October 6th 2008

It's another Monday and I cannot believe it! It is about 46 outside right now. We had three really bad frosts this past week...buy buy to Mark's peppers. I had him bring in my pots of snap dragons and green peppers. They are back on the porch for now doing well.

Isn't this pretty...if you enlarge you can really see the fence...just up the road from our house. I think it would make a lovely quilted wall hanging.

Okay, you really have to enlarge this one to see the bald eagle. We were driving along and there were many many eagles in the sky. We saw this dirt road and turned into a sand quarry and yep, dead dear, before this shot there were lots of bald eagles mature and immature; turkey vultures; ravens...as we walked closer this was the only one who held his ground and then we got too close and off he went. I wanted to park in this little side place in the shade of the trees. I believe it was far enough away they wouldnt feel threatened but Mark is so freaking impatient that he just drove away...creep... :-(

Finally made it to Ewen and Richard and Kimberly and SweetPea were home. Sheri was out working like usual...hardly ever see that gal! We did walk down to where she was working before we left for a quick visit. Was very nice to see her, looks like she has lost more weight, she looks great, a little tired but great! After a nice visit, Richard brings out his old gun and since Mark has never fired it, off to a rock quarry for some target shooting. Mark hit the target his second shot...went right through 1/4 steel...pretty scarry. The dog didn't like at all and begged to come into car with me. She sat quietly behind my seat for the rest of the shooting. The guys had a grand time of it!

and finally....I picked some concord grapes at my friend, Rebecca's house on Thursday...about half or more of a large brown paper grocery bad. The first half are in the bowl (that is the largest mixing bowl tupperware makes by the way) and now the sink is over half full with more grapes. It took several hours to pick them all off the stems and disgard the old ones and stuff. I am going to put them through my juicemanII...it gives me the juice, about half the skins and spits the seeds and everything else out the back...works perfect. I think removing the grapes from the stems is the most tiring and time consuming part of the deal. But nothing tastes quite as good as fresh homemade concord grape jam...welshes doesn't even come close!

I have all my blocks cut out for my new WOW quilt. It will be about 72" x 108"...it will acutally be a bit larger since I will add the half blocks all the way around so it will have a scalloped edge. It took all of my hand dyed fqs I had...took one fq for each 12" block...I have a queen size sheet set zippered bag full of scrapes now...which will force me into applique, by machine of course :-) Still working on the 6", that one will take awhile to finish but when it is completed it will be a real stunner for sure. Better get to the juicing of the grapes.