Letters, Leaders & Enders

Here's a shot of our maples in the late day sun last week. It was windy, which is why it's a little blurry. This week it's been either sunny and windy, or dark and rainy, so this is the best I've been able to do. This year their colour has been the best ever, which I think is partly due to the dry summer. But mainly I think it's because they are getting a lot more light since we cut down the ash trees that were damaged in the 2013 ice storm.

The moon was up early too:

Yesterday it was really dark all day, so I was happy to be inside and working on my next batch of improv letters:

I was going to put them together today, but here I am blogging instead, so it may not happen!

I also decided this week to see if I can add a leaders & enders project into the mix. Bonnie Hunter has a good description of the process here. I've avoided an L&E project up until now, because I didn't want to sacrifice the quality of my main piece by being distracted by a second project. But with all the short seams in this project (and also in My Country House), I've been using up a lot of thread anchors, so I thought I would try it.

For about an hour I wondered which new project I could start that would be appropriate, until I remembered my hourglass quilt! I ran out of steam on this project in early 2014, because it is super boring. But, boring is perfect for an L&E project, because I don't want to have to think about it at all.

I still need at least 300 more hourglasses, and all the fabrics are already cut and marked. I set up the rest of my lights and darks, right sides together, and piled them up:

I don't know how many are in there, but it is 4.5" tall!

So, can I improv and sew leaders and enders at the same time? Yes! In fact, with all the small fiddly seams on these letters, it was a relief to put in an hourglass set and just rip down the middle of that. Somehow it feels more balanced. At the end of the day I had the first two seams done...

...on 23 hourglass sets (which will be 46 hourglass blocks). It feels really good to get that project moving again. Hopefully this will be a painless way to eat up a lot of the preliminary work on this project.

I admit I've been having one of those "what was I thinking?" moments, about my decision to make this a queen-size quilt. Sure, the hourglasses are easy to make, but I really didn't think much about how long it would take to sew them all together as well. Now I'm starting to think about that too! Hopefully I can do at least some of that in L&E fashion as well. I'll keep you posted!

DitG Pink Birdhouse

Here's the second birdhouse stitchery from Leanne Beasley's stitchery quilt, Down in the Garden. Now that it is summer it so nice to be able to take things out and photograph them in the sunshine. What a difference!

Although it is not this obvious in real life, you can see in the photo above that the green Pigma micron pen that I used to mark the stitching lines did run a bit when it was painted over with the pale yellow Tsukineko ink. I have read complaints that the blue Pigma pen tends to run as well. I assumed that there was some chemical in the Tsukineko ink that was to blame, but maybe it is just the blue Pigma ink that is unstable. Anyway, I don't mind it here, I think it adds to the atmosphere a bit.

The flowers are simple chain stitch lazy daisies with long anchoring stitches, and the buds are also short, round detached chain stitches.

I really like the curling vines on these birdhouses. It's a lot of flowers! But I made a push last night so I could get it in just under the wire for WIP Wednesday at The Needle and Thread Network. Why? Because this week will be Monika Kinner-Whalen's last week running it, and next week, I have agreed to take over! Yes, another Monica. I am excited, because I have a lot of ideas for it.

Out in the backyard, our young lilac is putting on its best show so far:

And, while I was out there taking photos, this butterfly came to visit:

Lucky shot! Except for the blog name (and resize), the photo is completely unedited. Don't you love that combination of lilac and sky blue?

Early Crocus

Here're some shots of our first flowers, taken on Saturday. These early crocus are half the size of regular crocus, and they are about a week later than normal. You can see the grass is still mostly dead, but there are some new shoots showing up in the next photo:

No, not many!

It seems like spring photos are all around the blogosphere this week. Wanda in Illinois has forsythia blooming already -- we have maybe another week before we see that here by the lake, but they may be blooming in other warmer parts of the city. Daphne in Victoria has full grown tulips, but Victoria had cherry blossoms even before they did in Japan. Rebecca gets the prize -- it is still snowing in Alaska. Although, Christine tells us it can snow at Easter in Greece too!

As you can see, our snowdrops are still holding on. This week will be the first week where every day will be above 10 C (50 F), so they'll be gone soon. With luck, we'll see the full size crocus by the end of the week. Right now though, this is all we have:

Ah, spring!

A Cold Winter Coming?

