This might be the last day of playing in the many, many leaves we have had!  For one thing, Jim is blowing them away as I write this!  And we are expecting bad weather beginning early next week, with a combination of the hurricane coming and the cold weather blowing in from the west.  It will be wet and chilly.  Who knows, though, the wind might just blow those leaves back down toward our house!  We can put leaves up on the street, and the city takes them away, but I don't know if they will get here before the storm!

I had the kiddos again today.  I try to keep them once a week for Amanda so that she can do whatever she wants to, or needs to!  So, today was it again, and we were outside for hours!  Here ya go -

I took some pictures of the leaves around our house and on the driveway.  It seems like it has been raining leaves these last few days, and I know that Jim will be blowing those leaves up soon, so I wanted to remember how they looked!

And my grandchildren, who are growing up so fast, were here one day last week, and I want to always remember how they look at these ages!  We had lots of fun!  Outside, playing with balls -

And inside - eating those messy orange cheezy snacks -

Very intently following a dot-to-dot -

Putting together and playing with, Marbleworks -

And the Lite Brite picture they made!

Many of the women of my church are wearing these bracelets, in honor of one of our members who had surgery last week for Stage 2 breast cancer.  It says, "Imagine life without breast cancer."  I am also wearing it in honor of another young woman who is battling Stage 4 breast cancer, as well as my many other friends who are breast cancer survivors, including Betsy's mother-in-law, who is a 20 year breast cancer survivor.  And then also in memory (although I never met her), of Jim's mother, who died of breast cancer more than 44 years ago, at age 36.

And for Gwen, my friend from church, I made this prayer shawl.  I couldn't show a picture before I gave it to her because she reads my blog!

Not a great picture, because you can't see all of it, but you get the idea - here is another view -

It is about 25" x 65", and Gwen tells me that she loves wearing it around the house, as she recovers - I can just imagine her with it on as she watches her favorite football!

Meanwhile, Jim had a coyote skin, from a coyote he shot, that he had made into a hat.  The kids love it!  Me - not so much.  

The mystery of the hummingbird feeder is solved!  Many of you know that we have had a problem most of the summer with an animal getting to our hummingbird feeders, emptying them sometime during the night.  We have tried to get pictures of them, but never saw anything on the camera.

Jim just told me that he was up very early this morning, and it was still dark out, so he turned on the back lights to check the outdoor thermometer and see if it was raining.  He saw an opossum at the feeder!  He said it looked like a young one, who, when the light went on, just walked off like he was making his rounds in the neighborhood.  

Hummingbird season is over here, but I hadn't taken the feeders down yet.  Guess I better do that!  The only solution we have found is to bring the feeders in every night, onto our porch, then take them out in the morning.  I guess I might have to keep that up next year when the hummingbirds start coming back, because I sure don't want to change the sugar water in those every single morning!

I love making applesauce!  It is one of my favorite things to do!  I bought a bushel of seconds at a nearby orchard, and Amanda had some apples left from when she and the kids picked apples a couple of weeks ago.  Here are the jars, all washed and ready -

The lids and rings -

No pictures during the actual process, but here is what we have to show for our work - 10 quarts, 11 pints.  Doesn't look like a lot, but that is about what we usually get from one bushel.

And I have these left over to make apple crisp for dessert for a church dinner tomorrow night - 10 people will be here!

I am loving looking at more of my quilt pictures today, that I took yesterday at the quilt class with Barbara Cline.  You can also see some of her quilts and more info here.

Here is a picture of the Chinese Checkers quilt that she made and that our class was on -

There were so many being made in such interesting other colors!

Here are some other quilts she brought to show us - this one is called Bursting Forth and is in her book, Simply Triangles.  In the close up picture, she was showing us how she used netting over some areas of the quilt to make changes in shades of colors.

This one is called Blazing Star -

This one, I think, is called Dazzling Daisies -

And some smaller table runners she made -

I wish I had gotten a closer picture of the intricate and creative quilting she did!

It was a wonderful day!  And I am so thankful that about 6 years ago, I met Barbara's sister Polly right here on xanga!  We became blog friends, and then friends in real life, as I had the pleasure of meeting Polly and lots of her family, including Barbara.  One thing led to another, and Barbara came to Salem to teach a class, and then another class, and now, we are friends!  And I am friends with several of her sisters.  And friendship with this family has been one of the greatest joys of my life!

I took a quilt class today at the Salem Museum here in Salem, VA.  The teacher was Barbara Cline, an inspiring quilter, as well as a quilt designer, teacher, and who has several books published.  She has also been a friend for several years!  

It was a wonderful class.  We were working on a pattern of hers called Chinese Checkers - I'll have to put in a picture of her Chinese Checkers quilt on my next post.  I can only post 8 pictures at one time these days, on xanga, on my Mac, so the next post will be some of Barbara's quilts.  

Here, she is demonstrating one of the steps we had to do - lots of cutting, piecing, making triangles and diamonds and matching everything the correct way!   

Some views of the gals around the room at our sewing machines -

One gal had this cute Singer Featherweight - made in England, she said.  The white ones were made in England!

We had a nice lunch outside on the porch -

It was such a good class!  Barbara made what looked like a very difficult and confusing quilt, very clear and fun!  

