wooden butterflies

One of my very creative sons built a bench for me a year ago at Thanksgiving. He and the wood he used are from the very wet Tacoma, Washington area. The bench and I live in an area that gets very hot and dry in the summer, in fact on the day that it was 106 degrees the humidity was 8 percent. My bench dried out a bit and developed two large cracks. So this year at Thanksgiving the bench was repaired with six butterflies, three on the seat and three on the back. Now it is really a super cool bench!

My other very creative son brought and installed my new granite counter tops in my now finished kitchen. They are fabulous-- I love them!

I had a very good Thanksgiving.

Autumn leaf

Every fall I pick up leaves as when I'm out walking. This year I was just going to take pictures of them so I wouldn't end up with a pile of dried up leaves in the studio. But this leaf just had to come home with me this morning. I love the variations of color and the shadowy edges.

The green monster

Not a very good picture, but I don't have a tall enough space to hang the top so I can photo the entire quilt. Actually it's just the top, I finished piecing it a couple of weeks ago but never got the picture taken. It's the top that I started in the Kaffe Fasset class I took a month ago. All but four of the fabrics are ones that I've dyed and printed myself. Dh thinks it's garish, my friend Barbara that I took the class with thinks it's serene, what do you think? I think it's very green and until I moved to Idaho four years ago, green was my least favorite color. It's still not my favorite, but I am liking it more.

Road trip

We had to make an unplanned trip to Nevada earlier this week and one of the ways I occupy myself in the passenger seat is to take pictures. So this is what I looked at for a little over seven hours each way. Where we're going and where we've been.

Actually I do some of my best thinking on long trips, I just kind of zone out and let my mind go. In the past I've come up with some of my best quilt and fabric ideas while sitting and staring at the desert go by. This time I was concentrating on the colors of the high desert, the very soft muted browns, grays, greens, yellows and purples. They are very difficult colors to match, but I may give it another try.

At different times of the day the shadows are wonderful. This time of the year the mountains look like very soft discharged velveteen. The skies can also be quite beautiful and I love looking at the cloud formations. Sunsets can also be quite beautiful, but we were headed in the wrong direction and I couldn't get a good picture of one. Sunrises are probably good too, but Don's never up and ready quite early enough for them.

This weekend we head east to Twin Falls, only a 31/2 hr trip. Then we should be home for the next two months, yeah!!! Maybe I can get something done. I've finished all the painting (my part of the remodel), so Studio B is calling me.