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Week before last involved a lot of quilt block making and quilt handling. The final block of the month challenge of the year at the Flower Valley Quilt Guild (October through September is the block challenge year) was to make a block using 25 charm squares from one's stash of material. The winner of the drawing for all the squares now gets to create a unique quilt. I would have loved to win them, but I didn't. I'm most fond of the center square that depicts a spider web!
Another guild project was to make 12-inch blocks using 1930s fabric or reproductions. Since I still have scads of 1930s material left over from the Linville family quilt, I created these four Churn Dash blocks. They are entered in a national drawing and I'm eligible to win a set of 12 blocks made by other quilters...but not sure when I'll hear about that. I kind of hope I don't win since the object is to use up this material, not acquire MORE of it!
Guild members have been making quilts to donate to charity all year long, and we had a "show and tell" of the completed ones at our September meeting. Since I am on the committee, I volunteered to store the finished quilts until they can be given away. Here, the 35 finished quilts (so far) occupied our dining room table while I sorted them by type. We have 10 twin-sized quilts on the left, that will go to a private, church supported home for youth with mental health issues. The stack on the right is 21 baby quilts that will go to a shelter for teenage mothers that is run by a Catholic charity. The 5 quilts stacked in front will join some others that will be donated to Project Hero which provides housing, substance abuse treatment and job training for homeless veterans. It is one program out of many sponsored through St. Louis' very effective homeless services organization, St. Patrick's Center.
Then I spent last weekend quilting, too, at the scrap quilt club. It was a wonderful day and I made progress on two lovely projects that are not quite yet ready for prime time, but stay tuned!
It seems like just last week I was putting up the last of the Illinois peaches... but now it is totally apple season. On Sept. 11, a group of us from our church went to Eckert's farm in Belleville to pick our own apples. It was a little early, but that meant we got to pick Jonathons! They make great applesauce and pies, but they are even better as a lunch box treat.
Our group of intrepid apple pickers included, Mary, Madeline, Marty, Norm, Kim, DebE, Darrell, and little Annabelle. That's over 100 pounds of apples in those sacks!
Our warm weather persisted through most of the month, and even last Sunday, it was a challenge to keep everyone in the church sanctuary cool enough without air conditioning. (Thieves stole the copper from two of the church's outdoor units...and we are still replacing them, or rather the improved fence to protect the new ones.) Today we were hoping everyone would be warm enough. It's supposed to get to 47 tonight and although I'm not worried about the houseplants on the porch freezing, I know I have to start getting them sprayed and washed and moved into the house.
More signs that summer is over and fall is really here:
- Robins were flocking on the golf course this evening. Scores of them.
- Hummingbirds are still coming through, but the combative males are gone, and the remaining ones often linger a while and tank up before moving on. This morning I realized a feeder in the dining room window was empty after a hummingbird sat there and stared inside the house at Norm and me while we ate our breakfast. (Yes, we filled the feeder.)
- Buds on the chrysanthemums are showing lots of color.
- The tree frogs have finally fallen silent. Only the crickets give a night concert now.
- Spiders are starting to reappear around the house.
- Moles are very active, as are squirrels building winter nests.
- The furnace, which is set at 72 degrees, came on for the first time this afternoon.
- I wore socks with my sandals today for the first time since sometime last May.
October is coming soon, and the challenge is going to be fitting everything in. Church board and elders, knitting group, Regional assembly, book club, quilt guild, morning water exercise, Tai Chi 24 form class, Prime Timers, farewell to Orchard Crest camp, Norm's college class 50th reunion in Kansas, twice a week hand quilting sessions--and that's just the stuff we know about, now. Hope we make time to make some mores, drive up river to watch bird migrations, write some family history, read, declutter, start to plan for the holiday celebrations, write more letters and blogs, and savor the crisp fall skies.
This month I'm guilty of reading more than writing. Reading other blogs. Reading e-mail. Reading the morning paper. Reading a fascinating draft of a forthcoming book. Reading the tea leaves. Reading FaceBook. When I'm not reading, I have been cooking, or piecing patchwork, or quilting, or knitting, or sitting on the porch staring at the hummingbirds who are still coming to the feeders as they migrate. But I will write again, I promise. And post pictures. They are right there in the camera, waiting to be uploaded. I just need to commit the time to writing, instead of reading, instead of day dreaming.
On this day, the official end of Summer, here's a reflection on what our summer has brought. On this blog I have chronicled some of our travels, to Kansas and North Carolina. There will be more to be shared in coming months, especially about family history research. But for us the essence of summer here at home is defined in part by the view from our front porch. One afternoon the sunlight sparkled on the oak leaves in just such a way that reminded me of the huge oxygen factories that trees are. We owe our breath to them!
