Sunrise

 Sunrise from my back door 29 December 2020. The temperature was 28F 

Celtic

 I finished this quilt that had been sitting around for a few years. It was a round robin (but I took off a couple of layers to make it smaller.

Autumn

                           You know it's Fall when the spiders start building a lot of webs!!
 

And then the apples ripen

So I can make lots of apple pies.

Crystal Blue

 The name of this quilt is Crystal Blue. I finished it in August after having pieced it several years ago mainly because I began quilting it with a long arm but the back got all tangled and I had to take out all the stitches. Finally quilted it with my regular machine. The quilting is free motion feathers.

Baltimore Memories

 This quilt top was finished 6 years ago but it took me until now to decide how to quilt it and actually sew.

When I lived near Baltimore, in Columbia, Maryland, I wanted to do a Baltimore album quilt but never found a pattern that I liked. After I moved to Oregon, I decided that I wanted to make it with birds and flowers that reminded me of my time in Columbia. i found a few patterns in books and others I designed myself.

Narure's bounty

Blackberries in season. So I made blackberry brandy.

Pears almost rip, too.

 

Quail

 Foggy morning and the resident quail came for a visit.

July

This is a flimsy (quilt top) that I just finished. It was a June challenge from Pamelaquilts.com that gave us one block a day to make. Pamela is a member of the local quilt guild, an Island Batik Ambassador, and creates patterns.

Crocosmia lucifer, a beautiful flower in our                                                                               yard.

Ring of Time

I finally did it! This is the book that I have been writing for....years. It is a fantasy about a young girl who is the apprentice to a wizard. When the wizard disappears, she is left to finish her training alone and also do a quest. This is about that quest. She meets several people (and others) along the way.

If you want to read the book it is available on Amazon Kindle (there are several books with this title, so type in my name if you cannot find it). It is available in paperback, also from Amazon.

Double wedding ring star quilt

                                    Just finished this quilt. Took me about 6 months to do it

                                                 Quilting took a few weeks. Here is a detail.

deck garden

Things are blooming on my deck

And Merlin is enjoying some sunshine -
Morning nap                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       
Afternoon nap

Slough

I took this picture of Catching Slough near my house a few years ago on a morning walk. Thought I had lost the photo when my computer crashed but found a hard copy yesterday when I cleaned out a cabinet. If you look real close, there is an egret on the right tip of land jutting out into the water.

pine needle basket #3

Just finished this pine needle basket. I tried a different stitch and it was working until I got further apart with the stitches. The needles began sticking out more and more. So I changed stitches to an X. Parts of it look better than others, but I really like the base that I found online.

Pine needle bowl

I just finished my second pine needle basket - I think it is really a bowl. Read in a booklet that one could finish them with Mod Podge, so I tried it. REALLY SMELLY!!!! But it made the bowl very sturdy. Now all I need to do is figure out how to make them perfectly round.

wedding ring quilt

Getting ready to do some quilting.

Didn't work ....have to take my machine in to be fixed :(

Now I find out it was the thread-cannot use cotton to do free motion quilting, have to use polyester.

2015 project

In 2015, I made this soft book with the contributions from a few friends. We made a list of things and each person took a few and made blocks. I filled in some things to add and turned it into a book rather than a quilt.

Where I've been
What I like
Things I've done

1949 to 1969- names of places I lived (towns, streets)

Pansies and cats

Photography
1970's- 1980's - places (towns, streets)

Aikido
I like to read SiFi and fantasy

Chocolate
Marriage

Artists I like
Bellydancing (did it for a few years)

Italy (Lived there for a year)
Redwoods, California poppies

Massage therapist
spinning, weaving, crochet

Quilting and Sewing

1990's onward (countries, states)
genealogy

Acupuncture
Who contributed

Memories

Memories of nature

Age 5: Lindsey, California - Living in a house in the middle of an orange orchard with winter smudge pots.

Age 8: San Jose, California - Climbing my grandmother’s walnut tree and (Santa Cruz mountains) summer with a grandparents in the redwoods, a swing hung between two giant redwood trees, mornings in an open kitchen draped with a tarp whenever it rained. 
Age 15: San Jose, California - Walking to school under old gnarled live oaks that caused large cracks in the sidewalks. Picking up fallen figs in our backyard, fallen almonds at grandparents, eating grapes and avocado’s from grandparents’ yard.

Age 20: Los Angeles, California - Trying to learn to meditate in college at UCLA under some pine trees while people commented as they walked past me.

Age 27: Different trees, landscapes, ice, as we drive across country for the first time heading for Florida.

 Age 30: Formia, Italy - Orchard of olive trees surrounding the apartment buildings with Vesuvius and Ishcia in the distance.

 Age 35: Chesapeake, Virginia - Learning Ikebana with flowers from the yard and fallen branches. The Great Dismal Swamp, mosquitoes and snakes in the yard. Azaleas and  FIREFLIES!!!!

Age 48: Columbia, Maryland - Making a diary of the seasonal changes – light green leaves appear turning darker then into yellow, orange and red before falling to the ground. How the color raises from bottom to top and then down.

Age 56: Columbia, Maryland - The leaves falling just before our move and glad I did not have to rake again.

Age 63: Coos bay, Oregon - Walking the long driveway in different seasons. Watching as the trees sway in the wind and wondering which of the fragile alders’ widow makers will fall in the next big storm.

Age 70: Remembering the smell of the redwoods and watching the ones we planted grow taller each year. Noticing how quickly the seasons change and the years go by…

Fog

FOG

Fragile strands rise from the sea

Reflecting the union of earth and sky

The delicate touch, a shroud of mist

Crawling through trees, alder and fir

Around all hills and not very high

It follows the waterways wherever they go

Dew collects on nets of silk

Sparkling brightly from as the sun rises high

The blanket recoils in the heat of the day

The haze dissipates and fades away

Just so it can come another day

Art

Two of my kitties. Drawings with colored pencil.

Watercolor painting. I need to frame it.

Pine needle basket

At Heritage Textile guild meeting last Saturday, we made pine needle baskets - or at least began them. I finished mine last evening. It has an agate for the base that was within an acrylic envelope to protect it.

Kumihumo

Kumihumo or Japanese braiding. I made a necklace chain (left) and several key chains. The key chains were in a craft fair last December.

The bag (below) I spun the yarn from wool, crocheted the bag and did kumihumo for the strap. I was not particularly happy with the strap, it stretches too much. I added some thin sparkly colored thread for part of the bag to add interest. The bead used as a closure is dichroic glass.

Three art quilts

I did a small quilt as a sampler doing fabric origami using mostly Stonehenge fabrics by Northcutt. I put a button in the center of most of them rather than sewing that down. 

This was a kit but I changed a few of the fabrics. I did the quilting with monofilament so that it would not interfere with the colors of fabric.

This quilt is titled: 1+2=Qi. It is a reference to the Chinese theory that 1 is the Tao, 2 is yin and yang or opposites, and 3 is movement between the opposites (energy). And I like dragons;) I beaded the two circular centers of the yin/yang symbol.