T Stands for The Past Week's Highlights

 Hello and happy T day. 

I hope everyone had a great past week. It ended up being a fairly busy and productive week for me. I managed to get a few things on my to do list accomplished, walked with my group one morning, and  I actually went out to lunch one day last week (wow). Well it was take out eaten in my car. I had allergy shots one morning, and the doctor's office is near my husband's office. So I called him when I got out, and he was having a bad day, so I drove over, picked him up and we went and had take out burger's from 5 Guys. 

I like the color reflections in the aluminum foil wrapping of my burger.  The bad thing is now my car smells like burgers-ha ha! Not  an exciting lunch, but fun to hang out with the hubby a bit during the work day.

This past weekend was very cold with winds up to 40 mph. With the winds it felt close to zero (degrees F or close to -18 degrees C).  I had to pull out my new heavy duty arctic winter coat which I bought on markdown last summer and had hoped I could keep it in the bag all winter.  No such luck. I felt bad for the birds and the empty feeders so I ventured out into the cold to fill them.

Good thing we had the wood stove going inside. My daughter was home Saturday. She and I spent the day at the table near the heat working on a puzzle.

This photo is my ticket to T day as you can see my Diet Coke as well as our snack when we got frustrated with how the puzzle was going. 

Stop by Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog to see what the T gng has been doing. 

This puzzle was really hard, or maybe it is just that I am not very good at puzzles.

We did manage to finish it.

Or at least the best we could as a couple of pieces went missing between start and finish. 

The puzzle board underneath is something my husband made for me many years ago.

I also started sewing my wall quilt together. I've been working backwards  and cut a bunch of triangles out of my hand dyed fabric. I finally got around to working on it (nice since my sewing machine is near the woodstove), and I sewed the triangles together to make diamonds, and then I laid the diamonds out on my bed to get an arrangement I liked.

Sorry, it's a bit hard to see on my plaid duvet cover.

I then pinned these triangles and went off to sew them together. Now I need to cut some more triangles to square off the sides. 

My biggest issue is that I am not good a getting all my triangles sewn to be the same size, even though they started off the same size. And even though I made my stitches the same size. I'm just not good at being exact, but oh well. That's why I will never be a traditional quilter.

I was excited because after my burger lunch last week I stopped at Joann's fabric to get some more white thread to sew these pieces. I found a piece of batting in the remnant bin. Even better all remnants were on sale for 75% off, so I got a big piece (about four times the size I need) for under $4.00. Thread was also buy 3, get 2 free, so I was able to stock up on that too. I haven't visited Joann's Fabric in months, and my quick visit felt like a big outing.  Smile.

More to come with this project. 

The other good news is my mom got her first vaccine last week with no side effects, and my husband is getting his this week.  It will probably be several months before my turn, but once he gets his second shot at least it will take a bit of worry off of me.

That's all for me on this T day. Hope yours is a good one.

Thanks for visiting. 

All the Leaves Are Brown

Happy Friday everyone! It's another nice day here in New Hampshire. After a very cold and windy start to the week, we've warmed back up like early autumn. You've got to love that!

You may think the pieces of cloth in the photo above just look like messy rags, but I dyed some more  strips of on old  white sheet with fallen leaves,  using alum and rusty water from my outside tap. I think I got some pretty good leaf images and some nice yellow and brown colors. These are sheets are hanging to dry. 

My plan is to cut this fabric down and use it with bits of my other fabric to make a wall sized quilt. I think some yellow, brown or even some printed purchased  fabric will work well with my dyed fabric.

More to come with that at a later date. 

It is really starting to look barren and like late autumn here, even with the warmer temperatures. The beautiful colors we had are about gone.

Last Sunday I started some yard clean up. I didn't rake the driveway as I was waiting for all the oak trees to drop their leaves.  The good news is the wind we had early in the week blew all these leaves into the woods. Hurrah for that!

It was cold enough  last weekend we even had some ice over the water in the bird bath.

We also had our first hard frost.

My hydrangea leaves were gone after this frost.

I think the colors and textures are really interesting on these frost hit leaves though.

The other morning we had a dusting of snow. 

The lines are the bird prints as this is next to my bird feeders.

Last Sunday we closed up the screen porch, except we left the doors uncovered still. All the yard ornaments, most of the chairs, and even my birdbath got tucked away inside for the winter.  We left the doors open and one chair out for me for another week or 2. Then the chair goes in and the doors will be covered also.

I also cut back the stems in  my garden.  The photo below is the fence that is hopefully being painted today. I wrote this post yesterday so I can't say exactly when we are painting. The hubby is taking today off so we can get this job, and the rest of the outside winterizing clean up done. Our temperatures have substantially warmed back up to painting warmth so the plan is to paint either today or over the weekend. For me that also means (hopefully) getting some of the leaves raked into the woods.

The fence does look better even without fresh paint since my husband powerwashed it a couple of weekends back. Parts of it are down to bare wood though, so painting must be done.

 

Now  I that I  have to rake,  I hope the wind doesn't return.

I am linking up these photos to Art Everyday Month.

Have a great start to your weekend.

Bittersweet

Hi everyone.  It's almost time to go back to school. The last day of vacation is always a weird day. Excitement for the new year, sadness my down time if over, ready to see my co-worker friends on a more regular basis, wondering what this years kids will be like, all kinds of thoughts running through my head. I'm sure those of you who teach or have taught know what I am saying.

But no complaints about my summer break.

I thought I would share a day I did some dyeing a few weeks back. Nothing fancy, just some purchased dye and some white sheeting, and me twisting the strips into all kinds of contorted rolls and rubber banded designs.

 I soaked the strips in soda ash first and I will say I was happy with the color results. When dried and rinsed they still seemed pretty bright.

 But I have had better results wrapping and tying with strings or rubber bands.

 Some of my rolled forms took the color all the way through better than others.

Now I need to decide what I want to do with these. 

But I am sure I will figure that out.

Have a great day everyone, and thanks for visiting my blog.