It's been busy & finding my new normal.

Life has been busy & I have fallen behind on my blogging. Here's a quick recap since the last post.

Mom & I went to the Lake of the Ozarks for two days of workshops & trunkshows with the Lake Are Quilt Network. The Lake Are Quilt Network is made up of 5 smaller guilds in the area that get together & have speakers or workshops twice a year.  We had a fabulous time & met some wonderful quilters.

For the workshops I asked the quilters to bring their scraps in bags, buckets or baskets whatever they had available. They spread out & dumped out their scraps & had a great time!

We were working on my pattern "Prairie Stones". It's a fun block with 1 set in/partil seam. 

    

      My Tuesday group

     My Wednesday group

Thank you for having me, Mom & I had a fantastic time!

A quick update on lil squirt the tiny calf. He's doing very well. He is still very small but he is growing & is starting to find his moo (it's not that impressive yet but it'll get there). Here's a pic of him yesterday playing in the hay feeder.

On the quilty front I have been working on Smith Mountain Mornings (Bonnie Hunters workshop). I'm half way done making the blocks 60 done 61 more to go!

My impatient nature is getting the better of me & it's making me very anxious to get it done. I'm looking forward to seeing it done. For some odd reason when I started putting the blocks together I was using pins, crazy head because the seams were not matching up. I stopped using the pins & bingo my blocks looked much better. I'd like to have it done before my next guild meeting but we'll see. I like to have deadlines. It helps keep me focused with a goal. 

I hope that y'all are having a fantastic day. The weather here is getting colder, which I'm loving! Turn that furnace off & open the windows! Love that fresh air with no pollen! Kiddo is marching in a Halloween parade in a few hours. He's going to be a construction worker (easy costume & easy to play his saxaphone). More later on,

Vicky

The delinquent blogger

I am a delinquent blogger. I've been so busy & I've just not sat down to type out a blog post. It all started a few weeks ago when it was time to pick pears. We've got a very old pear tree in the front yard that produces enormus amounts of pears. Between my friend Maria, my kiddo & me we got the whole tree picked in one day. We have to use the backhoe so that she can reach the top of the tree!

This tree makes beautiful pears

Here's this years pear harvest

That's a lot of pears! These are just the good ones. We sorted them & gave the small ones or the ones that weren't quite good enough to the cows. 

It has taken a few weeks for them to rippen in the garage but they are ready to be worked up. Maria has come up twice & then she came up again this past Sunday with Randi to can pears. We spent 5 hours & 10 gallons of pears to make 33 pints of cinnamon pears. They are yummy!

On the quilting front I made myself finish my current Civil War scrappy quilt before I could work on Bonnies Smith Mountain Morning quilt. I finally got it done this past week & was able to give it to my LAQ at guild meeting. Here it is some what laid out on my living room floor

 

I tweeked the pattern & well it didn't quite turn out like my sketch. I didn't figure the row width correctly & the quilts dimensions turned out to be 87x119. Holy Cow that was long! I decided to take the botton row off & not put on borders. I will finish it with a scrappy binding & call it good. I really like how it has turned out & am really happy to call it done!

So now I can turn my attention to the batik beauty!!! Yeah!!!!

On the cow/farm front it's been nuts. The fall calves have started to arrive. We've had a set of twins with one of the babies not claimed by its momma. So another cow stepped up & adopted it & is feeding it along with her own. She's a rock star! About a week or so ago we had Squirt. He is so small! This is him & his momma when he was first born,

We are guessing he weighed about 40lbs when he was first born (which is incredibly small. We like them to be in the 80-90lbs range when born). I could scoop him up in one had & carry him. We brought him & his momma to the house so that we could feed him with a bottle & watch him. His momma is not a tall cow but he could walk under her belly & have about a 2" clearance between him & her.

He's doing much better eating his bottle & trying to eat more from momma, which is very good!

Also I almost forgot a week & a half ago mom & I went to Belleville, KS to speak to the Heart of the Prairie Quilt guild. It was a fun time with a great group of quilters. Thank you for having us!

I hope that y'all are having a great fall. I love this time of year. The weather is getting cooler & that makes me very happy. More later on,

Vicky