Start with a bed of fresh, tender spinach leaves and bits of red onion on a nicely contrasting plate:
Add fresh, sliced mushrooms:
Then chopped, hard boiled egg:
Crisp home fried bits of bacon:
And a hot sweet and sour dressing made from some of the bacon drippings, flour, vinegar, water, sugar or Splenda, salt and pepper to taste:
Yummo!
Golden Rod
Milk Weed
Fungi on Log
Moss on Log
Lichen
House through Stand of Goldenrod
Paper Bark Birch
Unusually warm weather for Up North in November produced some lovely, foggy views this morning.
I designed, pieced and quilted a little wall hanging for Halloween called “Bats and Birds”:
It consists of “shaded nine-patch” blocks arranged to represent Bats……..:
…….and Birds. I love the “beadie” eyes on both.:
The border is “flying geese” blocks with a bat wing quilting design.:
I have been busy making three fall table runners from some hand dyed fabric (SELC Fabrics, LLC) I bought at the Michigan Quilt Network show at Lansing in September. I combined the beautifully dyed fabric with some neutral batiks I had on hand. The first one is tessellating leaves:
I used a realistic leaf veining pattern to quilt the shapes:
The quilting looks nice on the hand dyed used for the backing. I gave this one to my daughter.:
The second table runner is pieced in the traditional maple leaf pattern. I gave this one to my friend, Laura.:
The third is just a little whirlygig pattern. You may have noticed the pieces of hand dyed fabrics being used getting smaller and smaller! I kept this one for myself.:
Last Thursday, which appears to be the last beautiful day of fall here, Dave and I decided to take a driving tour of the Leelanau Peninsula. Leelanau has orchards, wineries, quaint little towns and beautiful scenery. We stopped at the town of Leland to eat lunch at The Cove restaurant. It was a beautiful sunny day so we sat out on one of the patios where we could view the Lake Leelanau spillway, boats, etc.:
In the town of Leland, they have a sort of re-created village they call “Fishtown” containing shops, galleries, recreated fish shanties and a boat launch area:
After lunch, we continued our drive south along the west side of the peninsula where we encountered the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore Park:
As we drove south, we were tempted by a sign for a scenic drive which turned out to be an about 8 mile drive through the park with views of Glenn Lake, the dunes, the forest and Lake Michigan:
What a wonderful day!
Eight of my fellow quilters from the Thunder Bay Quilt Guild are doing a denim shirt round robin. I especially enjoyed adding this rouched rose to this particular shirt. One person had added the red, white and blue prairie points to the collar and yoke. Another person machine embroidered the red, white and blue patriotic butterfly. So I decided to give the butterfly something to eat by adding a red rouched rose.
Close up:
A couple of weeks ago I posted about our walk on the Au Sable Foot Trail at the Hartwick Pines State Park. This week we walked the Mertz Grade Trail instead. Is is only 2 miles long instead of 3.
At the beginning of the trail, a pine tree was bent over the trail, forming a kind of gate:
I noted several definite changes since our last walk in this park. For instance, there were fewer mushrooms. However, I thought these few were worth posting:
This is actually a sort of tree ear: color, lunar white, I would say:
I believe this is called a “Hen and Chicks:
Just another unidentified little fellow:
Berries on a tree:
Most of the maples were in their fall best reds, oranges and yellows:
Stumbled upon a spent wasp nest with cells exposed:
Lots of pine cones had begun to fall:
And many of the bracken had turned a delicious, golden brown:
We were reminded, occasionally, that we were, indeed, on a “foot” trail:
Said, “Goodbye,” to this forest scene for today:
Top:
Detail showing border:
The outside black border will end up being the same width as the inner black border. I added extra on the outside for machine quilting purposes…….so there would be some fabric available for “squaring up.”
Maple leaves:
Milkweed seed pods:
Northern Michigan’s answer to the saguaro cactus, common mullein:
They grow taller than men:
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