October Welcome

My favorite time of the year has arrived!

It seems like September disappeared in a blur and Autumn arrived in a hurry.

 So happy to see cooler temps, leaves turning color and pumpkins on the porch!

I am an October baby so this has always been my favorite month since I was a child.

Time has gotten away from me lately from working in the studio, taking a week to visit my daughter and taking a few day trips with Pog to celebrate our 10^th anniversary.

My daughter and I did a “little” shopping during our week together. 

We visited The Rusty Bucket in Cary, Thistle Bee Quilt Shoppe in Goldsboro and 

one of our favorites Lone Star Mercantile in Fuquay-Varina.

What can I say? Seems like we can never have enough fabric. 

There are a couple of velvets there too and some chenille trim for snowmen.

 In the meantime I ordered wool from Heavens to Betsy. 

I am in love with the black/orange stripe so I may have to order more of that! 

The black/orange on the bottom is a reversible stripe.

  Also during our week, my daughter started making her first doll.

The easiest one to start with is Raggedy Ann and she did a great job! 

I like how she put her own twist on fabric colors.

We will finish up the clothes on our next visit.

I also stopped at one of my favorite antique shops on the way home

 and found a fifteen dollar firkin. 

 It is not particularly old and missing the lid but will be great with a little cleaning.

 It looked like someone had already tried to clean it and then make it look rustic

 so I don’t mind working on this one a little more. 

I may put a small tree in it this Christmas.

The table runners and dishtowels I was working on are finally finished 

and one of the looms now has a warp for more runners. 

For now though, I have Fall Fever and have started making a few pumpkins. 

These have a surprise and I will show you soon what that is,

 but for now here is a little peak of the pumpkin fun going on it the studio.

 

The white one is a snowball that decided to sneak in on the fun!

Welcome October!

Loving October

“Time flies when you are having fun”

It also flies when you are working hard, which I have been, both in the studio and outside. It is the time of year when I feel so inspired to sew and weave, but it is also the time of year to start putting flowerbeds and the yard to rest for the winter. I have to admit that I did not do a great job on my flowers this year. 

I seem to have grown a lot of weeds! My only excuse is, I have a terrible time coping with the heat, and for us here in the NC Mountains,

 there was so much rain this summer!

Now thankfully it has cooled down and is dryer. It is time to gather seeds for next year. I have zinnia seeds my mother gave me from her flowers about 35 years ago. Each year I collect enough seeds to plant the next year and each time I plant them and see them grow, I think of her.

The first row in her garden was always zinnias, sown thickly so it hid the rest of the garden from the view of passing neighbors. She told me that made her garden pretty for everyone to see and hid the fact that sometimes the garden got a little weedy.

I have continued sowing mine the same way all these years even though,

 I have no passing traffic to see them. 

This is a picture from a couple of years ago.

 I have also continued this tradition by giving my daughter a bag of the seeds and she has begun planting them in her garden.

Besides gathering zinnias, cosmos, marigold seeds, and starting to clean flowerbeds, I have been working in the studio. 

My cabin rugs are hemmed and tagged. 

I called this one my little hot tamale! Bright and fun!

I have been making a few new fall things for my home, 

and I have been working on getting the AVL loom operating again. 

 I’ll let you know how that goes next time!

Wooden pumpkin I found at Carmeron

Also found this Apple Gourd at Cameron

I quilted a new Maple Leaf square for the kitchen table.

I made the Pumpkin and Acorn pillows last year but the Leaf is new.

 

This is the back of the little leaf pillow.

My birthday was this past weekend and since Pog had to work all weekend I spent the time with my daughter. For my day she took me to the Cameron Antiques Festival. This is normally a quaint little town with trees, old large homes and antique shops lining its streets, but for one day twice a year, the entire place is taken over by antique dealers! 

This is one of the pretty houses along main street.

Pretty decorated shed.

Streets are lined with dealers. It is like a mini Brimfield.

Believe it or not I bought only three small baskets and some wooden pumpkins. It was so hot!  88 plus degrees and I melted. It really made me appreciate our cool mountain air.

Also we visited a couple of quilt shops and I got my free birthday Pumpkin Latte at Starbucks. A lovely weekend spent with my daughter who is one of my best friends along with Pog who is my other BFF.  

This Saturday was the second part of my birthday. I have for a long time wanted to visit The Depot at Gibson Mill, in Concord, NC. It has 88,000 sq. feet with over 600 antique and designers booths. There is way too much to take in and so much stuff. Pog was a good sport but ended up sitting outside when he got tired but I looked for 2 ½ hrs! I had to stop because my back and feet were hurting. Maybe it is a good thing I don’t live nearby!

Again - believe it or not I didn’t buy a lot.  I found this nice wooden bowl for a good price, a funky hand made copper funnel and some vintage cotton rickrack. The bowl has this nice smooth feel to it and the funnel reminded me of a hat for one of my pumpkin heads. One day it might just become one!

What a wonderful time of year. The mountains are beginning to change color with the highest ridges and slowly creeping down into the valleys. This next week should be peak season here in our section of the mountains. Cloudy, cool with possible showers this morn. I do hope we have some sun this week in spite of predicted showers so we can have good views of the tree color.

I hope you are enjoying your October as much as I am!