THE WIND and STARS

 THE WIND SAND and STARS (excerpts) (by  Antoine de Saint Exupery 1900-1944. French writer, who also wrote "The Little Prince", Distinguished  aviator. Died on a mission over the Mediterranean during WWII)

 "The face of the sea is as variable as that of the earth. To passengers, the storm is invisible. Seen from a great height, the waves have no relief and the packets of fog have no movement.

 The sea is like a splintered mirror. These colours of earth and sky, these traces of wind over the face of the sea, these clouds  tell of the quality of the night to come.

 The threat of frost, a promise of rain, so all that happens in the sky signals to the pilot the oncoming snow, the expectancy of fog, or the peace of a blessed night.

 The hours during which one flies over this mirror are hours in which there is no assurance of the possession of anything in the world.

 Dawn and twilight become events of consequence.

 Alone before the vast tribunal of the tempestuous sky, the pilot defends his mails and debates on terms of equality with those of three elemental divinites.

 The surface of the sea appears to be covered with great white motionless palm trees.

 Palm trees marked with ribs and seams stiff in a  sort of frost.

 The hydoplane pilot knows there is no landing here.

 The face of the sea is as variable as that of the earth.

Well not be worth the embrace of man and storm.

 Look to the clouds they tell of the direction of the wind or the progress of the storm, and the quality of the night to come."
                                                           

WHILE the CHICKENS Cluck....

  Thursday morning.  Smarter-than-your-average-cat Spencer came calling. Must be Snack time. Then he was off to visit the chickens next door. The neighbours acquired chickens that clucked softly like flannel shoes, and hollered bawk bawk bawk like geese. Great amusement for any visiting cat....

  This Thursday it was rainy. The last rose of summer  bravely stood through it all. It was squooshy and gooshy. Through the rain I could still hear the chickens next door.....cluck, bawk, rowrrrr ( must be a cat).....

 The sog and bog held off  for a brief moment. Enough to air the working panel of a civil war Christmas table quilt, under the watchful eyes of Smokey and Spencer.  They had been to see the chickens.

 Now it was time to  catch some  rays of grey.
                              Grey skies overhead. And chickens next door going bawk, bawk, bawk, bawk. Must be another cat staring at them from the fence.

  I stitched another  quilt panel called Windmill, watched  it twirl around  in pattern.Through the open window, I could hear those chickens squabble and cluck, then came a yeowwwww, with a flash of gold and grey ripping through the yard. Must be big chickens. Able to take care of themselves.

Put together  yet another panel with sequins and holly corners. Christmas fa -la -la -la  la. On a roll these days. I'm running out of thread. Will have to go buy more soon. Meanwhile, Spencer stood guard in the green and bog of outdoors. Playing hide and go seek-those-chickens, with his brother . Smokey  crept to the fence and stood on it , looking down at the chickens in their pen. Cluck , Cluck, buck, buck......
             
  I finally got around to the last panel of coral and gold. Ready for Christmas. Much done, on a Thursday, while the rain rolled in , the wind blew wild, and  the cats did smack their lips at the chickens who clucked and bawked  in their house that the neighbours built.....

LONG WEEKEND QUILTING

 Hoooo Hummmm. Long weekend. Nothing to do but sit in a bucket and snooze.Bunny's snores rumble  through the fabric room.  Nothing to do. As if.

 Leftover fabric to tear through. Upholstery and decor fabric to piece together. Fabric from old dresses found one day at the Sally Ann. Fabric good enough to use in runners.Gold fabric from a 1960's dress to rip up and make new as a centre in a star.The possibilities.....

 New patterns to try out with leftovers. Recycling.
                                                    But some of us, ho hummmm,  would rather sleep in the bin.

 Finding fabrics that can go together for another star runner, but in pink hues. Christmas, and yet can carry over into not-Christmas. One for me, one for a friend, that's how I look at it. Or, one for me, and two  for two friends. Or three. Or four. Power quilting...

 Backing and filling and pinning panels, ready to be quilting. They're piling up. And still other panels stretch out on the table, ready to be disassembled and reassembled. Always a cat lying in or on something. Bo likes the sewing stage. Gotta love Christmas.......

     Big quilts hang  here and there. Never enough wall space. Lots of fabric though.  The brown quilt actually is an Autumn-Christmas quilt. Found the brown pointsettia fabric a few years ago. Very unique. Have never seen fabric quite like it. Bordered it with a flying geese pattern of triangles, as the geese fly south for the winter .Or, as in B.C. , they just fly around in circles and stay all year. The Christmas quilt on the right is a "Broken Glass" pattern. I used leftover bling fabric and did it up like a stained glass window. It's one of my favourites. I leave it up year round. Gotta love Christmas.....

And then there's Bunny. Sleepy Bunny. In the bin. On this long weekend of power quilting.Unfortunately, I need the fabric that she has squashed herself onto. She has done such a good job of supervising, may just have to leave her to snoring.

IN GREY LIGHT ( collage)

 I love grey.It's mysterious, mecurial and so neutral. I love the weird light you get thru fog. Fog on the water. Fog in the sky. Grey skies shining with light. Light shining thru fog .Storm clouds. Just a little collage of  grey and light...............

 Discovery Passage....

                                Sky before storm

                                                      

 Beach in grey

                                                Looking south

                                                                              Above the forest line....

                                                   

                                  From the cliff.....

  Gulls feeding............                                                Above the copse.....

                          Scary forest arms......almost all Hallows Eve............

APPLES and CRANBERRIES

 Time to pick the last of the apples. Kind of  a little wormy and buggy on the inside, so  requires a deft hand when cutting around the core. No slate bugs allowed in the cranberry sauce. Already had an earwig crawl out of the pot.....

 Labour intensive picking  apples.This year, the trees produced heaps and heaps.Every so often an apple would come plopping down. Good idea not to be standing underneath. How many  times did I feel  like Chicken Little and think the sky was falling......

 As always, the neighbours' cats  kept us company, watching while buckets and bags were filled and piled.

 Opened a bottle of Cordelia's Concord Cordial to let it breathe. Plenty of time to slosh a generous amount into the cooking apples and cranberries. 

 And let it  breathe, and breathe and breathe while the apples were peeled.After about the first couple of dozen I wished they could peel themselves.

  I tossed  apples into a lemonade bath. I think they like floating in their bowl of lemonade.They don't brown as much, and you can add extra lemonade into the pot when you cook up the fruit.

 I guesstimate everything to make this. Just take a large pot, toss in a lot of apples, and maybe 4 bags of fresh cranberries. Add some sugar to taste, or add 1 cup per bag of cranberries. It is whatever you like best. You can add no sugar at all, and just add it later. But it does best added in the pot so it cooks down.

 I also added  1 cup water to each bag of cranberries, and substituted a cup of wine ( or two) instead. And a good shake of cinnamon. If you have a cinnamon stick you can add that, but I don't have sticks at the moment. Fresh cookies had just been made, so we snacked on those while waiting for the pot to finish blupping away.

 Let cool. Freeze. Serve with anything you like.Let the  pot  bubble and burp away. Be careful of splattering, keep the heat fairly low. Ladle into a pretty bowl,or freeze in plastic containers.