Tea on the Mountain

O, Just a Little Project I've Been Working on....ForEVER

I'm not even quite totally done (still have some buttons and buttonholes to do), but,  here it is, as I promised to you- Miss Elf and Ashley.

My brand new duvet cover.  After all that work I feel I should call it a duvet instead of comforter....

It was so much fabric!  I started out with the brilliant idea (I thought I was getting over on somethin') of making a quilt-top but without the quilting, kind of a cheaters way of having nice bright colors without all the work....yeah right.  I now know that I will never ever make a quilt.  At least not one as big as that.  I had to carry it draped over my head just to move it around.

So, without knowing what I was doing (Foxfire wasn't very much help this time around).  I made four squares out of triangles, which I now know I didn't have to do (although I'm not sure if I could have made those Tennessee shapes without starting with squares cut in half anyway).  That takes some serious math and Moss skills- neither of which I have.  Plus, I only had a free Bank of TN yardstick and a Sharpie.  I made a few mistakes, but, as you may have noticed (and I just reminded you), I'm not Daisy.  So I just left them.  I figure by the time PawPaw is old enough to inherit it, it will be in rags.  Or hopefully I will have made something better.  By the time I was done with those four squares (a few days- round the clock.  I just drank Velo coffee by the gallon), I decided to move on to much larger pieces of fabric.

It's even reversible, although I might need to make sure that hot red line down the middle of the bed isn't bad luck for a couple sleeping under the covers.  I'll ask Daisy.  Or that's just the guest-bed side, where you don't have time for bad luck to catch up with you.....

To read: Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky
To hear: Ambulance Blues by Neil Young

Love, Ann

Pawpaw and me in the Sunchoke Patch... and Friends

This morning started with some biscuits and scrambled eggs and eating with my sweetie then continued to the garden where lots of treasures were harvested. We started in the cotton patch where I harvested lovely cotton heads from seed I planted in the early spring. The seed came form Miss Candice who had grown this variety for the past three years. 

 

Unopened Nankeen cotton 

And here's what it looks like when you harvest it.

Then we moved over to the sunchoke patch where some friends came to observe the findings.

Butternut just making sure I'm digging right

And Frannie just making sure I hadn't found a rabbit or something of the sorts 

Here they are... the marvelous sunchokes. Kelsey and I planted these in the spring and watched them get taller and taller and taller and then produce the loveliest little yellow flowers. The sunchokes originally  came from our friend Felicja's brothers farm in New Mexico. 

The Harvest

As seen by Frannie

Books to Read: Miss Rumphius by: Barbara Cooney (1st recommended by my lovely sister in law Ann)

Music to listen to: Miss Laura Candler playing the fiddle at ladies night or singing by the fire light

-Love Ashley

ms. moss and ms. elf take on the city

Hi Ladies! I know that this doesn't count as something either of us made, but Daisy and I traipsed all about ny ny and thought of you all the while. And I thought I'd post some pictures, so to convince you allll to come on up (post-january) for a ladies night (or week) in the city.

Persuasions:

 Can you believe this??? Mood Fabric store: 2 floors of thousands of rolls of fabric. This is just the tiniest slice of the jersey section. Daisy bought some of the purple she's holding, and some lovely gray. I was too overwhelmed (and happy) to do anything but wander around wide-eyed.

 Daisy on the ferry! to Staten Island- sunshine and tugboats and city views.

 Ann- look at these ancient beads at the Met! (sorry for the dreadful picture) I can't remember what era or civilization they're from (eeps). I'll check back for you come winter. But I thought you'd enjoy them, even on brown carpet.

Daisy at an outdoor sound installation that Laura, you were made to have seen. Original composition that became a soundtrack for the city from afar.

Happy (smelly) feet at a pier in Brooklyn.

and I'm leaving all the foodstuffs to your imagination. Cause the camera could not capture them all...

Everyone should start a penny jar for fabric and notions...

Urban love from Daisy and Elf

A Onesie for the little'un to be

While away visiting family my mother gave me some sweet clothes that use to be my dads when he was a baby. In the pile were a couple of onesies that inspired me to make one for my little one on the way...

Thanks to Miss Elf I had the loveliest screen print to applique onto the onesie

Some hand stitching on the sleeves that were too tiny to sew with my machine

- Ashley

Book to Read: Horton hears a Who! by Dr. Seuss

Music to listen to: Good in the Kitchen by Bearfoot

a doll for Lyrah

Trae's little niece turned the ripe old age of two last weekend. This is what I made.

Trae made the dress so we could say it was from both of us.

And then the doll tried to eat him:

But he got away. We didn't tell Lyrah about that. I think she likes it.

Sing: "The House that Jack Built" by Moira Smiley
Read: "Waterland" by Graham Swift (this is a neat novel I just started. It's like a fairytale. If you'd like to believe in fairytales but aren't sure if you can, this might be a good book for you.  little warning: I don't know how it ends. It might not be happy. But the dreamlike beginning is promising.)

wallflowers

HERE is my wall, of you. In my split pea soup room. I say hello to you every mornin', and g'nite every eve.

Love across the gigabytes for now, from a soggy southland

words to read: letters to a young poet, chapter 8, rainer maria rilke
songs to play: I Never Cared For You, Willie Nelson