I love fall! It is my favourite season. I just love the crisp cool days, the colours, the leaves changing, the smell of fireplace smoke in the air, walking through crunchy leaves, pumpkins and spice and everything nice.

I even like the dull rainy days. Those are the days that I stay in, and we put a fire on in the fireplace, make a nice mug of tea, and either quilt or knit the day away (usually both!).

This weekend, on Saturday,  I was up in Northbrook at Log Cabin Yarns for a yarn dyeing class. It was terrific. Look at the yarn twelve of us dyed:Mine is the third from the left - one of the olive hanks. All round it was a fun day.Summer of 2008 I had taken a fabric dyeing class, and it is a similar process.

Sunday, DH and I went for a 3.5km hike in the Lanark Highlands:The leaves are not yet at their peak, as here in the maple forest most of the younger trees are still green.

There are some trees that are in full blaze of colour:DH in a winter deer yard:A little bit of colour here:And some nice specimens of fungus/mushrooms:After our wonderful hike, I managed to get up to date with my TB Lovers 2 (online Thimbleberries group), and got my October lottery done:

Waterwheel Variation

And, my  BOM Building Blocks October block:

October Building Blocks a Nancy Rink Designs BOM

January to October:And a HOF (hearts of friendship) block for Tina’s new grandson:Happy Fall everyone!

Kudos to Amy of park city girl blogspot for creating/organizing this online quilt festival! What a terrific idea.

This lap quilt is my submission to the festival:

It is not my best quilt. It is not the prettiest or nicest of my quilts. There was no pattern for it.  It started as a store challenge with a small scrap of yellow rooster fabric. The fabrics I added were scrappy and uncoordinated, and mostly leftovers from some other quilts.  I never even met the person I gave it to. But, this is a special quilt, and I feel that it deserves to be shown and acknowledged.

This quilt is special because it was given as a comfort quilt to a lady who had terminal brain cancer. The process of  giving it to her, and knowing that she used it in her last year of life, and knowing that it brought her some joy, makes me proud to be a quiltmaker.

The quilts that I make are made to be used and loved. My quilting career so far has been fairly short - I basically learned how to sew 5 years ago, and quite often I still feel like a novice quiltmaker. But, every quilt I’ve made since I started  is either used in my own home, or has been given to family & friends. I am always so pleased to give someone a quilt, but giving  the comfort quilt made me the happiest.

Stephen & Justine

Justine and her boyfriend, Stephen, are headed west. They caught the midnight bus on Monday morning (well, it really still was Sunday night), for the 72 hr trip to Vancouver (ETA Wednesday night). Unfortunately, because of a fatal accident on the highway outside of Deep River, the highway was closed and they are now delayed by 10 hrs and will arrive in Vancouver on Thursday morning. The bus thing is their choice - ahh….to be that young again…

There is so much that I loved about them being home. I know that I am biased, but they are  pretty terrific kids. We enjoyed their company immensely and we had many lively discussions.  Erwin and I love cooking for them. Especially after them being four months in Nepal, where, as Justine puts it, the food was pretty “sketchy”.   At home, they love everything we cook up, and they actually EAT! During their stay in Ottawa they were hired to paint the complete interior of our business building. It took them 14 full days to paint the interior. The building is almost 100 years old with high ceilings and many nooks and crannies (they had to deal with original tin, trims, wainscotting,  etc.) It was fiddley work, and they did a terrific job. I am so happy that we got to spend the last 6 weeks together - and I’m going to miss them a lot.