Huzzah! The last Christmas knit is done!

Nothing fancy – just basic sock math and contrasting heels and toes. I do love the yarn. It’s West Yorkshire Spinners BFL prints. It’s lovely and soft and makes fantastically warm, heavy socks.

Just one present left to finish now, and it’s a quilt. So that means the next things on the needles is something for me!

I finally found a new Leader and Ender project…. sort of.

After I finished the top for the Time to Sew quilt, I was left with several 2″ sashing strips in off white, as well as a decent sized chunk of the fabric.

I rarely work with pieces smaller than 2.5″, but I didn’t want to waste those strips. So I cut them in 2″ squares, and started collecting 2″ squares from my other leftovers.

Scrappy four patches make great L&E blocks because they are just so mindless.

My original plan was to put them in a Jacob’s ladder layout… something like this:

Though not that big… I did something similar in my Follow the Leader quilt, and I love it!

But then I was over on Mangofeet’s blog… if you follow her, you know she makes the most AMAZING quilts. One of the blocks she’s been making is the Sand Castle…

And they are just so cool too? And now I can’t decide what all my little four patches should become when they  are done. What do you think?

While we’re deciding, here’s where all my other projects are at:

• Celtic Dreams – Four blocks down, two to go! (More on that soon)
• Garden Trellis  – This was the old L&E project. I have to cut the white squares and get this top together.
• Pinkerville quilt – This one doesn’t have a proper name yet, but I’ve made a few blocks and I love them!
• Unbe-Leaf-able – Those leaves are falling fast. I hope to finish this top soon!
• Leader and Ender quilt – As you see above!

 

Last weekend, we headed on down the road to see Dave’s Mom and Grandma. Dave’s Mom’s been trying to clean out some of their clutter. She knows I love my gardens, so she asked if I wanted a few terra cotta pots she had hanging about.

They are big, and those babies don’t come cheap, so I said sure! I won’t worry about filling them until next year, but it’s going to be fun deciding what to put in them!

When we got there, the pots were sitting on top of an old wooden plant stand. Someone was throwing it out, and she couldn’t stand to see it go in the garbage, though she didn’t have an immediate use for it.

But I did! So you can bet your bottom dollar it got packed into Dory along with the pots! (I miss my sporty Stella, but I do love Dory for her cargo space!!!!)

As soon as we got home, I rearranged the back patio.

These are all my house plants that spend the summer outdoors. It will be another couple weeks or so before I bring them  in for the winter.  When that happens, I think the wooden stand will get a fresh paint job. I just love giving new life to old things!

“Mooooom…. he’s doing it again….”

Here’s my last quilt for the week! And it’s one I’m so excited about!

A Fish Called Rhonda is quilted and bound and isn’t it fabulous. I love everything about this quilt. I love it’s colourful ocean prints, it’s fantastic fishy blocks, and I especially love it’s quilting…

I did my usual loops, but here and there in the blue background I added little doodle fish. Aren’t they cute?

This back is a matching whale and narwhal print and I had enough of it to use it for the binding too.

It’s a nice size – 48″ x 70″, perfect to top a small bed, or cuddle up with while watching a movie. I  suggest Finding Nemo!

And with that, all my completed tops are quilted. I guess I better go finish some more!

The second completed quilt is Starflight, the baby quilt  top I showed you a few weeks back.

This quilt started with a charm pack (the grey and white pieces) and the lime (leftover from Rowan’s quilt. Once complete, it wasn’t quite big enough, so I built it out with some pieces from my stash.

I pulled pieces that echoed the bits of red and blue in the charm pack prints.

To tie it all back together, I bound it with leftover scraps from the fat quarter prints.

You know I love to put flannel on the back of quilts, especially baby quilts… and I found this perfect piece at Lens. It wasn’t in the clearance bin, but it was on sale. The colour was ideal, and it even had bits of blue and red to echo the front.

This quilt is about 43″ square, a nice respectable size for a baby quilt!

Christmas is just three months away, but I’m ready! Or at least I’m very close.

This is the beginning of the last gift I have to knit! I still have Dave’s quilt and a couple gift cards on my list, but this is the last with knitting needles. It’s another pair of heavy man socks.

If it looks familiar, it’s because I made my brother a pair last year with this yarn (colourway is Blue Tit). When I bought the yarn, I thought I’d need two balls for a pair of socks – but with a separate colour for cuffs, heels and toes, I’m able to get one pair out of one ball. I also have another ball in the owl, woodpigeon and bullfinch.

I don’t think these will be on the needles long… then the options of what to cast on will be absolutely endless!

 

There was a flurry of quilting over the weekend, so buckle up! Here’s the first one….

Rainbow Block Party!

And isn’t it a gorgeous rainbow? I don’t know about you, but I can’t look at a rainbow in any form without smiling! It’s another simple design with a big impact.

As you know, all those blocks were made as Leaders and Enders. There’s 48 of them, and they added up to a respectable sized quilt. It’s not huge, but at 68″ x 76″ it’s not small either.

I was hoping to find some rainbow fabric in the clearance bin at Lens. I had no luck there but did find this big floral print that works almost as well. ( I have a nice big piece of it left too!). For the binding, I used the green butterfly print that was leftover from another rainbow quilt. (Cabins at Rainbow Camp).

All in all it’s another wonderful finish!

Yesterday, I alluded to the fact that the Monarch continue to be regular visitors to the garden.

It’s not every day, like it was, but at least every other day, there’s one or two flitting through.

The love the butterfly bush the most, but they flit about a lot of other flowers too, like the hollyhock above.

I also recently learned how to tell the difference between a male and female. Above is the female. Below is the male.

You can tell the male by the two black spots on his hind wing. Can’t see them?

Neat eh?

Here’s another male!

And now you’ve learned something new!

And for extra credit: The above White Cabbage Butterfly is a male. Below is the female.

How can you tell? The male has one white dot on his upper wing, the female has two!

Another Saturday, another stroll around the garden!

This big beautiful sunflower greets me every morning as I open the curtains. It’s so cheering to see her peeking over the fence top.

This is the view from the other side of the fence. Such a happy bunch! I can’t wait to expand the gardens on this side of the fence next spring.

I told you the Mums were going to be incredible  once they started blooming. Aren’t they just incredible!

The ones out front are much smaller (less sun) but such a pretty fall colour!

The butterfly bush continues to bloom and we’re still getting winged visitors almost every day! (More on that tomorrow).

I’ve also made an addition of this small, pink heath. I bought one of these not long after we first moved in, but I didn’t make it. It was a pretty sad specimen when I bought it, so I’m betting I have better luck with this one.

I’m enjoying fresh raspberries every day.

And the peach Foxglove is enjoying another round of blooms.

The Sedum is now in full bloom and it’s such a bold, beautiful pink. I have chunks of this Sedum throughout the various gardens – it’s an important late-season source of food for pollinators.

And in between all these other blooms, the marigolds are still going strong.

And the petunias are going absolutely bonkers!