Photography

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Winter Wonderland

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To celebrate the start of winter today we went out to enjoy our freshly fallen snow.We live on a glacial moraine that is filled with interesting geological features. Today we walked up a kame in the state recreation area. You can see the cone shaped hill there in the right side of the photo below.Michigan is really a pretty interesting place to live. You may remember when I wrote about the kettle hole in our yard."The hill in front of you, known as a kame, was formed thousands of years ago when water from melting glacial ice flowed through a large crack in the ice. Glacial melt water carried sand, gravel, and rocks, depositing them at the base of the crack to form the kame.  To help picture this, imagine how sand flows through and hourglass and creates a rounded pile of sand in the bottom of the hourglass."I'm thrilled to have everyone home for a few days. Let the festivities begin!Happy Solstice. 

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Sandhill Cranes

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This week we went to the bird sanctuary near us and watched the Sandhill Cranes come in for the night. They spend the night in that wetland area you see in the first photo.At first we saw a few small groups of cranes flying in. Then more and more larger groups and many groups at once. It was fun to hear them calling as they flew. The ones already on the ground in the wetland area would answer back.I'm posting these pictures at a larger size so that you can click on them and see some of the groups of cranes in the distance.(in the photos above and below you can see about 6 groups of cranes in the distance, surrounding the sun below the cloud)Note the groups in the distance below just over the trees.So. many. cranes.This sanctuary is one of a few places where the Sandhill Cranes congregate before heading south together in mid November. We feel lucky to have seen so many on one visit. There were thousands coming in while we were there. Certainly, it the most we have seen in one night. It was a beautiful evening for bird watching.

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Family Time

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We've been trying to squeeze in a bit more family time before everyone heads back to school. Yesterday we went for an early morning boat trip and picnic. We must have gotten M up a bit too early.We saw a number of Sandhill Cranes.It was a lovely morning.We have one more week before the school routine starts up again.I'll miss having everyone around but I'm kinda looking forward to a bit of uninterrupted time in the sewing room while miss P is at school. I have a lot of projects to work on. 

Cover Girl

Look who's on the cover of the new Generation Q magazine!P and I had fun earlier in the summer taking photos for the cover and the article inside.  Admittedly, the cover photo took us several outings as I felt a bit of pressure to get everything just right.  P was a real sport about it and pretty patient with me so I thank her for her cooperation. I was also a little nervous about taking photos of our house in its state of unfinished renovation. I worked on taking pictures over a period of days. We even staged a tea party with tiny shortbread cookie cutter cookies. It's all in the preparations, right? I sent them a bunch of different photos and I don't know which ones they included.I enjoyed emailing and talking with Melissa and Jake on the phone. They were very patient, helpful, and easy to talk to. I am still amazed that they wanted to write an article about little ol' me.They say it will be in selected newsstands later this month. I can hardly wait for it to arrive! You can read more about it here.Information on the cover quilt, Twinkling Stars, can be found HERE.I suppose I should go write out the directions for the quilt that started it all and will be in the NEXT issue of GenQ.   

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Butterfly Walk

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It was a beautiful day yesterday and we went for a butterfly walk with some people who really know their butterflies.We saw about 15 different species of butterflies,and also found a few praying mantis.I'm glad that the super heat of summer has broken enough for us to turn off our air conditioner units - at least for a few days. We are enjoying a lovely breeze through open windows today.Now, if we could just get some rain...

Instagram Photos

Narrow hand appliquéd bias strips. 1/16” quilting lines not going over the appliqué. I’m about a month in on the quilting and ALMOST finished. Whoop! Quilted with Invisalign on top and Decobob in the bobbin. Threads by @wo
This summer we watched my two oldest grand kids one day a week. Towards the end of the summer they started making projects on their own in the sewing room. They made lots of little projects from my scrap basket including pillow cases and tiny quilts
Here’s the layout with all but one block done. I’ll finish that last block when I get more of the baby poop green/mustard fabric. I put out the call and the internet provided! This top will be finished soon! This is a remake of an 1870s
I’m finally getting around to putting these stars together. I made the stars a few years ago and have been on the hunt for the perfect setting fabrics. These @carolynfriedlander prints are the perfect match for the 1800s reproduction prints in