collections

Gail here with a pic of a table in my dining room. It is mainly of two chairs, the one on the right belonged to my granddaughter and she gave it to me when she decided she didn't want to play with her American Girl doll any longer. The one on the left came from my sister, Diana. She gave it to me because I collect little chairs. Thanks, Diana, I love it.

nice Amy

the sweater and how lucky that you won two things.....maybe you should buy a lottery ticket.......and yes, of course I love that garden art....very country which suits me just fine.....Gail I love the pumpkin swag and know it took quite awhile to create.........where is the purchase you got at Goodwill last week, Amy...you have not shared it with us....

Harvest Time, Squash that is

I have harvested my Delicata and Dumpling squash and I am rich in the stuff.   I loaded most of them into my truck this morning and tried to donate them to our local food bank but they were closed until Monday...so I brought some into the house to sample...I have one of the Delicata, (some people call them peanut squash) in the oven and if I really like it I might bring a few more in the house.   Even though they are a winter squash, their skins are a little tender so not sure they would keep too well.   The Dumpling have a tougher skin and are very heavy though small....I am sure if I threw one at someone they would get a big injury.   I also harvested most of the beets and a big cabbage yesterday and made pickled beets.   I am saving the big red cabbage for a giant cole slaw for my daughter's birthday dinner.   The garden is about done though and it is always bittersweet for me...I do get tired and need a respite, but the winter time here is long and bleak.

Another Win/Garden Art

Every year the RSVP volunteers are given a luncheon. This year because of budget cuts, the luncheon downsized to a dessert bar. They also have tickets for door prizes and this year I won 2 of them. First was a folder with all fifty new quarters on a map and the second was a hand knitted sweater. The sweater is wool and was knitted by one of the ladies in the Project Warm-Up group. Project Warm-Up is a group of ladies that knit or crochet and make hats, scarves, lap robes, afghans, etc. for the many agencies that provide for people in need. Every year they knit or crochet about 6,000 things. The sweater has fish buttons and little fish swimming on the bottom which looks like waves. Also on the back of the sweater is a knitted anchor. And it fits too.
I am including a picture of some more garden art. I thought my sister might like this idea. It is a shovel with a birdhouse on the top of it.

 Sweater front with fish buttons-it is on Millie the Mannequin. I
rescued Millie from Goodwill, but she didn't have a stand.
The next time I went to Goodwill I found an IV stand that just
fit her, perfect.

Sweater back-see the fish swimming at the bottom.

 Close-up of the anchor-this sweater is really a blue color

 Birdhouse on a shovel-you can see some
beds in the back that we grew some little
pumpkins on-ignore the weeds, that's
what I do

Amy

Road Trip

Nordic Hertiage Museum

 My buys at Weaving Works-those are cones of bamboo

We are back from Seattle and yes it did rain, but not very hard. The first thing we did was pick up our son and take him to the Nordic Museum http://www.nordicmuseum.org/, It is located in the Ballard section of Seattle which is where many nordic people settled. It is located in an old school building and is three stories tall. Very interesting, check out their website. I was interested in seeing Margaret Bergman's weaving work. They had an area with her loom and on the wall behind it were her textiles. She had a coverlet that was made in two pieces and sewed together with everything matching and the seam just barely visible, wonderful. If you don't know about Margaret Bergman, just google her name and you will find a little bit about her history as a weaver.  Our mother was a Norweign and I found the info about when many Norweigns came to the United States. I know that our family came when the United States offered free land in the midwest and my mother's grandfather came at that time and stayed in the Midwest. Many Norweigns came to Seattle instead of staying in the Midwest because it reminded them of Norway. Now this is terrible to say but I figured that my mother's family came here because they were as poor as church mice but the museum said that the people who came at that time were landowners in Norway, in other words the middle class. Because of the cost of coming, the poor were not the ones who came, interesting, Sorry mom for all those things I thought about our ancestors.
We also visited Weaving Works.http://www.weavingworks.com/. It was stuffed with yarn and more yarn. I bought a little bit home with me. I also got a new temple and fabric wash. I really needed more money.
Of course we had to stop at Goodwill in Seattle, Trader Joes and the Asian market. We found things to buy everywhere we went! Later I will show you my buy from Goodwill.
Amy

Good Day/Bad Day

Diana, I love the caterpillar, The edging you gave to me is out in the weather and I haven't done anything to it! And Gail, I love the Halloween garland, so cute.
Today was one of those days that got better later in the day. This morning my husband and I took my son's dog to the Humane Society because they were offering shots and microchipping for a very low price. Of course everyone else in town thought it was a very good price too. We waited in line for 3 hours! When we got there and the line was clear out the door and down the sidewalk, I thought about turning to my husband and saying "let's go to the vet."But we stayed. Later when I told him I thought about just leaving and getting the shots elsewhere, he told me he had thought the same thing. Our son was in Seattle and they had hired a dog sitter but when we went to their house, the sitter was gone, she only worked until 1:00 and my son didn't come home until about 4:00. So we had Henry longer than we thought we were going to today. But this afternoon I answered an ad on Craiglist for some weaving wool. I went and bought about 28 partial cones of rug wool. It had belonged to tapestry weaver, I got to see some of her tapestries and got some wool too. Her daughter, who was selling the wool, was settling her mother's estate and she told me a couple of names of people who were starting a weaving guild in my town, so I need to get in touch with them. Also I won a weaving book from http://www.eweniquelyewe.blogspot.com/ called, "Weaving As An Art Form"by Theo Moorman. When I bought the wool, the seller showed me a tapestry done in the Theo Moorman technique. How cool is that!
Tomorrow we are going to Seattle to visit the Nordic Museum, http://www.nordicmuseum.org/. Hopefully I will have some pictures to share about it.

My big buy

My big win

Amy

Halloween

Hey, Gail here finally after a long dry time of creating anything. This is a banner I made for my grandchildren who live about 5 hours from me and who I don't get to see very often :(  I started with a 6" piece of cardboard, trimming it to a point half way down the sides then covered with colored cardstock which was glued directly to the face of the cardboard. Some of the symmetrical shapes were cut using Spellbinder's Nestabilities dies using my Cuttlebug. I punched holes with the Crop-A-Dile and strung them together with a type of yarn of undetermined content I purchased at a yard sale for $.12 a skein. Have a wonderful Halloween.