Rayen

Happy Halloween!

This is the last stitch I made hand-quilting the Happiness quilt. I'll be spending Halloween binding it in between handing out candy to the kids. I really love this quilt. It came out even prettier than I thought it would, and definitely lived up to its name. I especially appreciate how it got me through Hurricane Ian and the aftermath. It was almost impossible to get a shot of the stitching on the back, so here's a darkened version. It's much whiter than this. :)

I've been looking for some small, low-sugar fall desserts for me and my guy, and decided to try making this recipe for an apple tart. I tweaked the recipe a bit by skipping the egg wash of the pastry and one tablespoon of white sugar, and I used sugarfree apricot preserves for the glaze. It came out very good and light, and reminded me a lot of apple danish.

Since the weather has finally grown cooler my guy and I went to the big lake near our home to walk. Although we walk a lot with the dogs this is just for us. This time of year the sunsets become spectacular, and when the water is calm like this it's like being part of the sky. There is no better way to exercise while filling yourself with beauty.

As promised, here are pics of the rest of my latest order from Fabscrap. Let's start with the green scrap pack. Green happens to be my favorite color, and I wasn't disappointed in the variety of shades, patterns and fabrics I got in this pack. I use green most often in my art quilts, so I expect a lot of these will go into some future projects. The purple scrap pack had plenty of fun fabrics in it, including some wonderful patterned sheer pieces. Got another part of a sleeve in this pile. Eventually I may have enough garment pieces to make a jacket. :) Also included was a gorgeous piece of burnout velvet in a rose pattern. That I'm saving for the next crazy quilt project. The cotton multi scrap pack also didn't disappoint. I got a few trimmed garment sections, lovely flannels and even some denim. As with the lace the quality and variety really impressed me. So what am I planning to do with all this rescued fabric? Stay tu

I made another order from Fabscrap, this time for scrap packs of lace, green fabric, purple fabric, and multi cotton. Today I'll show you just the lace pile. I was really bowled over at the colors and variety of lace I received. I've always wanted to make a lace quilt of my own design, but I rarely use lace except for crazy quilting, so I never acquired enough to make a try. Now I can. All the pieces are very generous, and the patterns are all different. The quality is insanely wonderful. Some of the pieces are intricate and have patterns I've never before seen. Having all these colors and patterns to work with is so amazing. The quality of the entire pile is like new. I never expected the lace to be this nice, and once more I'm dismayed that this fabric might otherwise be in a landfull. Since lace tends to be expensive, to buy even 1/8 yards of this in all these colors would cost major $$$. Stop in tomorrow and I'll show you pics o

Making some good progress on the Happiness quilt; about half of the patchwork handquilted now. I really like these colors. As in really, really like them. I like the simplicty of the peach thread on the white backing fabric. I'm going to try to finish this by the end of October.

As of October 13th I finished the fifth and final phase in my latest project for work. Here's the whole project on paper (a bit dishevelled after I jostled the pile around during Hurrican Ian.) I began this on January 23rd of this year, so it took 264 days from start to finish. This new split morning/evening work schedule is really working well for me, I think.

The high prices at the supermarket are getting even higher here, so we took a trip out to our favorite local farm to see if we could manage more for our dollar there. We also wanted to give some support to our local growers, as they took a hard hit from Hurricane Ian. It's pumpkin season, of course, and they had lots (I really wish I liked pumpkin, but sadly no.) I have peppers in the freezer from the summer garden, or I would have grabbed these. I opted for some sweet potatoes and red onions, and a big bag of corn on the cob. It's actually more than we can eat, but I'm going to blanche half the corn and freeze it. The owners always do a nice display with this old wagon; in the summer they load it up with watermelon. Alas, autumn is here. I was also happy to find a bottle of raw honey from a local beekeeper for sale. If you can support your local growers, please do.

My favorite person now works on a very small island and commutes there every day by boat. This is one of the views from her workplace. The university set up a lab for her, too, which is small but has everything she needs for her work and teaching her students. Among other things she will be identifying invasive species and helping others come up with solutions to prevent them from causing problems. I could not go to college because my parents didn't have the means to financially support me, and refused to cosign a loan. My guy never finished high school. We both instead went into the military, which helped us do very well in life. We still knew how important education is. That's why we committed our finances to assure this amazing woman could go to college and never have to take out loans. Best investment ever.

As she has to pack her lunch for work (no restaurants or takeout on the little island where she works) my favorite person went food shopping, and promptly got a big dose of sticker shock. For the small amount of food you see here she paid $100.49. Most of it she said was on sale, too. I checked the receipt (she sent a snap of it)and just the two rolls of paper towels were $9.99. Last week I paid $13.00 for twelve rolls of paper towels and groused about it. I will now shut up. :) Living in a place where most of the commodities we take for granted have to be imported means paying a lot more for them, I guess. I see a lot of banana and cereal breakfasts and PB & J lunches in her immediate future.

Last night I finished hand-quilting the first row of patchwork on my latest quilt. I'm trying to think of a name for it that has nothing to do with hurricanes because I never care to memorialize storms that way. The thread I chose looks pretty with all the different fabrics, so I think that was a good call. I really like working on this quilt because it feels joyful and yet so calming. Maybe I'll call it Happiness.

Hurricane Ian did a bit of damage to the garden, mostly shredding our infant pole beans and flattening the corn. Yet again I was surprised at how much survived the storm intact. Before the hurricane we put all of our plants in containers inside the garage, like this pepper we salvaged from the summer garden. The watermelon and our herbs likewise hunkered down with us. We lost one baby pepper from this plant, but the rest are doing fine. I think it will take a nuclear bomb to bother the cucumber vines, which are flowering now. Our pole beans were only a couple of weeks old, and their fragile leaves ended up completely shredded, so we removed the remains and planted new. Happily it looks like the corn plants are going to make it.

My second order from Fabscrap arrived, and it's three pounds of the neatest scrap fabric I've ever seen. I ordered three different packs this time, which are from left to right: Cotton Multi, Neutrals, and Blue. Let's start with pics of the Cotton Multi pile. If you like variety and want cotton this is definitely a good buy. Lots of nice-size pieces, all very clean and in new condition. Some pieces have a few wrinkles, some thread bits, label bits and sticky tape, but that's all easy enough to deal with when I want to use them. I'm also getting a better sense of what these fabrics were likely used for (mostly garments) before they were sent for recycling. The quality is so amazing it kind of hurts to think these scraps might have otherwise ended up in a landfill. I got part of a sleeve in this pack, as you can see at the bottom right of this pic. That's so neat. The neutrals pack was mostly blacks and grays, but I got a couple pieces