I was noticing footprints on my blog, and even a friend request, from several people I didn't know or who hadn't come to my site from someone's site who I do know.  Then I could see that I made it onto Xanga's top blogs.  This has happened before.  I don't want to be one of Xanga's top blogs!  Anyone know how to stop that?

I drove for 10 hours this past Wednesday to get to Indianapolis for the True Woman '12 conference!  I had planned this months ago, to meet my friend, Julie, who has been involved in the True Woman movement for a number of years and has gone to the conference before.  She invited me to go.  It was wonderful!

Thousands of women had an opportunity to see some wonderful speakers - Nancy Leigh DeMoss, Elyse Fitzpatrick, Janet Parshall, Mary Kassian, Priscilla Shirer, Susan Hunt, Joni Eareckson Tada, and others.  The topic for the weekend was Revival!  The music all weekend was done by Keith and Kristyn Getty.  WOW!!

The first event was a Leadership pre-conference luncheon.  Here are some pictures of the ladies at our table, most of whom were gals who had come down from Illinois with Julie.  Her daughter was at our table too but she was busy with many responsibilities, so I didn't get a picture of her.  The bags in the center of the table were gift to everyone - filled with books!!  

I tried to get pictures of the speakers, but they didn't turn out well.  Too dark for you to see.

Before we went into the luncheon, Julie and I were waiting in the lobby when these ladies from the Dominican Republic came and sat where we were and we had a nice chance to chat with them.  3 generations - grandmother, mother, daughter, and friend - all women who love the Lord, and we really enjoyed our short opportunity to get to know them.

Here is a picture of the main conference hall - it was soon packed with almost 9000 women!

So much rich and godly teaching!  Lots of prayer and fellowship!  Scripturally sound and motivating music!  Inspiring stories!  A weekend of reminders of the gospel, how it is all that we need in all of life, how we need revival in our hearts and lives, God's Word to be central in our hearts.  WOW!

I really enjoyed the opportunity I had to meet several women that I had already gotten to know a little from facebook, as we prepared as a group to go to the conference - prepared spiritually, through working on a Bible Study together and sharing with each other.  They were all a group of ladies that Julie knew, and now I consider them my friends as well!  Here we are at dinner one evening - 

Sorry that I couldn't get pictures with any better lighting for most of the weekend!

I left early - Saturday morning - although the conference didn't wrap up until noon.  But I really wanted to get home, and it was a 10 hour drive home.  And look what was waiting for me from my wonderful husband when I arrived home!

I had to admit defeat tonight. . . sigh. . . the Swallowtail Shawl is no more.  I started the shawl at the beginning of August, took a class to learn the difficult lace pattern and how to make nupps.  Nupps are when you knit 5 stitches into one stitch, sort of, to make a little bauble and add some depth to the pattern.  You have to pick up the 5 stitches by purling them together on the next row.  On a shawl where every row you knit is adding more stitches, you have lots of stitches on your needles as the shawl keeps getting bigger.  In the pattern I was doing, the nupps started towards the outside of the shawl, making them every 10 stitches for about 300 or so.  I was getting it, but for some reason, even though I counted and counted, throughout the rows, and at the end of every row, and by the time I got that far,  even putting in a lifeline every other row, I was making a mistake somewhere on a nupp and the whole pattern was off.  But the yarn I was using, while beautiful, caught on itself and stuck to itself, making quite a bit of pulling apart when taking it out.  I was spending more time taking it out down to the same lifeline.  Finally, tonight, the yarn started shredding and breaking at that row.  And I gave serious thought to whether I wanted to take it out several lifelines down, cut the yarn and attach a new piece.  I was not enjoying this project.  Once I got down to a lifeline, this yarn was very difficult to pick up by threading the needles back through the stitches, and I was feeling like the hours I spent working on it and taking it out and re-doing it were keeping me from working on projects that I love.

I thought about just stopping in the middle of pulling it out this last time, putting it away, thinking about getting back to it again in the future.  But don't we all have unfinished projects hanging out in our sewing rooms that we started and never finished for some reason, tugging at the back of our minds, giving us no peace until we tried again?  And I didn't really want to try again on this one.  I didn't like it.  I am not even sure I would enjoy wearing something that I really didn't like making.

So, I ditched it.  Gone.  And it is ok!  Because I don't think that we always have to finish every single thing we try.  Some projects are learning experiences where we have to see the benefit we got from the process.  What benefits did I get from the process of knitting this shawl?  I learned some new stitches and patterns in knitting.  I learned that I love to knit lace but if I see nupps in a pattern, I will most likely not attempt it.  Or, if I do ever want to attempt them again, I learned that I need to pick my yarn more carefully.  I chose this yarn for its color mostly.  I didn't look closely enough to see that it was delicate and would shred when stressed.  I learned that I need to look up my yarn and projects on Ravelry to see if others had bad experiences with it.  And in the process of taking the class and working on the project, I got to spend time with a dear friend and get to know some others better.

So, there won't be any pictures of my Swallowtail Shawl!  I don't miss it at all!  In fact, I feel quite relieved and am looking forward to having time for another project.  And the next knitting project is one I have done before and love, and is very worthwhile - I am going to knit a prayer shawl for another dear friend who has just been diagnosed with breast cancer and will be having surgery very soon.