PUMPKIN LOVE - part two

Displaying my son and daughter-in-law's homegrown pumpkins at the cabin...

and putting up all the harvest decorations throughout home and yard.

That's huge love for me.

Putting out artist/illustrator Patience Brewster's mini 3-d designs come to life,

along with fiber artist Barbara Nelson's stuffed whimsical creations

on a Halloween tree design by Patience is always something I look forward to.

Barbara is still going strong at 87 although this was the first year

the Artistic License Art Show wasn't put on due to Covid where her work is featured.

I've collected one of her whimsical creatures almost every year since I was in my 30's.

Creating pumpkin designs with my new fiber students and and long time dear friends,

was so enjoyable this year.

Aileen Perry,

Whitney High's Biology teacher,

 along with her sister Suzanne Campbell,

Whitney High's Principal's secretary and I have been spending the last 5 months together,

meeting up once a week at my home studio for chatting and creating.

And yes there is mask wearing and social distancing going on!

HA!!

This is satisfying my need to teach as well as keeping me abreast with all the goings on

 at my beloved school that I continue to miss so very much.

Aileen gifted me with the lovely ochre pumpkin in the middle

and inspired me to design my own pumpkins for gifting and display.

Now the gals want to learn to quilt,

so I'm teaching them to eco-dye first to learn about all the dyes that can be extracted from plants.

This will them a rich array of color on cottons and linens to design their quilt with.

Then they will learn to hand stitch and embroider

doing a little preliminary on felt before constructing a mini quilt.

It's up to them where we go after that.

Possibly basketmaking, weaving , felting, bookmaking;

it's all so much fun for me.

It was Aileen's idea to try and make a child's mobile using a few of the characters from Harry Potter.

She has become an avid knitter in only a few months.

Above is the Sorting Hat I demoed for her

(a fairly challenging pattern).

We've also completed the snake and hedgehog and are working on the lion right now.

I'm not a big Harry Potter fan so I used my Sorting Hat as a Halloween display.

Another big love for me during this time of year is collecting and pressing fall leaves.

I just found these from last years collection when I was looking thru a big Coffee Table book.

Amazing how they haven't lost their color in a years time.

Now what to do with them?

Hummm?

This is also the time for us here in Southern Ca. to take down our dried out summer gardens.

This weekend I helped my son remove all his dried up pumpkin and squash vines

and tah dah, 

we can see his backyard again.

I think I might have mentioned a couple of posts back

that when he and his wife moved into their home,

they gutted their backyard.

We amended it with bucket loads of steer and chicken manure,

so the sunflowers they grew were pretty ginormous...

LOL...

as you can see here.

I got to take one of these beauties home with me yesterday,

 and I'll scatter the seeds next spring at the cabin.

Well, maybe not all of them.  

I'll give a lot to our always hungry Blue Jays.