How do you know it is Fall ?

I know because I pick up my crochet hook again... yarns in bowls and baskets and on tables and chairs... and I am continually trying to remember where I left my crochet hook, luckily I have a pottery mug full of spares.

This week I was asked to make a couple of crocheted items.  As soon as I could get myself to the yarn shop, I did.  I spent a few hours blissed out among the baskets and baskets of yarn.  "This could go with this or that and then you could add this and oooo look at this one."  Now before you ask who went with me, I went with myself.  I was muttering like a mad woman, crooning over my cart of yarns.  There were at least a few other people there doing the same, at least I prefer to think of it that way.

I picked up Bernat Blanket yarn to make this:

And some more Bernat (Supervalue and Premium) to make this:

Crocheted pumpkins are my kryptonite. I am powerless to do anything but make more and more and more of them.  Big, medium, small, solid orange, variegated, white, grey even.

These are the ones I made a few years ago for our Thanksgiving table at my sister's house, so you can get an idea of their tremendous potential !  But be forewarned, these lovely wee things can lead to disputes over who gets which one, or ones.  We did have to regularly venture into my niece Ella's room to reclaim those she had decided were hers, which was nearly all of them.

But enough of my chatter, I have things to do, things to do... I am coming my pumpykins, I am coming...

Curious Case of the Happy Brownie

Ahhh brownies... that is what this quilt top reminds me of...Brownies.  Not the fudgy, chocolatey kind.  No my friend, more along the lines of twit-a-wit-a-woo.  Those words send shivers down my spine.

"Oh no, not Brownies, not Brownies again.  Can't I just stay home and watch TV?"  My pleas fell on deaf ears, after all my Mum was the Brown Owl.

Brownies was wearing a scratchy unflattering brown polyester dress with heavy black lace up shoes. Brownies was pretending I was outgoing, pretending I cared to fit in.  Brownies was about team work and conformity.  Brownies was sitting on the hard wood floor of a gymnasium, legs stretched out to meet those of another across from you, all of us spread out in a long line. Other Brownies ran across our outstretched legs as fast as they could trying to step in the spaces between. Brownies was cringing and bracing for the crush of a solid black laced shoe on my skinny, bruised legs.

One day I met a lady, I will call her Dilly.  She was funny, irreverent and full of mischief.  I should have known.  As we talked somehow the topic turned to Brownies.  She ADORED being a Brownie.  She recalled those meetings with something close to joy.  Her eyes sparkled with memories.

However for me the pain of being a Brownie never went away.  I could not find anyway to face this trauma but to make a quilt about it.  This is my quilt design.  It is called the Curious Case of the Happy Brownie.  To remind me that while I suffered in my Brownie Pack, there were some who found happiness there, bizarre as that may seem to me.

If not for meeting Dilly and our chance conversation about Brownies, I would never have made peace with my Brownie self.

Twit-a-wit-a-woo.

I wish I had met Eleanor Roosevelt

First time I heard of Eleanor Roosevelt was when I was pregnant with my son, Blake.  My doctor was advising that I would likely be having a caesarian with my second child, having had one with my first... dear Alicia (fondly known as Lou to me) had arrived at 10 lbs. 1 1/2 ozs. a few years earlier.  I recall asking him what the dangers were in having a second caesarian.  He simply said, well Eleanor Roosevelt had 4 so I think you should be fine.  I remember thinking... what did Eleanor Roosevelt possibly have to do with me?

Many years later I was reading quotes as I love to do (apparently a trait I shared with my Grandma Jessie) and found a few from Eleanor Roosevelt.  All of them spoke to me.  I had to know more about her and when next at the library I took out a book of her writings as well as a short biography.

Now the next logical step in my mind, after reading so many of her inspiring words, was how to devote an entire quilt to her?  I had already put one short quote in my Cream and Razors but I wanted more.

I decided simple was best, and fastest.  I had some wonderful radish fabric that I had no idea what to do with and it let me know that it had been waiting for Eleanor.  Once I had the top pieced, it gave me a chance to practice my border skills on a small scale, my first intention was to stitch Eleanor's words into the quilt top directly.  I tried this but I was not satisfied by three lines in.  Three lines which I then had to pick out, sometimes I am that fussy.  I finally decided to write the lines in fabric pen, and quilt all around them.

This is how it turned out.  Eleanor hangs in my front hall.  Her words written on my heart.