Covid-19 Life, TBR, Autumn Colors

With Covid cases rising, we continue to social isolate and order pickup and delivery. My last haircut was in late February. It's getting long!

Six of the quilters are still braving meeting outdoors in the park. It was 50 degrees out, we were bundled up, wearing masks, and had a great visit.

Karen's Monkey Wrench quilt

The rest of the quilters meet through Zoom. 

As does the Clawson library book club. Next month we will read The Bear by Andrew Krivak, who is to join our Zoom meeting!

I am perfecting my Zooming skills. 

Last week, I Zoomed with the Troy library book club. They read Song of Achilles and Zoomed with author Madeline Miller. She also discussed her novel Circe. 

And in previous weeks, I Zoomed to hear Francesca Wade talk about her book Square Haunting: Five Writers in London Between the Wars and with three historical fiction writers who wrote about composers, including Barbara Quick who wrote Vivaldi's Virgins.  

New books on my shelf include The Memory Collectors by Kim Neville, from Atria Books.

Other books new to my shelf include

• Nowhere Like This Place:Tales from a Nuclear Childhood by Marilyn Carr, a memoir
• The Crown in Crisis: Countdown to the Abdication by Alexander Larman, about King Edward VIII  
• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

And soon to come for an Algonquin blog tour,

• Astrid Sees All by Natalie Standford

We are enjoying watching the original and hilarious The Good Place and saw the new Rebecca from Netflix, a very interesting and competent interpretation of Daphne Du Maurier's classic gothic novel.

Our only travels are to the doctors. Luckily, there is a lot to see in our two-mile square suburban neighborhood. Like this Blue Jay that perched on the edge of the sliding patio door as it endeavored to get to some insect hiding between the doors.

And the Canada Geese who decided to take a walk down our street.

And the Halloween decorations.

Like much of America, we have been busy fixing up the house and finishing projects. Besides painting a bedroom and ordering a new kitchen table, we bought bookshelves for our TBR books and a sideboard for under the kitchen windows.

Many of my TBR books are from the library sales, but also from my brother and ones I ordered.

This week, my husband dug a hole in the garden and we buried the ashes of our four Shiba Inu dogs. Kili was our first Shiba, adopted when our son was five years old. She lived over 16 years. Next came Suki, a seven-year-old puppy mill breeder who needed a lot of TLC to make her a 'real dog'. Suki's first friend was Kara, a nine-year veteran puppy mill breeder. He taught Suki how to play and snuggle. Sadly, Kara was only with us ten months. He already had kidney failure when he came to us. So, we brought home Kamikaze, another puppy mill rescue. Kaze thought the world was hers and loved freedom and her home. She and Suki bonded as they aged, and when they lost their eyesight they aided each other in every day tasks--like finding the water bowl and going in and out doors.

Now they are all together in their forever home near the Pink Drift Roses, marked by a lovely Shiba Inu statue.

Our fur babies forever home

The roses are still blooming since we have not had a killing frost yet here.

Every day on my walk I find a beautiful tree to photograph and share on Facebook and Instagram. Here are some.

We voted. We got our flu shots. We are staying safe. I hope you are, too. It's going to be a challenging fall without normalcy, the pandemic impacting our cherished Halloween, Thanksgiving, Advent, Hanukkah, Christmas, and other family and community traditions.

Poems for the Very Young: Autumn

Today I am sharing Autumn poetry from Poems for the Very Young Child compiled by Dolores Knippel and illustrated by Mary Ellsworth, Whitman Publishing Co, 1932

See Spring poems from this volume at
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2019/04/poems-for-very-young-child-poems-for.html
See Summer poems at
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2019/06/poems-for-very-young-child-summer.html

Still Catching Up on the Austen Family Album Block of the Week...

Going away on several trips meant I got behind again on Brackman's weekly Austen Family blocks. I did three these past few days.

Friendship block for Anne Brydges LeFroy, Jane's friend and mentor

 Wheel of Change for Capt. Jean-Francoise Capot de Feullide, husband of Eliza Hancock

Old Maid's Puzzle for Tom LeFroy, Jane's "heart throb" at age 20

Before Friday we had a few lovely days. There are still some leaves on the trees.

I added some little pumpkins to the donkey cart made by my dad which is  filled with Zinnia's still in bloom.

But yesterday it rained and the cold driving wind and rain kept the little kids from trick or treating. Groups of middle school boys were out in droves. One told me it was "worth" going out in the rain for the candy! 

Oh for the stamina of youth again! 

Autumn Leaves

Over twenty years ago while walking in town I saw red-orange leaves against the clear blue autumn sky. The image stuck in my head. About fifteen years ago I taught a continuing adult education class on "old fashioned" quilting, and made Maple Leaf blocks to demonstrate hand sewing quilt blocks.

And it came to me to use those pieced blocks with the image of those leaves to make a quilt.

I used all hand dyed fabrics, some purchased and some which I had dyed. The quilt is hand appliqued and hand quilted with a 'curlicue' design.

The branches in the central panel are knotted in places. I used bleach to remove color from the central leaves, and made dots with a Pigma permanent marker for shadowing.

Fall was always my favorite time of year. I loved the colors and the cool weather.

Now I am older, it makes me think of the coming winter, the cold, and the long sunless days until spring.

My Favorite Season

I have always loved fall. I love the colors. When I was a girl my family would take a fall trip from Tonawanda NY to the Allegheny Mountains to Putt's farm.  I don't even know how we knew the Putts. But I loved the colored trees on the mountain sides, orange, red, yellow, and brown.

I love the cool nights, great for sleeping. I feel invigorated in the fall. When I was a girl, I loved that September meant returning to school. I loved the paper and pencils and books, learning new things, being with all the other kids.

Here are some of my favorite autumn pics, taken Up North when visiting my dad's and brother's cabins.

 Kili

Lake St Helen

My brother's cabin outside of West Branch, MI

I made this quilt years after seeing red leaves against a brilliant blue sky when walking in Hillsdale, MI. The image stayed in my mind. I used hand dyed fabrics, bleach and pen for details.

Autumn Leaves

I have always loved fall best of all the seasons. I love the colors of the leaves, the gold and reds, the browns and oranges. When I was a girl, every fall my family took a day trip to the Allegheny Mountains to see friends on a farm. I loved how the colored trees looked on the hillsides, huge rounded masses of color next to color.

My mom was an oil painter, and her earliest paintings were copies of Robert Wood landscapes, trees in autumn. This still life painting hangs in my aunt's house, and was Mom painted it in the early 1960s.

When our son was little, we would walk into town together as a family, sometimes to go to the school playground and sometimes to visit the ice cream stand. One autumn, I noticed red leaves on a branch against a brilliant blue sky. I later took a photograph, and some years later it became the center of a quilt.

I used bleach and a fine permanent marker for leaf details. The branches are knotted in places. I then added a border of pieced leaves. It is all hand appliqued and hand quilted.The fabrics are all hand dyed, some purchased and some I dyed.

I also have a nice collection of handkerchiefs featuring leaves, and have always planned to make an entire hanky quilt of leaves!

The trees are still green here along the West Michigan lake shore. A little red is showing here and there, so I expect a glorious riot of color is to come. Nature's last hurrah before its long sleep.