Mountain Weekend Fun

Another beautiful weekend in the North Carolina mountains...Saturday was potato harvest day in the garden across the creek.

It was a lot of fun...beautiful location..

.

good friends..cute baby...

trees turning color...

Charlie put out some corn on the cob with husks near his deer feeder last weekend. There was not a kernel left on any of the ears, so he decided to move the stealth cam to see who was really eating the corn...the deer, the squirrels, the raccoons? NO!

He's ba-ack!

Yes, our friendly (I hope) neighborhood black bear, who had not shown up in any of the stealth cam photos for the last month. We thought The Bear Went Over the Mountain...but no!

Tomorrow is my Art Quilt Bee meeting. Topic is Journal Quilts...more later!

Mountain Fun

It was another gorgeous weekend in the North Carolina mountains. Charlie and I went up on Thursday night. On Friday afternoon, we got to meet my newest great-niece, Lacy. Sixteen days old! What a sweetheart! I caught her smiling in her sleep in this picture.We did not have our grandchildren there this time, but we enjoyed watching everyone else's.We spent lots of time fishing in the pond, putting our chairs in the creek and watching the little ones, and of course, riding up the mountain on our Gator. The weather was sunny and warm most of the weekend. Look at the happy clouds and blue sky!Mother Nature decorates the Christmas trees in the field during the summer.

So pretty on the mountain! Charlie and I picked blackberries on Saturday afternoon, and Mary made a cobbler for dessert. I did most of my picking from the Gator, since at our first stop I almost stepped on a very big snake. Just a black snake, but ....The wildflowers were abundant, with lots of black-eyed Susans.

We took one more ride on Sunday afternoon, and it looked like we might get a storm. Look at these scary snag trees!

This picture reminds me of the John Denver song: "There's a storm across the valley, clouds are rolling in..."

However, we only had a few sprinkles before we left for home. We stopped in Cary for a birthday dinner with our son Dave and his wife Emily. Here they are with their new ECU flag.

Dave wanted us to try some Thai food and Sushi for his birthday dinner...something we normally would never had experienced. It was an excellent delight!

Tired today...I have a customer's Christmas quilt on the Gammill today, so I guess I know what I will be doing!

Mountain Sunset

Not much blogging activity from me this week...that big weekend at the beach wore me out, and I have not been very productive in the quilting department.

I did finish the Mountain Sunset quilt in time for Charlie's birthday. I had it pretty flat, but after traveling to the beach, it could use a bit more time being straightened. He liked it. :)

This one has quite a bit of sparkle due to shiny threads, some crystal organza fog, and a little Angelina. It also is a bit dimensional, especially the dark green hills in the background.

And here is something too cute not to show off...new baby Ragen. This would make a good Anne Geddes image inside a rosebud, wouldn't it!

We are traveling again this weekend, this time to the beautiful mountain town of Asheville, North Carolina. My husband Charlie, the old Eagle Scout, will be administering the Eagle Award to our nephew, Tom Logan, on Saturday. Quite an honor to be asked to do this. Congratulations to Tom on a great accomplishment!

A little more Christmas...and first felted pieces

Here are a few more holiday photos. My brother-in-law Richard has a new orange kitten named Tigger. Doesn't he look like he belongs on a December calendar here?
Soon after that shot, he began eating the pinecones. He and CJ spent most of their time chasing and teasing each other.
We had a new great-nephew this year. Here is my BIL ,Grandpa Grady, with his son Philip's baby, Zach. He was a very friendly baby who looks like he is also very well-fed!

Yesterday I finally started playing with my new toy, the Baby Lock embellishing machine. I started out with a small pink felt square and added wool roving and Angelina, yarns, and sari ribbon.

It is great to just move the piece under the machine, and never have to worry about starting and ending threads! Later I added a piece of sheer fabric with gold spots, and burned some of it off with the heat gun. That sort of finished the edges of the felt.

I found an issue of Quilting Arts with some felted backgrounds for landscapes, so I tried a couple of those. You use netting on the back and top, layer yarns and roving in between, safety pin, and needle-felt. These were fun and could be some future postcards.

Finally, I got a piece of lime-green fleece and used most of my pile of thread, ribbon and yarn bits. It ended up looking sort of like a strange-colored forest. The fleece really got distorted, though. Probably too stretchy to make a good base.

On all of these pieces, I liked the back side as well as the front. Better even, on this green one!