I wiped away the weeds & foam. / I fetched my sea-born treasures home... Ralph Waldo Emerson







Wednesday, November 11, 2020

Catching Up ~ Little Quilts Big Quilts a Storm and A Crow


Good evening. I am back but limping along with a damaged photoshop program tonight. Frustration is mounting, Mounting , MOUNTING!

My internet and phones went out last Wednesday, with intermittent returns until it died entirely on Thursday or Friday. Besides the usual panic of no communication, there was the frustration of not being able to easily follow the election results. 

TV was off then returned--but I for one do not ever sit and watch TV. With current events unfolding, I want to  turn on my phone and see what is happening, at yes, 3 AM, 4 AM, noon and midnight. Landline phone, retained for emergency use was, of course, out of service. 


A repairman arrived late Sunday as the early darkness fell. I waited from 8 AM, no shower for me, no real walks for Mo, we were desperate. My friend came from the beach to help oversee the repair which in the end we were told was not due to the windstorm on Monday, but was due to old faulty poorly designed wiring. The entire system needed to be repaired. [In my defense---the provider did the wiring, after H Sandy. If poorly done it was their fault, not mine.] He opened very closet, moved very piece of furniture. Dust bunnies everywhere, i was mortified. And a bit of a mess was left behind. My fabric bins all set in wobbling towers, my project boxes strewn across the sewing room floor. Old wires and modem boxes left hanging.



 Life just sucks sometimes.

                                              ....................

Being all tense and worried about our nation's future is not conducive to properly calm and pleasant sewing.

 I fiddled with some labels...You know I'm not a fan of labels! Baby Pineapples was delivered to the family with only a tiny almost invisible label: for XXXX * 2020. Fused, not sewed, in case the mom wishes to remove it. I had the lovely quotations printed fabrics, Amelia Earhart, Walt Whitman, planned for the that quilt, but in the end, sanity prevailed.

 My friend L kindly embroidered some labels for me, inspired by labels being created on my Cheri Payne quilting group on FB.


This is Tiny Baskets' label. I may add my name in Sharpie pen.

 And Julierose put a commemorative Halloween Blue Moon, very elegant, on her equally elegant chic Starry-eyed Jack! Mine is less art, more cartoon. But a memory.

 



As a break after finishing the two big summer project quilts, I worked on this small funky quilt.

 



The main Watermelon quilt came to me not quite finished in a box of scraps from a swap. Again this is a Cheri Payne design, Made by my swap friend MA. I loved the little quilt and actually emailed her, thinking she included it by mistake! But no, she said, All yours, have fun with it. I hope she is okay with what I did.

 

The watermelons should seem summery., but MA's dark prim palette made me think of Fall. And crows!

 


I also wanted to try a popular new to me way of applique for primitive quilts: a quilt is pieced and quilted, washed and crumpled, maybe coffee dyed to age it. And when all that is done, the wool appliqué is added. Huh. Fun?

 

I used a paper sew thru template for the cable quilting. Prob should hand quilt but this is supposed to be fun, I reminded myself. Removing paper templates? =Not Fun.



MA's darling doll dress style fabric for binding, tiny calico flowers, precious scraps from the same swap.

 



Additional cornerstones from  a gift package from Penny in SA!

Here is Crow audition One. It's the crow and Flag from another Cheri Payne Group sew along, done this October. 

 


But Jan Patek's Starry Eyed Crow with Flag, choice number two, won out. The sitting crow, # 1, looked so sad, I thought.

We don't see many crows here at the beach. Only in the fall, near the tideline, a small crow that is locally called a fish crow. They are only here in the autumn, I don't know where they really live.

 


The Flag she holds will remind me always of this election week.

Sneak peek: Shirley's Christmas quilt is ready for binding!




This plaid, ordered last winter, awaited through months of covid slowdown.

 

And I hung A Year in the front corner of my living room, just for a few weeks. It's the only free wall I had. Visual clutter--- hidden by the open door. I do love this quilt so much



Sending love and care to everyone, please be safe---the virus is bigger than ever. What a nightmare our world, our lives have become. Pray for hope and better days ahead. Love you all! 