Here's the Mountain Ash outside our house. I have never seen it so full of berries! The branches are actually bent under the weight. Traditional wisdom would say that this is a sign of a long, cold winter coming. What do you think?

Here in the Northeast we had a couple of hot weeks in early July, but late July and August so far have been unusually cool. Personally, I've loved it! But I do have a threshold for how much snow is too much snow, so I have some concerns, too, lol.

At least there is a good meal here for all the migrating robins and other birds, once they start to travel. Anyway, a stitching post is up next!

Panda Diplomacy

Our Prime Minister Stephen Harper was at the airport today to greet the giant pandas that are beginning their visit from China. He is taking some heat in the press, because, you know, he has other important stuff going on. But the pandas are an important diplomatic token these days, so it is beneficial to our relationship with China to treat them well. It is certainly better than selling China all our future oil production... oops, too late!

All right, I'm off my soap box, because really I just wanted a chance to dust off my photos from the pandas' last visit in 1985. Are the pandas an exciting zoo exhibit? Judge for yourself:

I recall that there was quite a while between each of these photos. I think the series says it all. :)

Hopefully I'll be sewing again soon!

Happy Stitchy New Year

New Year's has taken me a bit by surprise - I've been so preoccupied by basting my nine patch. That's done! More tomorrow on that.

I did manage to run out to the backyard and take a couple of photos. The snow is deeper than my ankle boots, so I got a bit wet! The light and shadow in this photo of our flower pots make it look like the north pole, rather than just Toronto:

The hydrangea is always photogenic. I love how the two separate snowfalls have layered to give the flower heads pointy hats:

As far as last year's New Year's resolutions go, I am zero for three. Still no finished quilt, after at least five years of resolving to finish one! This year though, I am so sure I will finish at least these two that are basted that I am not even going to make a formal resolution.

Sedona Star is also not finished, as I already discussed. I didn't say, though, how valuable just making the commitment was. Maybe it was still too big a project even for a very determined novice, but it has required me to improve many of my skills, including paper piecing, which I now love!

My unplugged Sabbaths lasted until March. Now, rather than taking a whole day, I am giving myself more "time outs" when I need them through the week. It seems to be working, so that was a valuable exercise too.

Intentions for 2013

1. Learn hand quilting
2. Hand quilt one project

Plus there are a few UFOs that are ready to drop that I would like to finish by spring:

• Edward's quilt
• Nine patch quilt
• Yoyos quilt
• Mom's chickens quilt
• Collector quilt
• Celtic Spring cross stitch

The chickens and the yoyos are both slated for hand quilting, so maybe I won't finish them by spring, but at least I'll make a start. After the past year, Collector is feeling extremely easy, so I want to at least get the flimsy done by spring. Depending on how it goes, I may hand quilt that one too.

Right now, though, I am laser-focused on getting these two basted quilts quilted. Starting tomorrow!

Happy stitchy new year!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to all my fellow Canadians!  I am looking forward to some pecan pumpkin pie later today.  :)

This is our hydrangea, which I always think looks best in the fall.  It first blooms a bubblegum pink, then loses all it's colour, and then these gorgeous deep tones develop.

Now that I've finished Clara, I've allowed myself to start a new project, even though the nine patch flimsy is not quite done yet.  It's another English Paper Piecing project.  Stay tuned!

Fall Colours

In Japan they have started their Koyo reports, so I thought it would be fun to do the same for around here.  It is still a little early for fall colours in Southern Ontario, but I did get some nice shots.  Last weekend my mom and I drove up Lakeridge Road, past Hy-Hope Farm, around to Uxbridge, and then back home.

Some of my favourite shots are always of the ditches beside the road:

In the foreground are the purple fall asters, with goldenrod and sumac bushes further back.  I always think these would be a great colourway for a Fair Isle sweater in the style of Alice Starmore!

The sumac puts on a consistent show every year...

...and the purple asters and goldenrod are a nice contrast on their own too:

Even the new invasive grasses have their charm:

It was difficult to find more than a single tree here and there that had changed colour.  This hillside by Dagmar ski resort looked great in the sun:

I must admit that the above photo has been enhanced somewhat to get the colours to pop, because by the time I got the car stopped and the camera out, the sky was doing this:

Hy-Hope Farm on Lakeridge Road was busy.