We still try to garden, although our main crops in our sun-starved back yard are limited these days to a few tomato plants, and the ever-expanding raspberry patch. This was not a good tomato year in St. Louis. This is the full sum of our crop so far, sitting on the kitchen window sill. Two Jet Stars and a cherry tomato. There were a couple of others, but between heavy rain and scorching heat, they rotted on the vine. The vines are still living, and with cooler nights have started setting fruit again. They might ripen before frost, or they might not. These tomatoes were, by the way, delicious. We would have loved more just like them.
Back in the spring, some 20 women in my quilting guild started a scrap quilt club that meets on the 4th Saturday. I've posted a couple of completed quilts from that group before. This block is my first completed one for a large quilt called Cathedral Stars that is a club project. It is supposed to be finished by the end of October. Right.The goal of the club is to use up the scraps and leftovers in our stash. So far, so good. I haven't had to buy anything new except some Christmas border fabric so far.
My quilt guild also has a monthly block challenge. We all receive the same pattern, with general instructions about type of fabric to use, etc. Then at the meeting the completed ones are displayed and one person is drawn from a hat to receive the whole bunch to make into a quilt. This is my block for August. I'm working on the September one, now. A year ago, I promised myself that I would do all 12 blocks...and it looks like I'm going to make it. The reward will be a quarter yard of new fabric...something I really need! 
Another promise I made at the beginning of 2010 was to finish the family reunion quilt top. I did that in June, and in late July the Spanish Lake quilters put it on the frame and started quilting. I get to join them on Tuesdays, and I really enjoy hand quilting, especially on this project. Here are Christine, Judy and Fran at work last week in Judy's bright and cheery bonus room. At this point, I think there is the equivalent of 20 blocks done, 44 to go. Or something like that.
On this Labor Day, we shared a leisurely dinner with our dear friends the Dixons, with conversation going well into the evening, and raspberry sundaes enjoyed by all. After they left, Norm and I repaired to our front porch to enjoy a cool breeze and listen to the tree frogs and crickets singing in the dark. For once, no mosquitoes were biting. If we had screens on the porch, it would be perfect for sleeping. The evening chorus still says summer, but the cool nip in the air says....fall is coming.
So what about fall. What's on the schedule? Well, water exercise resumes on Tuesday. Norm and I are both trying to learn Tai Chi 24 long form, also on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. After a month of sabbatical from meetings, our church is making up for lost time. The knitting group will start up in October. I've got several projects to finish for the church bazaar, which will be on Nov. 13 this year. Norm and I plan to go to Kansas for his college class 50th reunion in October, and we also have a church regional assembly coming up that month, too. There's a manuscript I want to read. A couple of them, actually. I think I might just blink and wake up tomorrow and find out it is already Thanksgiving, or even Christmas. We really are living that cliche about not knowing how we ever found time to work!
On the weather cast the other night, the meteorologist announced that summer is over--as far as the weather stats are concerned. The end of summer always stirs up a sadness in me. Just in time, a cool front arrived Friday morning, and it is supposed to get down into the 50s tonight, as if to rub it in. So I'm listening to the crickets outside...they always are more numerous in late summer and early fall. There is one lone tree frog a few houses South of here...back in July their chorus was loud and late into the night. The white frost of fall-flowering wild clematis is adorning fences, another sign of the changing season. School has been in session for two weeks now. Newly hatched caterpillars of some swallowtail species are finishing off my potted parsley. There are more signs of fall than I can shake a stick at. And I still haven't re-potted all of the houseplants! Labor Day Weekend is here and there's no denying that even though warm days are still to come, fall is in the air. Guess it's time to call the people who inspect the furnace.
Week before last involved a lot of quilt block making and quilt handling. The final block of the month challenge of the year at the Flower Valley Quilt Guild (October through September is the block challenge year) was to make a block using 25 charm squares from one's stash of material. The winner of the drawing for all the squares now gets to create a unique quilt. I would have loved to win them, but I didn't. I'm most fond of the center square that depicts a spider web!
Another guild project was to make 12-inch blocks using 1930s fabric or reproductions. Since I still have scads of 1930s material left over from the Linville family quilt, I created these four Churn Dash blocks. They are entered in a national drawing and I'm eligible to win a set of 12 blocks made by other quilters...but not sure when I'll hear about that. I kind of hope I don't win since the object is to use up this material, not acquire MORE of it!
Guild members have been making quilts to donate to charity all year long, and we had a "show and tell" of the completed ones at our September meeting. Since I am on the committee, I volunteered to store the finished quilts until they can be given away. Here, the 35 finished quilts (so far) occupied our dining room table while I sorted them by type. We have 10 twin-sized quilts on the left, that will go to a private, church supported home for youth with mental health issues. The stack on the right is 21 baby quilts that will go to a shelter for teenage mothers that is run by a Catholic charity. The 5 quilts stacked in front will join some others that will be donated to Project Hero which provides housing, substance abuse treatment and job training for homeless veterans. It is one program out of many sponsored through St. Louis' very effective homeless services organization, St. Patrick's Center.
