When we were kids, my brother and sisters and friends were delighted when a load of topsoil was delivered to backfill the edges of our new house that was in the final stages of construction. We would run to the top of the mound of dirt and then challenge each other to push us down and replace us, with taunts of “I’m the king of the castle, and you’re the dirty rascal.” (It was a good thing my mother didn’t hear us talking like that.)
Crispin is the king of the castle here, but he has no challengers at the moment. The new load of firewood is perfect for him as he snacks on one of the walnuts he has stashed away.
It was just another ordinary evening, until I went to open the deck door to cool the house a bit. The colours were amazing. I had to remind myself to close my mouth, stop gawking, and run for the camera.
Next time you have a fish dinner, you may not even have to go fishing first. The meal is all served up on your new placemats.
I worked on these for many days, and when it was time to do the last step, I must have had that “horse to the barn” feeling and rushed through the corners when I was putting on the binding. Don’t look too closely. They are not neat and squared off.
BUT, I had a lot of fun making up these placemats, cutting out the shapes and finding a fabric that would serve as a reasonably close match to their colours in real life – not that you’d ever encounter the Darth Vader fish in real life. Each piece is first ironed on with some slightly sticky white webby material called Steam-a-Seam. When you peel off the fusible material, you iron the shape onto the place where you want it to be and then sew around it with your choice of stitch. Mine was a blanket stitch that grabs the edges every second stitch.
I doodled around with my free-motion stitching (which just means you can go in any direction by moving the material around – not just forward and back when the machine does the steering) and was able to put some scales on some of the fish and lines on their fins, and make the pupils and irises of their eyes.
In the background, I see two strips of material from the Captain’s old jeans, one light and one dark, to make up part of the water, and a light blue denim shirt for the top layer of water.
In case you were wondering, I do know that an octopus has eight legs, but he’s sitting on one of them.
That strange creature reminded me of one of my favourite Ogden Nash poems:
Now the placemats are all done, it’s time to use them when we set the table. I wonder who will get the first big blob of greasy gravy on them?
If it’s YOU, beware.
Darth Vader of the Sea is watching.
It is almost time for the Autumn Equinox. Depending on which part of the world you live in, you will have equal number of hours of daylight and darkness on September 22 – 23. It marks the beginning of the autumn season in the northern hemisphere and spring in the southern hemisphere.
For us in North America it marks the official beginning of autumn as we head into cooler temperatures and shorter hours of daylight.
The trees and shrubs notice the change to cooler temperatures and the leaves begin to die, but as they “leave” us, as “leaves” do, they put on a magnificent show of colour on their way out.
This picture was taken in Montana, in October of 2016. It is one of my favourite photos because of the natural colour display.
Turn on your sound. In the following very short clip, you can hear the black cottonwoods, whispering. Ignore the whistle blowing in the middle of the clip. The captain is calling his dog.
