What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

Glorious color adorns our driveway with the fall season reaching its peak. The reds and golds are brilliant even in this early dawn view. Fog settles into the valley sometimes, and I love that. This photo was taken two weeks ago, as the colors hit their peaks.

When the sun came up over the east mountain, the driveway was awash in autumn color. But we are in a drought, and this scene didn’t last long as the leaves fell quickly. Some of the trees in our view still have beautiful color.

A couple of days ago, this photo shows ...

It has been a minute since we had a Sunday chat. October was so jam packed with projects. November is a time to relax and enjoy the season. Autumn color is hitting its peak this past week or so, and the color is glorious. We did a wonderful drive on our mountain roads with a car club, enjoyed some hot soup for a charity event, and watched the wildlife from our door. Get a cuppa, and settle in for a nice, long, catch-up chat.

Our local food bank, called Manna, serves the 12 county area of Western North Carolina, supporting ...

Tuesday night was the third cooking contest, this time with eggs. The rules specified a frittata, so I decided to make mine Mediterranean. It has Italian sausage, spinach, onion, garlic, mozzarella cheese and cherry tomatoes. Tomatoes often add too much water to a recipe, so I had the idea of cutting cherry tomatoes in half and placing them cut side up on the top of the frittata. This worked well when I tested the idea on a quiche a month ago, so I went with it.

It did not place in the competition, but we ate almost half of it ...

Today, I will share my third place winning recipe for the Tricolor Tomato Tian. A tian is a French peasant dish consisting of sliced vegetables, overlapped in an earthenware dish, then baked. The vegetables are meant to be the stars of the dish, so no sauces or cheese are added. I thought a tomato tian would be a good entry, with some onion and garlic for flavor. The dish is baked at a high heat for a long time to reduce the water in the tomatoes.

Starting out, the assembly of the elements is so colorful! When I tested the ...

Rain fell off and on last week, and one drizzly morning these boys came by for a visit. Both males, they strutted around and loudly gobble-gobbled. I threw some sunflower seed hearts out for them.

They were happy as clams to do a bit of hunt and peck.

The goldfinches and a woodpecker got their share in the feeder. There is a titmouse on the back side as well.

The garden is winding down, but the squashes refuse to fully ripen. I’ve moved the leaves around to get more sunlight to them, and I am still waiting. The largest ...

We had a nice drive recently with some friends. We wanted to drive the Blue Ridge Parkway when the weather cleared and cooled off, so we emailed our buddies and got a group to go. We met at a parking lot, then drove up to the parkway together. The scenery is lush and green everywhere, with cascades of bright yellow flowers here and there. Rock walls like this one are so interesting, some with water coming down.

This section of the parkway, between Hwy 191 and 276 has the most tunnels. I blurred out the SUV in front of us ...

Labor Day weekend is Apple Festival time. This annual event celebrates our county’s primary agricultural crop, with a downtown street festival that lasts four days. We usually try to get there for at least one day, often going for both the street festival and then coming back on Monday after they pick up all the booths and hold the King Apple Parade. You can buy apples in a huge number of varieties. Of course, we love the Honey Crisp best. I have talked about different aspects of this show every year.

Most of the orchards in the county have ...

With all the entries I’ll be doing in the fair, I have quite a bit of preparation to do. I pull things out I have made in the past year, go through my blog posts to make sure I have included everything I can, and maybe whip up a project or two for other categories. Then there is making sure all the quilts have labels and sleeves. Everything else sewn needs a label as well. I need to determine which photographs taken over the past year will be selected for entry, print them and mount them according to the ...

Another week of wildlife visits, this small flock of turkeys came by for a meal. I’m pretty sure these are four of the flock of seven that were here last week. They certainly came up running up from the lower meadow just like last time when I stepped out to the veranda and began tossing out some seed to the ground.

I do not know where the other three went, but these guys and gals enjoyed a small feast.

Leaving the house one day this week, the deer were crossing the road as I drove slowly down the street ...

Mornings have been delightfully cool, with temperatures in the low 60s F and even the high 50s yesterday (high teens C). Waking early, there are clear skies most days, but sometimes the humidity will cause fog in the valleys between the ridges of trees. Although the sky is light, the sun has not come over the mountains to the east yet.

It’s a good time to take a photo of the latest dahlia bloom, bright red with intense yellow stamens.

The begonias continue to bloom prolifically as well, masses of white flowers that the bees are loving.

