Christmas is coming

Christmas is coming!  The tree is up.  The wreath and stockings are hung.

The nativity set from Spain is in full view, 

by the TV.

The quilt that I won in a raffle many years ago is on the living room wall.  It is beautifully hand-quilted.

Pictures of my daughter with Santa and my grandson with Santa are displayed, along with a Scrabble greeting.















And on the coffee table,  eight handmade snowmen ornaments await the quilting bee
Christmas party.

Rug in Brown and Red

My Great-Niece Elizabeth saw the other rug that I was knitting and liked it.  So I offered to make her one.  Two months later, I'm almost done.  Her sister will be staying with me at Thanksgiving, so I plan to finish it up and send it back to north Texas then.
Here I am at Bee meeting, showing it off:

We meet once a month, and Show and Tell is usually the best part of our meetings.   Some of us have know each other for 25 years or so.  (Actually, Bonnie and I met 40 years ago.)

So good to have long-lasting friendships!








And here, I'm working on the border. It goes a lot faster than the center. Then to sew it on.

Yellow Flowers

Summer is over.  I guess this is Autumn.  The heat hasn't been turned on yet, but I've only run the AC a few times lately.  There's been blessed rain.

I love yellow flowers.  My bouquet at my first wedding was of yellow roses and they remain my favorite.  I also like sunflowers, coreopsis, and all kinds of multi-petalled   wildflowers.

These pictures were taken in my neighborhood in October.

Then I painted a couple of pictures in my art class.
Love those yellow flowers.

Photography Class

Last Saturday, I took a class with a local nature photographer, Steven Schwartzman.  I follow his blog: he has a beautiful picture every day.  I've learned quite a bit about native Texas plants and insects through his pictures and descriptions.  It's a great resource.

I signed up some time ago for a UT class held at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.  Unfortunately, it was held three days after my eye surgery (the cataract in my left eye was removed).  So my vision was not at its best.

Nonetheless, I learned a little more about the 35mm camera I bought last year and thoroughly enjoyed the class.

Here's my best picture from Saturday.  Too bad I don't know what the plant is.

Pears with Pitcher

My latest oil painting is of a pitcher with pears on a table top.

The teacher's painting was darker; it had more of an old-world vibe.  But I prefer a lighter look.

I'm scheduled for cataract surgery in a couple of weeks.  I'm wondering how this will change how I see paintings and colors.  I know that in dim light purples look like brown  Good grief!  I hope this pitcher isn't purple!

 

Update:  The cut pear looked like an apple and it had a certain Escher-like quality, so I made some changes.  I also added a branch of pear leaves to fill in the table space.  I still have issues with the "pearness" of the cut fruit.  There may be more changes...... 

Jigsaw Puzzle

Sometimes when it's too hot to move, I do a jigsaw puzzle at my kitchen table.  This is one that Alice gave me; it was in her pile of things destined for her next garage sale.

It has several "shaped" pieces.  I worked on those first, then the edges.  The hardest part was the last 50 or so - all solid red (maybe a LITTLE variation), with two "outies" and tow "innies".
It's a good exercise in color awareness, if nothing else.

It's now apart and waiting to go back to Alice's stack of stuff.

Knitted Rug

At Emilie's Quilt House, there is a rug in the Dutch Doll room that looks like an old fashioned rug but is, in fact, knitted from fabric strips.  The owner, Kay, recently finished her move from Austin and is now faced with organizing all of  her "stuff", including many family things.  The pattern for this rug was unearthed - scrawled on hotel stationary from Saratoga Florida.  Dated July 26 (my birthday).

Since I had my "chunk box" of scraps with me on my last visit to Emilie's, I decided to try out the pattern.  It's fun, but hard on the hands.

The pattern didn't give a needle size to work with, but the largest Kay had were 14s and they seem to work well.  

Love the note in the instructions that say "no orange"!  I, of course, ignored that part.


Here's the start, done at Emilies.

Here's a little farther along, durnng Show and Tell at our monthly Bee meeting.

Here's the finished rug:  It's nice nd soft and squishy to stand on.