A couple nights ago my groomer (a neighbor) called and said there was a stray dog accross the lake at the boat launch. He was just lying in the snow. Jim and I rushed over there and met her and her husband. The dog, an Anatolian Shepard, very tall, very skinny, very friendly, very hungry. So Jim and I loaded him up in the back of the Vdub, brought him back to the ranch. I took him and Sadie for a short walk to go pee, came back and let him in the house, he hesitated like he hasn't had a lot of house time. He gave Sadie a good going over with his nose then they pretty mush ignored each other. We put him in the sun room for the night. It was pretty cold but he is a big outdoor type dog. Unfortunately every time one of us would go out to check on him he would wake up and start barking. None of us got a lot of sleep that night. Monday I took him into the shelter. I will try to keep up with what happens to him and let you know.

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.