 


lizzy


gone to the beach........

 The windstorm destroyed the kindness/hope shell installation. 




Obliterated.


I put out my last two shells on Halloween Eve. Perhaps this is one of them?


Even the Par Duck gaggle is half buried.

Mr Mockingbird, looking very fluffy and handsome, singing away in the ugly locust tree. Returned from his nesting area in the dunes.




Autumn blue sky above. And a classic Autumn sunset sky.



 

Sunday, November 8, 2020

Internet Is Back???

 Hi everyone. Two young men worked hard this afternoon and made a bit of a mess, restoring my internet/ wifi and landline phone. 

My hidden dustbunnies were all revealed, ugh.  

Fingers SO crossed it stays on and I stay connected. Sorry not to have responded to comments, and some couldn't even be posted.

I 'll be back with a new post in a day or two.


love


lizzy


gone to the beach....


Tuesday, November 3, 2020

A November Walk




Good morning on this important Election Day. [probably the less said the better!]


Improv VOTE quilt info  [not made by me]

Instead---Welcome November!  



November is one of my most favorite months, all golden dunes and deep blue skies. Big blustery winds and and crisp Fall air. Autumn is finally arriving at the beach. Here at the Beach the holiday season filled with anticipation and joy and love, begins with the celebration of Halloween. 

Let's put aside our ''election/ covid anxiety'', and take a head clearing walk.



















Look who I discovered in the larger high dunes!


Do you see them?


The rest of the flock of wooden ducks! How fun. They seem to be vintage [1940-50?] golf markers of some sort, maybe from a Pitch n Putt or miniature golf course? This herd is in the big dunes on one's right , if facing the beach; the rest are on the smaller lefthand dune face with the covid hope shells.


And who lives here?


Quite large, 2" hole to a burrow. Crab? insect? dune squirrel? No footprints, just the tiny pile of dug out sand.


I added my latest seashell offerings onto the shell installation. It has become somewhat sad. I will be adding a New Year's shell for sure, then what, years ahead of uncelebrated milestones?
  




*****

Autumn wildflowers are blooming.

Late roses and goldenrod.






Real asters, like the ones that bloom along the back roads on Cape Cod, not the garish [but pretty] wildly colored magenta and violet ones sold in September here.


**********
Indoors again, we can enjoy hot tea again, as the wind is now frigid. Gusts up to 60 mph! 23* windchill. Some Earl Grey Double Bergamot is very welcome. Even the hot mug in my hands is comforting, as I breathe deeply of my favorite tea's orange herbal steamy mist.It's dark at 4 now. Candles lit. "Embrace the darkness." 
Candles are from Gable House Goods: preordering is necessary as they sell out quickly.










***********

A brief Halloween recap as we say goodbye to this odd October. I saw not a single reveler or trick or treater. Mo and I walked about that evening, on silent dark lanes. As an annoying college friend used to jeer, if I was dressed up in something new or special: ''All dressed up withno place to go." 

Is this baby Mo's last Halloween dress up?



I stopped by a few friends to see their socially distanced treat set ups.





And visited briefly outdoors around my friends' beautiful firepit, where perhaps we'll share a shivering Thanksgiving feast later in the month. I took a tiny bag of M n M's. My gesture to days gone by.


Have a good November!



love

lizzy

gone to the beach....



seawall pics for Mel:

The second tier is added each fall; more a wind break than a water barrier. This seawall was set deep into the sand in the early 1960s if not earlier when the area was a US missile base during the Cold War. When I first arrived, there were no  dunes; the seawall on the other side towered maybe 15 or more feet tall. The dunes have encroached over the years. It edges an asphalt ramp , access for emergency vehicles.








 PS Don't forget to stop by my Instagram page! It is just for fun, a daily diary, pictures onl,y as I  haven't mastered the requisite witty caption. 

IG will NEVER replace my blog [unless Blogger drives me out]. My blog is a tribute to my mom, whose letters and shared journals and photos, books and clippings, brightened the world of a shy lonely girl far from home. Twice a week, all our years. My blog is what I would have written back, to her.    Instagram