It is ...

Standing at my kitchen sink earlier this week, I noticed movement in the front. Once again, the local black bear was making an attempt to get to the bird feeder. My Sweet Babboo has tie-wrapped it to the pole so the bear cannot shake it down and cannot reach it, but last time the bear bent the pole. So I grabbed the camera and stepped just out the door to the veranda to scare him off by yelling at him. He moved away quickly, and I used the zoom lens on the camera to get his photo as he went ...

It has been such an interesting week for projects, with a lot of things in the works. I’ve been working on a Quilt of Valor on the frame, my Japanese art quilt in my chair doing handwork, and crafting in between. We’ve had wildlife visits, too. I’ve been cooking up a storm testing recipes for the upcoming Mountain State Fair, so My Sweet Babboo has been eating pretty well. The highlight of the week was a visit by a pretty female hummingbird, perhaps the mate of the male I was able to photograph recently. It was a ...

Since I agreed to do the Christmas project on two Sundays, I didn’t have a chat post last week. I will be doing the project assembly this Sunday, so let’s chat today. It was shop hop week, and of course, I did my share. I couldn’t resist the black backgrounds on both these fabrics, one with the beautiful tones of blue and purple, and the other with its Thanksgiving theme. There was a bin of partial cones of the thread I use a lot in these nice colors, so I snagged four of them. Then the black ...

So much to chat about today! Get yourself a cuppa, and settle in for a long and picture heavy post. July brings more flowers to the garden, with the apricot gladiolas bursting into bloom this week. I must have two dozen spires with these soft orange flowers dotting the hill behind our home going up the mountain.

They are just beautiful. Each spire has 8 buds, some fully open, some yet to come.

They always bloom at the same time as the hostas. Sometimes I cut some of both for a vase inside. The purple and orange blossoms go well ...

Rain every day this past week has brought out the flowers in the garden and on the veranda. Almost every early morning, the valley and mountain ridge was heavy with clouds. The morning air was cool and almost fall-like, but more humid. Rain brings out the lush green, and everything is growing.

My garden has made progress, strong tomato plants and lots of basil mean freshness yet to come for the table. Squash came up that I didn’t expect, and the parsley is showing promise as well. I have a good number of flowers, and even some tiny green ...

Wildlife has been visiting frequently this past week. This deer was behind the house on the hillside, almost concealed by the very tall vegetation back there. She can eat as much of that as she wants. Actually, I would like her to eat it all, LOL!!

Wilson, our resident woodchuck, stopped by to slurp up some seeds that fell to the ground below the feeder.

Two female turkeys have made regular appearances, pecking at the ground. They may have had a tiff between them as there are a bunch of feathers in the yard.

I was the program speaker this ...

It was mostly a quiet week here, with not much going on. I piddled in the sewing room pulling fabric for the swap early in the week, stared at the quilt on the frame with no idea how to quilt it, tidied up a bit, and generally spent days doing next to nothing. I read a really good book, and another that was good but not great. I’ll have reviews on those soon. One morning, My Sweet Babboo called me to the window to see two deer at the edge of the forest where it comes up to the ...

This past Sunday was the New Member Picnic for our car club, and we were in charge of it. It took a few months and a lot of work to plan, and it is good to have it done. For the meal, we were having it catered instead of it being a potluck as in years past. The choice of roast beef sandwich, turkey sandwich or strawberry pecan salad was made when folks signed up for the event. So, I needed lunch tickets. I pulled three colors of card stock, and stamped them. The yellow has a turkey on it ...

We had a lovely time this past week, with family visiting. My Sweet Babboo’s brother and his wife were here for several days to do some sight-seeing, and visiting. We wanted to take them up on the Blue Ridge Parkway one day, and we stopped at Looking Glass Falls on the way up through Pisgah Forest. It was a nice day, not too hot or cold, but a bit overcast.

From there we drove up to the parkway, and went north to Mount Mitchell. Along the way we stopped at a few overlooks for photos.

Unfortunately, as is usually ...

What a bloody wasted week. Getting covid was not in the plan. Two days lost to fever and feeling awful, then two more days of sitting in my chair binge watching Yellowstone, with no energy to do much. Since I have nothing new from this week to share, today’s post will be a catch up on a few things I was doing before our trip. The bluebirds were working hard to feed their chicks before we left. Here are a couple of those photos that I didn’t have a chance to share before. The female was bringing fat ...