first world worries

i do realize that i begin to seem a little obsessed about this, but seriously...

i.
cannot.
take.
a.
poetic.
shot.
of.
an.
almost-empty.
plate.

not to save my life.

this, it looks like a big fat mess that needs to be scraped into the chicken bucket (tho' i do love our plates and silverware).  and yet, flickr abounds with people who master this particular genre. i'm just clearly not one of them.

i'm not even sure why it bothers me as much as it seems to.

and it is a lame thing to worry about. i realize.

i'll try to stop now. i promise.

more magical mushrooms

purple velvet on a green carpet

salmon pink

blue velvet 

stones that look like a broken, old mushroom

more light blue velvet

stitched around the edges

perfect stitches around the edge

lipstick

frog and a slug

shell-like

teeny tiny world

once again, i'm not so great at identifying these, but i do love finding and photographing them on a walk in the woods. i'm amazed at the range of colors mushrooms and fungi come in.  next year, i'm going to be prepared to use them for dyeing, but with harvesting the garden bounty and honey and making cider and getting ready to build a new kitchen and such things, it feels like too much to try to tackle mushroom dyes as well.  so that will have to wait. and the pretty pictures will have to suffice in the meantime.

viking imaginings

there are times when you come upon a scene that transports you, just for a moment, back in time. i imagine that this scene wasn't all that different in viking times...cows grazing on the shore and a long viking warship at anchor in the lake. a crisp autumn day, birdsong in the air and a light breeze of the sort that the vikings undoubtedly enjoyed. i didn't see any actual vikings, but i suppose they were at the nearby kro, having lunch and a few beers...just like in the old days.

it kind of makes me want to pillage something...

real life

flickr and the blogosphere are full of empty plates with achingly artistically-arranged crumbs photographed in cafés flooded with perfect light. but real life is something else...it's a photo of the day left 'til well after dark in the artificial yellow light of a drab kitchen where a busy family dashed in and out, grabbing something to eat and leaving behind not-so-artfully-arranged crumbs. and milk cartons and open boxes of crackers. and a wadded up piece of cheesecloth stained crimson by elderberries. sometimes i miss reality in cyberspace.

cut out and keep quilting

here it is, finished at last! the cut out & keep quilt that i made for kristina. i struggled a bit with this one. first, because it was for kristina and i wanted to get it "right," but also because i love the cut out & keep fabrics that heather moore did for cloud 9 so much that it felt like i had to do justice to them.  so suffice it to say that this one took me much longer than it should have, tho' if i'd thought about it, what i needed to do was there in the name all along - i just needed to cut it out and keep quilting! but, sometimes the muse is wily.

i was inspired to do some slightly random lines of quilting by the quilting done by filminthefridge on this quilt. the batting i used was natural cotton and rather thick, so this ended up quite heavy - it will be comfy-cozy for winter for sure. and i can tell you that after two days spent quilting it, my arms and shoulders were very tired.  quilting is more work than you would think.

next, i've moved on to a quilt in autumn-inspired solids. and i've got some bags along the lines of the one i made for sabin on the go. and a new stack of stitched-up photos. apparently once the muse was tamed, she got down to work in earnest.

to make room for the new stitched-up photos, the remaining ones in my shop are on sale - 25% off! - just typed in STITCHED at checkout.

feeling a need to be grateful

the best part about having a lot of heart-shaped stones lying around is that they make you think about things you love. because you can't help but think happy, grateful thoughts when your windowsill is full of hearts (even if it is also full of spider poo and dead flies).

right now, on this rainy day, i'm grateful for:

~ that at least one of our chickens (i think it's the same one) has begun to lay eggs.

~ baby hedgehogs.

~ having a really good riding teacher.

~ hedgehog sneezes.

~ leaves that are changing color.

~ acorns on the ground.

~ and have i mentioned the baby hedgehog?

~ potato and bacon omelette for dinner.

~ the fact that people love to tell their stories.

~ that my life is my life and not that my job is my life.

~ eggplants and tomatoes in the greenhouse.

~ elderberries.

what are you grateful for today?

baby animal alert!

i found this adorable little hedgehog toddling around in the garden this evening. i'd been hoping to catch a glimpse of a baby one all summer, but hadn't seen one 'til today. she may very well be the cutest thing i've ever seen. and yes, i gave her a rather big pile of cat food. we've got to fatten her up and make sure she can make it through the winter.