Late Fall Project

It was really warm today, for the end of November.  Warm and sunny and no wind!  I took advantage of this beautiful day and did a late fall yard, or rather bee garden project.  

All summer I have been looking at a spot in the bee garden to build a fire pit.  I have changed my mind about that and we are now planning to build a pit in the trees in our pasture.  That project will have to wait until spring.  But today, I decided to build a small patio in the bee garden, with some left over bricks.  I put the small wood chairs that we usually have on our east porch on this little patio and I moved the lard pot near the patio for small, two person fires.

The fruits of my labor were rewarded as the sun moved lower in the sky and we sat in our chairs, on the little patio, with a small fire burning in the lard pot, a glass of wine, and plate of tasty appetizers.  And a cute little dog for extra company!

The beginning....choosing the site.

I used these left over bricks for the patio.  I've been moving these bricks around for the last 15 years, waiting for the right project to use them.

About half way finished......

and completion  

OK, this is staged because we used our everyday porch quilts once we actually sat down a few hours later.  These are a couple porch quilts that I made several years ago.  The fabric is Christmas themed but wild colors.  Definitely out of my box!  A friend gave the fabrics to me as a joke, knowing full well that I was going to struggle, but in the end, these two little quilts turned out kinda fun.

From this photo it looks like Baxter is interested in the fire, but he's really interested in the cheese on my plate.

September memories

 Here are a few photos from late September and mid-October.

My honey bees spent most of September and October stocking up for winter with sugar syrup fed in this old school lunch tray!

Baxter!  Such a regal pose.

Delicata squash harvest.  This is our favorite winter squash.  Good thing!!!

Fall flower bed clean up.  Do you think I can get any more in my wheel barrow?

Early fall cold snap.  

Snow, ice and roses blooming!

Fall Quilt Retreat

 This past weekend I took time to indulge in a fall quilt retreat.  This is the usual time for our Stitchin' Chicks Retreat in the barn.  That couldn't happen this year because, well.....2020, but I was missing it.  Nan set up a Zooming chicks check in and get together for Sunday at 4pm.  I decided that would be the conclusion of my retreat, which my friend Chemyn called a me-treat!  So, Friday morning at 10am, my me-treat began.  

Here are the projects that I worked on over the weekend.

This past spring I started piecing a quilt for Ryan James.  Farming, yard and garden work got in the way of completion.  With those three off the to do list for now, I turned my focus back to this quilt.

Building the pieced blocks

More building.....

I decided it needed to be bigger than I originally planned.  This is what I thought I could do to enlarge.  

But the plain block was overpowering the pieced block.

So I decided to try a nine patch and I liked it a lot better.

Still liking the nine patch and now thinking about what to do about a border.

All through this process, Reynald, aka Color Man was consulting.  In the end, he chose a narrow green border and I will also bind it in the green. Now it's off to the quilter. 

I worked on a couple other projects, off and on throughout the weekend as well.

This snowman themed cross stitch has been going on for awhile.  I'm not really sure why I started it, but I did and now I'm too far along not to finish.  There's one more snowman and one more tree.  The two snowmen that you see, need to be filled in.

And of course there are the never ending wool applique projects.  I have fall and winter finished.  Closing in on this one and then of course there is spring.  

I really missed my fellow chicks in the barn, and it was so good to see some of them on Zoom last night.  Fingers crossed that by this spring we will be able to gather in person.  In the meantime, I had such a fun me-treat I think I will do it again before winter is over, maybe even a couple times!  

Back By Popular Demand

I've taken a hiatus from blogging.  I'm not really sure why.  I wondered if my posts were becoming redundant.  However, just in the last three days, more than one person has contacted me to ask why I have not been posting!  I suppose I will leave it up to you to decide upon redundancy!  

We've had some spectacular sunrises and sunsets this fall.  Following are a few images of the beauty we are so fortunate to experience.

This one was so pretty even Baxter stopped to look!

Sunrise

Sunset