Where I work at home

I know that people like seeing how others live, and many of my friends have never visited my house, so I thought I would show you part of it. This is the front living room. I just brought in a bunch of potted petunias so it looks a bit like a florist's. Cats, dog toys, overturned books and all.

This is the back living room. It used to be a calf shed attached to the main house. I renovated it and put in all these windows and french doors, redid the floors, walls, ceiling, everything. It faces north, and has a library behind it to the left.

A better view of the previous room looking toward the library which you can just see in the center, behind the french doors. There is a mastiff asleep on the carpet in there.

This is my workroom, mostly for sewing and the "clean" arts (i.e. not painting which I do in the kitchen, in a later post perhaps).

The opposite wall of my workroom. It has my new embroidery machine on it.

The center wall of my workroom. It was two little bedrooms but I knocked out the central wall. It faces south. My Bernina sewing machine is there. I have a serger too.

My serger.

The rack of embroidery threads and my cutting board. And a big stack of plastic boxes containing skeins of yarn.

The latest thing I've embroidered. It's going to be a baguette bag as well (I call it that because it's so long it would be good for bringing back fresh baguette if there was a french bakery nearby). It's made of soft old sailcloth, cotton canvas.

A bag I made... it's a finished "baguette", it's also of soft sailcloth with burlap trim. It has some french embroidery on it, two swallows on the front, with script. I did all the embroidery on my new Janome 350SE.

A fleur de lis on the back

It's lined with vintage curtain material

This is another bag, a big bag for carrying laundry, or clothes, something where you need a big open bag. It's a heavier sailcloth, cotton canvas. It's lined with the same vintage curtains. I embroidered a pair of bees in the lining

                                                    I added embroidery to the facings

            This is the front of the bag.  It has a rose tattoo on the front, and a lucky horseshoe on the back.
                                                  

See you again soon!

Migration begins

On tonight's walk we went and checked on our flock. Here are the girls with their babies.

The pond where we heard coyotes and a bird that sounded like a man laughing, yeh, he-he-he.

The sunset brought out the mauves and pinks in the tree stems.

In the sky we saw the first huge flocks of geese flying south.

 The road home.

Autumn is coming

We had a great summer this year. Just the right amounts of heat, humidity and rain. Not too hot, maybe 29 at the hottest. And the air is so clean here that it is easy to breathe. We didn't even have a big mosquito problem, they usually come out in June and linger until frost, but this year we were fortunately free of them until late July.

We took a walk through the woods on Thursday and found that autumn is coming nevertheless. Here are some bunchberries at the foot of an old aspen.

This is a little low area where deer like to sleep. The swirls of the trees reminded me of an old landscape.

Our wild raspberry patch still has fruit. We have an area under a giant spruce that is full of raspberry bushes, about the size of my old Toronto yard. I think keeping cattle off this place has made that happen. I can get enough wild berries there to fill a pail, if I can stop eating them that is.

From the willows overlooking the hay fields.

This hill is full of wildflowers in the summer: asters, tiger lilies, toadflax, wild roses.

Another photo that looks like a painting, of the beautiful Kylie.

And perky little Daisy.

The maples are beginning to yellow, the poplar and aspen are still green, the underbrush of hazel, hawthorn and saskatoons is already orange in some places. It is so sad to say goodbye to summer.