off only one plant the first night...

... and came back the second night and polished off  the rest of the leaves. I guess they don't like tomatoes though because they never touched those, lol. 

By mid October, night time temps start dipping into the 30s, so we drained the pipes and buttoned everything up. 

We went back up to the lake a few weeks ago, just to check on things; and the water level has recovered a little, and the well has fully recovered. It will still be some time before the lake freezes over, so I'm hoping the water level will come up some more. It's supposed to be a snowy winter, which could mean a lot of spring runoff, which would be good. We'll see.  

September

I spent all the time I could at camp in September because I don't get hardly any time to do that during the summer because of quilt show. After Labor Day, most folks have closed up camp and gone home for the winter, so it is peaceful and quiet but still warm enough to be out on the water. 

We have been experiencing drought conditions all summer long, and it is not much improved this fall. Two summers ago, the water was up over this top step and over the dock and stayed that way through part of August. This summer, the water has receded quite a bit. 

Normally, all this sand is covered with water, with just a narrow beach up by that house.

 

The water level has been so low for so long that the grasses have gotten a foothold. 

Neither my granddaughter nor I go swimming, but we do like to go wading every summer, and I was amazed how far out we were able to walk. There is even another sandbar behind me in the picture. 

You can see we were a long ways out from the beach when I took this picture, and the water was still not even mid calf. I wondered if we could have walked all the way across the shallow end of the lake, but my granddaughter decided she wanted to go back. 

 

I bought a kayak for my (ex) daughter-in-law several years ago but had never kayaked myself. The kids brought their kayaks up, and we keep a couple under the deck during the summer, so I whipped up my courage and decided to give it a try. My kayak was a wider one, so no worries about flipping it over and not being able to extract myself from the kayak. 

We decided to paddle straight across the lake, which was a lot further than it looked; but we made it. I actually had a blast, and paddling wasn't as tiring as I thought it would be. I paddled a canoe years ago, and that was a lot more draining for me. 

I choose a project to work on at camp every summer. I leave my small sewing machine up there and have everything set up in one of the dormers so I can just walk up and start sewing. A few years ago it was the 21-Year Pineapple Project, which took a couple of summers to finish. This year, it was these Cherry Crunch string units, pattern from Bonnie Hunter. I need hundreds of these units, and I'm up to 330 so far. I figure I'm close enough to the end that I might work on it this winter at home. 

These are all string blocks of course, and I've even incorporated a few selvages here and there. I don't know why it didn't occur to me before to do that. I think it adds a lot of interest.  

 

My granddaughter is old enough now to use a sewing machine. She made a pillow at her friend's house, so she's used a machine before. Although she has not expressed any interest in making a quilt, I did ask her if she would make a Cherry Crunch unit that I could include in my quilt, and she was happy to oblige. 

She feels quite confident behind the machine and knows exactly what to do. Her block is the one with the little fox at the top in the photo above. 

 

I worked on some of these blocks too for Bonnie Hunter's Shattered pattern. These are so fun to make!

This unit is one of my favorites so far, which also incorporates part of a selvage. 

I also made this string block, which will eventually become diamonds for another neutral strings quilt. I have no immediate plans to work on it, just had to make one to get it out of my system, lol.