Out front were many photogenic bushels of produce from the fall harvest:

Inside we bought a couple of butter tarts and some apple pie for later.  Their pie has always been good, but this time the crust was particularly nice, crisp and flaky.

Then we continued around up to Uxbridge.  I've been nostalgic recently for some small town Ontario scenery after watching The Cry of the Owl on tv, which was filmed nearby in Port Perry.  Uxbridge is very typical too:

You can click any of the photos to see them larger.  Uxbridge supports both a good knitting shop, On the Lamb on the main road, and a great quilting shop, the Quilters Cupboard, on the edge of town.  It was my first time at the Quilters Cupboard, and I was very impressed with the selection, especially of small prints and Civil War reproductions, which I have been hankering for recently.  I have been realizing that my stash has too many large prints!  Unfortunately there was a shop hop going on when we were there, so the place was packed.  But it will definitely be worth the drive to go back.

It will still be a couple of weeks before our own maples change colour, so it was nice to get a preview.  A great day!

Unwelcome Visitor

Not ten minutes after my last post, we noticed this guy in our backyard:

Yes, it's a skunk.  We smell them from time to time in the evening, and run around closing all the windows, but a daylight sighting is unusual.  We think this one is still young.

Our birdbath is quite a popular watering hole.  It is often stuffed to the brim with migrating birds in the spring and fall.  The sparrows especially like to all pile in at once.  Sometimes I think it would be a great location for a webcam!

And sometimes we have take the bad along with the good.  I suppose all God's creatures have some (inscrutable) role to play!

Back to Normal, Hopefully!

I just have a little point-and-shoot camera, it's the HP Photosmart R817, but it certainly takes great macro shots!  This is a new Black-Eyed Susan that we have in our garden.  It was planted two years ago, and this is the first time it has bloomed.  But boy, has it bloomed!

I think these late summer flowers are my favourites.  I'd love to get some cosmos too, but I think our yard is too shady for them.  We only get sun at the very end of the day.  It is great light for photos, though.

Our basement is pretty much sorted, now.  It is actually better than it was before, because we took out some old built-ins, and now I have more room for my stash!

I've also finished the new website for my quilt guild Rouge Valley.  Check it out here.  I'm trying to stop tinkering with it now, and get back to this blog on a more regular basis.  It was a fun project, though.  I realized yesterday that at least with the website done, I can feel that I accomplished something over the summer, given that I haven't been able to quilt at all.  My online friend Anna Maria Salehar calls the work on her website "electronic embroidery," so maybe my work on the guild website has been "electronic quilting."  ;)

It is certainly nice to be back to normal, anyway!

Intermission

Breaking my iron on Sunday has really thrown me for a loop!  I have done no sewing of any kind since it happened.  It is ridiculous, because the vast majority of my projects don't require the iron.  But I guess I was finally so focused on Sedona Star that now that it is on hold (again, yes, again), I am having a hard time changing direction.

Mother Nature, however, is having no problem changing direction.  Spring is here weeks early, and as you can see, the evidence is everywhere!

The only thing that feels appropriate for me to do right now is cleaning and organizing, so I've been sorting books and fabrics.  Both are badly needed activities!  Hopefully, at some point during all that my next step will become clear.  :)

All Yoyos, All the Time

They were predicting a big storm for us this morning, but when we woke up it was all clear.  A few hours later, though, it looks like this:

Last gasp of winter - hopefully!

No lake view today!  But wet snow like this is pretty photogenic, I think:

For me, it doesn't matter what the weather is like, because it's all yoyos inside:

This is all I've been doing for days.  I don't know why these are so obsessive, but I finally realized that if I ever want to do anything else I'm going to have to finish these first.  There are 38 strips, and I only have 6 or 7 left.

My plan now is to get this flimsy done, and the nine patch, in addition to Edward's quilt which is already ready for quilting, so that I can set up my sewing area for quilting and do all three at once.

Before I finish the nine patch, though, I really am going to get started on Sedona Star.  It's been on my calendar twice already, but then something else comes up and I end up sewing yoyos again.  I've printed the Month 1 templates on the Ricky Tims' Stable Stuff.  They look ok, but printing them one page at a time, as the instructions recommend, was a big pain in the neck.  I don't anticipate any problem with the piecing though, so I think that once I get started they will go quickly.  Month 1 will, anyway, I am a little concerned about Month 2, but one step at a time!