Here are two sets of place mats I made for my Mother for Christmas. One set is made from 4 different batik fabrics, the other four are just simple cottons. I like the batik ones best. Guessing which ones she will like is a crap shoot. Both coordinate well with her dishes, I used her sugar bowl for my sample.

I have no idea why this picture came out sideways, I didn't take it like that, and I couldn't figure out how to rotate it to make it correct.

I also made a bag for my Mother for Christmas. It's for carrying her library books to and from the library. The fabric is like a light weight canvas (duck) fabric. The fabric was white and I dyed it a pretty teal and added a brown woven strap. I found a Celtic knot design on-line, traced it and drew it on with a fabric paint pen. The center circle is a batik, I hope it isn't too New Agey for her. The bag is 13" x 11" x 6". ( I don't know way this paragraph is blue and underlined, it was not intentional. I have sooo much trouble every time I blog. The whole thing seems to have a mind of it's own, and it just pulls my along for the ride.)

Quail !
We have had a sweet covey of about a dozen quail scurrying around the yard for the past week or so. It is so cute to see them running from one place to another as if they are on a very important mission.

During my recent trip to see Janice, David and Rosie, I enlisted Janice in one of my "Lucy" ideas. I know she likes abstract impressionist paintings, soooooo, I thought wouldn't it be fun to have her do her take on a Jackson Pollock painting on a piece of fabric and I would make a tote bag out of it for her. I had some duck cloth fabric (light weight canvas) someone had given me almost 20 years ago. I really like how both her painting and the tote bag came out. The tote is over sized so she can use it to carry her painting/drawing supplies to school or wherever. Click on the photo to see the painting up close.

Spuds!

Here is our Potato harvest for this year. Two reds, two whites and two different fingerlings. I bought two packages of fingerlings a couple of years ago, each package contained about 6-7 tubers. I plant the unusable, too small, soft, stating to grow, tubers each year. This year we harvested a very big crop. Yum!


Jack-o-Lanterns

Jim and I did carved pumpkins this year. can you guess whose is whose?

These are my grandchildren Addy (3) and Riven (1.5). Addy is wearing her new craft/apron I made. Riven is so angelic. They love having Grammie here, can't wait to see their Great Auntie ;-)

I made Jodi (my partner in crime at the Animal Shelter) and I new aprons for dog walking. They have 3 pockets, one for key card and ink pen, one for leash (me) or cigarettes (Jodi), and one for the poop bags. The aprons are longer and wider than my first attempt, the pockets are deeper and the tie strings are longer. Mine is the brown one with yellow/white dogs. I gave hers to her before I took a photo so all I have to show is a left over piece of the blue fabric with cute dogs. The back ground fabric on both are the same, paw prints.

This is a Craft smock/apron I made for Addy. Her 3rd birthday is August 10th. I picked out the main fabric, which is so cute, but I had to have someone at the fabric store help me pick out the pink tone on tone fabric for the pocket. Choosing fabric is not my strong point. If she gets paints, glue or anything else on herself maybe it won't show too much. The pattern only had four pieces and it really wasn't too difficult, but the double fold bias tape was very time consuming. every couple of inches I had to pin, the fabric kept trying to slip out, so I had to go real slow. I am pleased with how it turned out.

Here are a couple of pictures of the first night Pumpkin and Sadie met. It was so cute, their paws touching. they each made a little grunt when it happened and laid back down and went to sleep.

This is a good picture showing how big Pumpkin is, Sadie is big, but he is BIG. (95lbs vs 72lbs). What a hugh head you have Mr. Pumpkin.

Here is our newest foster, Pumpkin. His story, he is 4 1/2, 95lbs., his people had to give him up because he has two bad rear legs, his left knee seems to have a bad ACL, his right knee may also be bad but his right hip snaps, clicks and pops when he walks, yuck. Since he is so over weight he can't have anything done until he drops a few pounds. He lived outside, roaming around anytime and anywhere, not taking it easy like he should have been. His fur was dirty, very smelly and of course matted. His women person seem to like him alot and gave him up because they could not afford his medical bills. He and Sadie are ok so far. He is so big he makes Sadie look small and petite. I will try to get them in a photo together soon.

We have had lots of rain lately, the lake level has come up. Yesterday we had a torrential rain storm, the kind that floods roads and basements. An inch in 2 minuets type rain. The Lake level came up so fast you could almost see it rising. The level continued to come up all day, it is as high now as during the rainy season. It will take a few weeks for the level to go back down to normal. Maybe someone will go downstream and bust up the beaver dams. It does get the baby ducks up close. A Mallard with five ducklings were swimming around this evening.

This is pale pink tree peony. I pick a few of these and a few whites, they keep in the house almost a week.

I have been a little under the weather so I have alot to catch up with..here we go.
Jim had a job up north and came back through the Skagit valley. He got some pretty close up shots of the Snow Geese. Jim L-O-V-E-S Trilliums, every year he takes tons of pictures, the only difference between year to year is....I don't know, nothing.

The Osprey are back! This one sat up in the tree a long time. The Eagles usually chase them away, or harass them until they drop their fish and high tail it off the lake. Theres only room for one fish eater on this lake.

Jim got a good picture of this very cute Douglas Squirrel. They can be very brave. Sometimes you can get within a couple feet of them. They used sit in the tree and torment Rudy.

We had a man come and grind the stumps from our tree cutting. It made a real mess. It will be a year at least before we can get grass (or moss) to grow there.

A sweet little Quail came to the feeder for a couple of days, He blends in with the dirt so well, sometimes you only see him when he moves.

We had a unique visitor to the feeder too, a "morph" Evening Grosbeak. It is not an albino, because it does not have pink eyes. Last year we had a "morph" red winged black bird. It is unusual because the "morphs" don't usually reach adulthood..too easy to see...being white and all.

Bad news. Ms. Mallard was back at the feeder today, but only 6 (of 12) ducklings left. Can you tell how much they have already grown.

We saw this years first ducklings last Sunday. Mom Mallard brought them into the back yard to munch at the bird feeders. I ran and got the camera and very slowly, and I thought quietly, slide open the kitchen window to get a picture. She got spooked, gathered all of them up and as they sprinted across the yard I was able to snap just this one shot. Not too bad, huh?

Jim took this picture, we are calling it "a study of Miss Sadie Mae with flower". We had this building built for lumber storage. It is 16x8. The back and sides are sheeted with T-111, the front is finished with old fence wood. It was sort of ironic, we had to buy lumber to build a building to store lumber. I am a self proclaimed lumber hoarder. I had piles of lumber all over the yard. I was absolutely ruthless when it came time to sort out what to toss and what to keep.

This is what we did with the trees we had cut down. Split and stack the alder to use in the wood stove in the basement. These two stacks alone with the two truck loads of wood we got from brother Al earlier this year will last us several years. I just hope we can use it up before it rots! I put a free ad on Craig's list for the rest of the fire wood we did not want and had a responce within a half hour. All totaled I had 14 responces before I deleted the ad. We had two people come today, both took a full truck load and I think one of them is going to come back tomorrow for the rest. Jim used the chips on our trail system. He first lays down branches and then tops it of with wheelbarrow loads of chips. If not for these elevated trails we would not be able to use over half of our property. We enjoy walking around the trails and looking at stuff. This is probably the 3rd or 4th time this trail has been "done".

We had a wind storm today. It was blowing from the North and when that happens it whips the lake into a white capped frothy mess. Standing on the float is like being on a carnival ride. We were lucky not to lose power or have a tree fall on our house.