Fall is in the Air!

When I moved into my house, the back patio was covered by a grape arbor. How nice, I thought. And then it came time to pick grapes. Holy moly! Those two vines are most prolific. I have picked and washed and stemmed and frozen and bagged 27 quarts of grapes in the last few days. (They have to be spread on a cookie sheet to freeze, then when frozen, scooped up and put in quart bags). I have given plastic grocery bags of grapes to my neighbors, my friends, my squirrels, the neighbor’s raccoon, and the neighborhood birds. I still have grapes left to pick. Not to mention the sweeping of the patio on an almost hourly basis—when the bees will let me.

When the end of this month gets here, two of my Sisters of Choice will drive over from Seattle and we will spend a busy 3-day weekend turning those 27 qts of grapes, the 25 qts of apricots, 15 qts of cherries, and 4 qts of crab apples in my freezer, plus the berries and plums and whatever they bring into jams and butters and ketchups. Last year in our jamming session (frenzy might be a better word) we put up 240 jars. This year, we’re going to use the pint jars, too (last year we used 4, 8, and 12 oz jars). We may not have as many jars, but we won’t be in such a frenzy. We hope.

My Gratefuls:
1. My Family of Choice
2. Title IX
3. End of Apartheid
4. That I like my son’s girlfriend
5. That my son cleaned the kitchen last night-if only to impress his girlfriend.

My Wonderment:
With all the crap going on in the world that Love still persists!

Quote for the week:
“The older we get—the better we were!” — Senator Ted Kennedy

I’m not about to tackle a quilt with grapes, but here is my first appliqué project. It is a Hawai’ian style quilt only I made the pattern using leaves off the fig tree where I used to live, and the fig. It is a single piece of purple fabric hand sewn onto the cream. No one at the quilt store told me not to use batik fabrics for appliqué—it’s much too dense. I’m still quilting it. I call it: Figlets

This is another appliqué quilt top. I used fusible webbing and machine stitching for this one. I told my ex boyfriend if he wanted a quilt, I’d make him one but he would have to buy the fabric and I’d get to keep the scraps. He agreed. I finally got it finished, quilted, and given to him—with a bill he gladly paid. It is a table topper, but his (now) wife won’t let him put it on the table, so it hangs on the wall. I call it: Done

I love tee shirts, but often find I have a mated pair and end up with way too many. Or they get too old (or too small) to be socially acceptable, but I still like them. I took several of my more favorite ones and turned them into a quilt. It is my heavy, winter quilt, and I just love to snuggle under it—when the temps drops way down. I call it: Warm!