Crazy Snow and How to Pass the Time

Saturday we got 2 1/2 inches of rain. Sunday was incredibly gorgeous - sunny and 60. Monday was 40s and drizzle. Today? Snowing heavily with a predicted 12-16 inches and winds to increase to 50 mph. If you don't like the weather, just wait a minute and it will change. So, seeing as I was snowed in today, I had a studio day. Don't get enough of those.

I'm calling this "In An Autumn Wood". It's was fun doing a fast project. It's 9 inches square. Every now and again I need instant gratification, as so many of my projects take the better part of a year.

Frosty nights!

Well, the frost was on the pumpkin this morning. Night temps have been in the low 20s for the past week. Here's a photo of Grootendorst roses hit by the frost.

And as it is getting on towards Halloween, I thought I would post a pic of my crazy quilted witch's hat. It is a Crabapple Hill pattern - that I had to tweak of course. It's actually a pillow rather than a hat to wear. I thought it was highly amusing. I've had that fabric with the eyes on it for some time, just waiting for the right project. There are two sayings embroidered along the brim: "If the hat fits" and "Member in good standing of the Black Hat Society". Now, where is my cauldron and broom?

October's Bright Blue Weather

October's Bright Blue Weather by Helen Hunt Jackson (b. 1831)

O suns and skies and clouds of June,
And flowers of June together,
Ye cannot rival for one hour
October's bright blue weather,
When all the lovely wayside things
Their white-winged seeds are sowing,
And in the fields, still green and fair
Later aftermaths are sowing;
When springs run low and on the brooks,
In idle golden freighting,
Bright leaves sink noiselessly in the bush
Of woodsd, for winter waiting;
When comrades seek sweet country haunts,
By twos and twos together,
And count like misers hour by hour,
October's bright blue weather,
O suns of skies and flowers of June,
Count all your boasts together,
Love loveth best of all the year
October's bright blue weather.

Amen, sister, Amen! We have had a glorious streak of weather here and autumn is dazzling! On Saturday, Green Spiral Herbs vended at the Schoharie Old Stone Fort History Fair. Sunday, we vended at the Catskill Ginseng and Medicinal Herb Festival. It was a terrific day out. Lots of people buying our herbal stuff and enjoying the weather and speakers at the event. A reporter from the Catskill Daily Mail interviewed me and a few others. Here is the article http://www.thedailymail.net/articles/2008/10/12/news/news3.txt We bought a few more ginseng roots to plant on the property. Monday was my birthday and DH took the day off work and took me on a lovely drive to look at the gorgeous trees. He made me dinner of bacon-wrapped scallops and spinach orzo. Delicious! We spent time in the garden, collecting more seeds (culver's root, black cohosh, Korean angelica, feverfew, meadowsweet and a few others), harvesting more herbs and doing some general fall clean up. Yesterday would have been my brother's birthday (he passed last year). I wished him a happy birthday and felt his presence with me as I gardened. Today, 125 garlic were planted. I harvested more dill and coriander seed and comfrey leaves. There is a patch of nettles that were just coming up, so I picked those as well. As long as nettles are young and tender, they are good. I started putting sand around the base of the lavender plants (we planted 500 in mounded rows earlier this year). The sand will reflect light back onto the plants and keep some weed growth down. I picked a few leeks to make potato/leek dinner for tonight. I love autumn!

Center of diamond crazy quilt

By golly, I thought I had posted the center of this quilt already.

So, here it is. The background is brown velvet. The roses are made of satin, each petal is made separately, then sewn onto the velvet. The forget-me-nots and daisies are silk ribbon. The leaves are silk chenille thread. I hand-dyed the butterfly and hummingbird lace motifs.

Diamond Block for Crazy Quilt

I'm working on a crazy quilt that will be composed of diamond shaped patches. It is based on an antique crazy quilt that I saw. It will be a combination of highly embellished crazy quilt patches and "whole" patches. Some of the whole patches will be velvet with chenille embroidery. Four of the patches will be these youths in costume. The youths are based on line drawings from Victorian booklets I have in my collection. There were no directions for making up the design, simply a line drawing. This allowed the imagination of the needleworker to take over and do whatever she felt best. In a few Victorian crazy quilts, I have seen figures that have been portrayed dimensionally. I decided to try my hand at that. So, the face was painted onto Peau du Soie fabric. Then, all the roses were embroidered with silk floss. Next, the costume was added. I think it turned out well. Now, to finish the other three youths.

Birds of a Feather

I am including more photos of my Hoffman Challenge quilt, "Birds of a Feather". Scroll down to the previous post to see an overview.

Fruitful week!

It's been over a month since I posted last. Been very busy! Our anniversary was July 5th and we took a little trip to the Robison York Herb Gardens in Ithaca, NY. I've been there many times, but not since they revitalized the gardens. What a lovely job they did. We also went to Baker's Acres nursery, which is just north of Ithaca. Tremendous gardens and wide selection of plants. I came home with many new things for the garden including a hardy gloxinia, acanthus and lavender mint.

Middleburgh, NY has started a farmer's market on Friday afternoons and we have participated as a vendor. Really good turnouts.

We had a garden club tour the gardens and it was a lovely group indeed. Lots of interested, interesting ladies. As they were leaving, a reporter from the Catskill Mountain Guide magazine showed up to do an interview about the gardens. The August issue should hit stands soon and I'm eagerly awaiting to see what was written!

Then, I was off to the Maine State Quilt to teach for a few days. Never mind driving through horrendous rainstorms, tornado warnings and hail to get there!! White knuckle driving, to say the least. On the way up, I decided to take a side trip to Avena Botanicals and Deb Soule's gardens there. Be still my heart! Deb has created a magical fairy world of plants and I was lucky enough to experience it. ~sigh~

Green Spiral Herbs was asked to set up an herbal display for the Schoharie County Fair, which is running this week. We were happy to oblige. Saturday, I will be on hand to answer herbal questions.

Wednesday, I had my interview with David Winston to see about getting accepted into his 2-year herbal study program. The answer is yes! I'm pretty excited about this. I've done other herbal studies, but am looking forward to this particular program. Hooray!

Today, I found out my crazy quilt wall hanging, "Birds of a Feather" won an Honorable Mention in the Hoffman Challenge. There were 579 entries. Considering I didn't put a single quilting stitch in this "quilt", I think I did well. It is entirely hand pieced and hand embellished/embroidered.