As Beautiful November Ends....

Good evening!As November draws to its ever darkening end, I am looking back on this favorite month. We have had sunny days and winds, and storms, but it was finally Autumn, that sweet finale of the year. Today the sky was filled with puffy grey clouds and the horizon maintained a sunrise/ sunset apricot color all day.  The month goes much too fast, perhaps like for many of you, October does.

The Welcome  Pineapple is all done except the final applique of the hearts.

Probably I will not send it for quilting until after the expensive holidays have passed.

I also finished the sweet little TQC October quilt. As it's a present I'l l post more detailed pics after it has been gifted.

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Encouraged by the long awaited arrival of Fall, Mo and I took many slow sunset walks as I gathered leaves to press and draw.

These will prob just go into a blank notebook or folder. They are fragile once dried, and they fade.

I finally found found some oak leaves in Home Goods parking lot. Dry and dessicated, probably blew in from the marsh behind the store. Two species, pin oak and white oak [swamp oak].

 

I loved this idea of many tiny leaves, but the glue would not stick, not for nothing.

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I found a few sweet books on an international used book site. I was charmed by this Autumn Flower Fairies book. It was old and foxed and falling apart,

but so sweet with its faded illustrations and carefully pressed--in just the correct spaces---leaves.

Most of the trees are familiar to me from a Midwestern childhood, where woods and old orchards filled afternoons with secret spaces to explore and study.  Others are very English. We had buckeyes, not chestnuts.

Then from my bookshelf, inspiration from a tiny book by Dutch artist Marjolein Bastin.

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I've mentioned the large flocks of black birds we see each evening.

This is the early winter pages of the children's nature book I got this summer.

Starlings, at least sometimes---though today's unraveling skeins of black were sea ducks over the ocean.

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More nature drawings in the scribble journal. Nancy asked what the little notebooks are: they're just Mead grocery or jotter/ list books, I buy a stack of 5 on Amazon . 5" x 7". I did find a couple of lovely unused watercolor notebooks one day last week as I was hunting for special jewelry tool. But maybe that would spoil the fun, the spontaneity?

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In my Santa Workshop moments I've been repairing the old wooden toys that turn up in my dad's Shaker boxes. The little horse cart is almost repaired, so I began work on this minute brass band.

They are so finely painted and so cute, each little man is different. Not marked but I estimate c.1880-1900, Germany. Perhaps 1 1/4" tall.

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In the cottage, all traces of Fall have gone; the red and white quilts are out and airing in a big stack, to be distributed after the monthly cleaner works her Dyson magic tomorrow. 

I hope to put up my tiny tree and finish a simple sort of decorating over the coming week. 

Tonight, again, a nor'easter storm approaches. 60 mph wind, one site said 70 mph off the ocean. Much as I love it here, sometimes the storms make me weary; I yearn for a sheltered place with gentle weather. But I suppose I'll be here forever, sand in my shoes, the wind in my hair.

A sweet cocktail napkin from Thanksgiving, its design echoing my found leaves. To be pressed with other memories.

Mo enjoyed Thanksgiving very much!

Have a good week.

love

lizzy 

gone to the beach....

pics from a friend, early one morning, his beach.

for Bonnie, a pic of my small collection of real agate marbles, early 20th century. Called aggies and highly prized.