Wishing You

Happy Halloween from Valerean.

Needs Binding, But Done

This is the last stitch I made hand-quilting the Happiness quilt. I'll be spending Halloween binding it in between handing out candy to the kids.

I really love this quilt. It came out even prettier than I thought it would.

I especially appreciate how it got me through Hurricane Ian.

It was almost impossible to get a shot of the stitching on the back, so here's a darkened version. It's much whiter than this. :)

Rustic Honeycrisp Apple Tart

I've been looking for some small, low-sugar fall desserts for me and my guy, and decided to try making this recipe for an apple tart.

I tweaked the recipe a bit by skipping the egg wash of the pastry, and using sugarfree apricot preserves for the glaze. It came out very good and light, and reminded me a lot of apple danish.

Lakeside

Since the weather has finally grown cooler my guy and I went to the big lake near our home to walk.

This time of year the sunsets become really beautiful, and when the water is calm like this it's like being part of the sky.

Get out doors while you can. There is no better way to exercise.

Latest Fabscrap Haul, Part Two

As promised, here are pics of the rest of my latest order from Fabscrap. Let's start with the green scrap pack.

Green happens to be my favorite color, and I wasn't disappointed in the variety of shades, patterns and fabrics I got in this pack.

I use green most often in my art quilts, so I expect a lot of these will go into some future projects.

The purple scrap pack had plenty of fun fabrics in it, including some wonderful patterned sheer pieces.

Got another part of a sleeve in this pile. Eventually I may have enough garment pieces to make a jacket. :)

Also included was a gorgeous piece of burnout velvet in a rose pattern. That I'm saving for the next crazy quilt project.

The cotton multi scrap pack also didn't disappoint. I got a few trimmed garment sections, lovely flannels and even some denim.

As with the lace the quality and variety really impressed me.

So what am I planning to do with all this rescued fabric? Stay tuned to the blog in November, when I begin my new sewing challenge to use it all up. :)

Latest Fabscrap Haul, Part One

I made another order from Fabscrap, this time for scrap packs of lace, green fabric, purple fabric, and multi cotton. Today I'll show you just the lace pile.

I was really astonished at the colors and variety of lace I received. I've always wanted to make a lace quilt of my own design, but I rarely use lace except for crazy quilting, so I never acquired enough to make a try. Now I can.

All the pieces are very generous, and the patterns are all different.

Some of the pieces are definitely intricate and probably expensive, too.

Having all these colors and patterns to work with is so amazing. The quality of the entire pile is like new. I never expected the lace to be this nice, and once more I'm astonished that this might otherwise be in a landfull. Since lace fabric tends to be expensive, to buy even 1/8 yards of this in all these colors would cost major $$$.

Stop in tomorrow and I'll show you pics of the rest of the haul.

Halfway There

Making some good progress on the Happiness quilt; about half of the patchwork handquilted now (technically as of 10/17, when I'm actually writing this post.)

I really like these colors. As in really, really like them.

I like the simplicty of the peach thread on the white backing fabric. I'm going to try to finish this by the end of October.

264 Days

As of October 13th I finished the fifth and final novel in my latest series for work.

Here's the whole series (a bit dishevelled after I jostled the pile around during Hurrican Ian.) I began this project on January 23rd of this year, so it took 264 days for me to write 5 books that average about 67K each. I've been writing about 1800 words per day (with a few week-long breaks) so this new split morning/evening writing schedule is really working well for me, I think.

Farm Trip

The high prices at the supermarket are getting even higher here, so we took a trip out to our favorite local farm to see if we could manage more for our dollar there.

It's pumpkin season, of course, and they had lots (I really wish I liked pumpkin, but nope.)

I have peppers in the freezer from the summer garden, or I would have grabbed these. I opted for some sweet potatoes and red onions, and a big bag of corn on the cob.

The owners always do a nice display with this old wagon; in the summer they load it up with watermelon. Alas, autumn is here.

I was also happy to find a bottle of raw honey from a local beekeeper for sale. If you can support your local growers, please do. We're also going to make more of effort to get out there as many indy farms took a hard hit from Hurricane Ian.

Dream Job

Katherine now works on a very small island and commutes there every day by boat. This is one of the views from her workplace.

The university set up a lab for her, too, which is small but has everything she needs for her eDNA work and teaching her students.

High Prices

As she has to pack her lunch for work (no restaurants or takeout on the little island where she works) Kat went food shopping, and promptly got a big dose of sticker shock. For the small amount of food you see here she paid $100.49. Most of it she said was on sale, too. I looked at the receipt she sent a snap of and just the two rolls of paper towels were $9.99. Last week I paid $13.00 for twelve rolls of paper towels and groused about it.

Living in a place where most of the commodities we take for granted have to be imported means paying a lot more for them, I guess. I see a lot of banana and cereal breakfasts and PB & J lunches in her immediate future.

Progress

Last night I finished hand-quilting the first row of patchwork on my latest quilt. I'm trying to think of a name for it that has nothing to do with hurricanes.

The thread I chose looks nice with all the different fabrics, so that was a good call. I really like working on this quilt because it feels joyful and yet so calming.

Maybe I'll call it Happiness.

A Few Casualties

Hurricane Ian did a bit of damage to the garden, mostly shredding our infant pole beans and flattening the corn. Yet again I was surprised at how much survived the storm intact.

Before the hurricane we put all of our plants in containers inside the garage, like this pepper we salvaged from the summer garden.

The watermelon and our herbs likewise hunkered down with us.

We lost one baby pepper from this plant, but the rest are doing fine.

I think it will take a nuclear bomb to bother the cucumber vines, which are flowering now.

Our pole beans were only a couple of weeks old, and their fragile leaves ended up completely shredded, so we removed the remains and planted new.

Happily it looks like the corn plants are going to make it.

More Fab Scraps

My second order from Fabscrap arrived, and it's three pounds of the coolest scrap fabric I've ever seen. Front left to right: Cotton Multi, Neutrals, and Blue.

Let's start with the Cotton Multi pile. Lots of nice-size pieces, all cotton but different types of fabric, all very clean and in new condition. Some pieces have a few wrinkles, some thread bits, label bits and sticky tape, but that's all easy enough to deal with when I want to use them.

I'm also getting a better sense of what these fabrics were likely used for (mostly garments) before they were sent for recycling. The quality is so amazing it kind of hurts to think these scraps might have otherwise ended up in a landfill.

I got part of a sleeve in this pack, as you can see at the bottom right of this pic. That's so neat.

The neutrals pack was mostly blacks and grays, but I got a couple pieces of gorgeous wool and some intriguing knits.

I suspect some of the pieces came from someone making suits. :)

Another surprise: some very nice, big pieces included in the blue pack.

I love the prints in this pack, too.

This huge piece might actually belong to the neutrals pile. Anyway, you can see I have an abundance of inspiring fabric with which to work, and I'm already sketching some ideas on how to use them. As I complete something I'll be sure to post pics on the blog so you can see what I do with my fab scraps. :)