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 we decided to slice and 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.  

Getting Back into the Blogosphere

The weather has finally warmed in Maine with temps in the 70s. We have four or five days of hot weather coming up, then back into the 70s. Black flies are out and about as well. I try to load up with bug repellent, and I pay dearly with huge itchy welts if I don't. 

We have been waiting for the landscapers to start on a new back walkway, and they've finally got to it. I'm guessing the walkway is 30+ feet; and they've just started laying the pavers, so they'll be a while. 

Warmer weather also means the violets are in bloom. I discovered that my neighbor's side yard is almost all weeds in the spring, including spectacular amounts of dandelions and violets. I picked blossoms to my heart's content and made some lovely lavender and violet face cream with fresh blossoms infused in water. Also some wild violet cold process soap with dried blossoms infused in oil. 

The left over blossoms were dried and bagged for use this winter. Violet leaves were not so plentiful this year, but Mountain Rose Herbs carries dried violet leaf, and I can make soap with them too.  

Tis also the season for summer cactus. My summer cactus is a very finicky bloomer, so I was excited this morning to discover it is sprouting buds. There are not a bunch yet, but I'm hoping. 

My Christmas cactus, on the other hand, is perpetually confused. It has bloomed nearly continuously since last October. Here it is June, and it's still blooming.

In April I finished Mountain View Lodge, which was a free pattern from Benartex. I've made a couple of these as gifts for men; and this was for a friend of hubby's, who stitched a canvas cover for our pontoon boat last summer. 

I still have quite a lot of fabric left over from this collection, so I used up all of this striped piece on the back. Still didn't have quite enough, so I pieced one stripe with some tan fabric from the collection on either side. 

I am increasingly trying to find ways to use up more fabric from the stash on the back side of my quilts. I recently found a site called Just Get It Done Quilts by Karen Brown, justgetitdonequilts.com. Her YouTube channel is a gold mine of videos on scrap management and other subjects. She also has one called The Afterquilt. That video illustrates the process she uses to incorporate scraps left over from the front of a quilt into a pieced back. Very useful information.

The only other quilt I've finished this year is a quickie strippy. After having been off the quilt frame for so long, I figured a little practice was in order. Plus, these strippys are mindless and fast to put together, which sometimes provides a necessary respite from more complicated piecing. I'd like to have a stack of these tops available for practicing machine quilting.
 

Besides not having as much time to quilt as I'd like, the other reason I've been slow to get things done this year is because I've been working pretty consistently on two UFOs in particular that have been exceedingly time consuming. 

I finally finished the pineapple top and got it loaded on the longarm right away, intending to complete it before quilt show registration closed in May. I stitched out two rows in a thread color that didn't work, in a pattern that didn't work. It's been sitting on the frame for weeks now because picking out two rows of stitching takes a really long time and really kills my back. I'm still chipping away at it in increments of 15 or 20 minutes, and I don't have too much more to go. But that also means that I can't get anything else quilted because I am NOT taking this thing off the frame.  

I also resurrected my Y2K millennium charm quilt--again. I blogged about this quilt at the end of October in 2014, and that's probably the last time I worked on it. I am finishing up the last three rows of triangles, then it's time to sew all the rows together and add a border. This top is NOT going back in the closet again.

Summer Color

I took a ride to the nursery this morning to get a big bag of sunflower seeds for the birdfeeders. Even though food should be plentiful this time of year, the gold finches and chickadees are still cleaning out the tube feeder every couple days. It's worth it, I suppose, because my husband and I get so much enjoyment from watching them.

We discovered other creatures are enjoying the birdfeeders as well. Last week we came home from someplace and scared a skunk away from the feeder. Two nights ago there was a huge racoon rooting around under the feeder. I suppose I'm okay with that so long as they don't get into trouble (like trying to get into the trash or something).

I also bought a couple of coneflowers for the garden. I love these flowers, and I've wanted one in the yard since we moved to Maine. What I didn't know was that they come in other colors besides purple. I bought a peachy colored one and an orange one because my husband complained that everything in the garden is either purple or yellow. They were also available in a creamy pale yellow, which was so pretty. Maybe I'll get that one next year. I'm not very handy in the garden, but coneflowers are perennials, so I expect they'll take care of themselves.

Everything seemed to be in bloom all at once at the nursery, so I took a few more photos just because everything was so beautiful. I don't know what most of these plants are called, but I labeled the few I knew.

Begonia

This was some kind of fancy violet.

Kalanchoe, I think.

Orchids

Oh, if only I could grow these magnificent plants.

Pitcher plant, a carnivorous plant.

Hexies #27 and #28

I meant to get these up on the blog Sunday morning, but I just didn't get a chance. I have enough hexagons sewn to assemble a couple of rows now, but I'd be struggling to find the time to do it. I still have plenty more hexagon blocks to make though to keep me busy.
















It is much cooler in Maine today, and we are expecting some showers this afternoon.

In the garden, my tiger lilies are almost ready to bloom. I've waited several years for this moment. Last year the chipmunks climbed up the stalks and ate all those black pods (what the heck are those anyway?) in between the leaves. In the process, they pushed the stalks down and broke them. The year before, red beetles ate every leaf on the lilies before I even knew what hit them. I looked out the window this morning, and one stalk is pushed way over. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that nothing will happen to the rest.

Garden Glories

More plants in my garden have come into bloom, including the hostas. We have lots of them that line the back walkway, and I like looking down the walkway at the sea of flower spikes. I think this plant with the purple flowers is a hollyhock. Last year I had a bunch of black-eyed Susans, but they never came up this year. I'm afraid I may have pulled them out by mistake, thinking they were weeds. It's one of the pitfalls of not being a gardener, and it's a darn good thing these plants tend to themselves.

My tomato and herb plants are also doing very well, and I'm worried they might outgrow their pots. These self-watering flower pots are really fantastic. All I have to do is just go out every four or five days and fill up the bottom of the pots with water. I have blossoms on both plants now, and we're just waiting for the tomatoes to grow. One of these is a regular tomato plant, the other will bear grape tomatoes. Have you *seen* how expensive grape tomatoes are at the grocery store?