November wrap up

Sketch of my bed at the bay under the Fairhaven Summer Quilt now completed 

A house with a great view at the Chesapeake Bay

I was so stretched in November that I didn't get time to post news about some of the good stuff I wanted to do so I am taking a little time now to do it here in early December.
There was a trip to the Fairhaven Cliffs and a few days alone in the Red house with a few dozen lady bugs and my completed quilt. I took new materials and worked on the Williamsburg project. I also dug out my Crazy Quilt from the past eleven years and did a little more work on that huge project. I realized I didn't have enough time to do them both so when the machine jammed up I turned to hand embroidery to finish my time at the bay. Then there was a week of volunteer work at the Pyramid Atlantic Arts studio making boxes with my friend Kelly O'Brien for the Moving Parts project. With Gretchen and a couple of volunteers who dropped in we worked for five days almost all day finishing up as much as we could. It's not completely done but we took a big leap forward with 17 fully completed clam shell boxes! Only 26 more to go and since Kelly lives in Germany now we will wait till next summer when she comes back to do some more intensive work towards the goal of 50 completed box sets. In the middle of the week Keith and I went out with a fully cooked organic turkey and some delicious pumpkin pie and feasted with Mom and my brother David and spent the night. Next day we went shopping and I got some more quilting fabrics for the two projects I am working on now and some for a future project. The sale was great at Joann's Fabrics 20% off everything including sale prices! So I splurged and got some red velvet for the Crazy Quilt. I need more so that will be a good wish list item for my Holiday gift list. Then I went back to finish up boxes and in the mean time I have been trying to finish up some binding work of my own journals and sketches.

arrived at the bay in the rain

got to work on the green and white strips 

Gray skies didn't discourage and the low tide was amazingly low! 

A very handsome house at the top of the hill on the road overlooking the bay 

view of the bay from the high ground by neighbor Foust's house 

Red house view from the beach with no green leaves or kudzu

clay cliffs

17 clam shell boxes under weights drying 

17 clam shell boxes ready to wrap and store at Pyramid Atlantic

Some of the work I finished on the Williamsburg Quilt project 

something that belongs in every work of art, sparkle

In the next post I will show the sketches I did the last week riding metro to go volunteer at Pyramid Atlantic Arts Studios....

November metro sketching

This has been an exciting month with lots of running around. I went to the bay for a few days to work on my new quilt. Then came home and volunteered for a week  on the Moving Parts box building project at Pyramid Atlantic Art Studios in Silver Spring. Since my time at Pyramid wrapped around Thanksgiving I decided to ride metro up to Silver Spring each day allowing me some time to sketch and keep my daily routine out on the road. Here are some of the sketches that are in my little pocket sketch book from those commuter days and nights at the end of November.

Lady in beige 

Woman with groceries and big circle earrings

The month began with this fellow writing on metro 

early in the month this Asian man was my subject downtown on metro

Lady in hound's tooth design jacket and black scarf 

head to toe figure guy on metro was my favorite 

cell phone dominates the activity of metro riders

night before Thanksgiving travelers showed up on metro this one was so tired she was falling asleep between stops

decked out in lots of color she was wearing knee high boots

best head of the month is the guy in the foreground

Extremely tall guy didn't fit on my page so his neck got tucked in his shoulders 

This woman bugged me by eating fried chicken on the train so I drew her 

elder Asian couple riding metro

Now it's time to start a new month. November was part of the change from the garden months where I transition to indoor working like these sketches from Metro.

orange red and gold walk through brookland's trees

small leaf linden gets yellow 

oaks in gold orange and scarlet red were in the square in front of Brooks Mansion 

the doorway in the distance is the Brooks family Mansion 

I believe the District of Columbia's emblem tree is this scarlet oak the color is so red for several days each autumn before they turn brown.  I wish we had more of them. 

All these trees in one little square area next to Metro parking lot and in front of the the Brooks Mansion that are slated to be cut down to make way for more housing in the not too distant future. It is a nice little square of urban parklike land that happens to belong to the Metro who can do as they please with it in the end. They even planted fruiting plum trees along one edge of the square of land which are picked each year by neighbors and visitors to the area who know when they are ripe. I was just passing by on my way to the post office and knew the colors were going to be pretty good so I took my camera along to see if I could capture some of it before it's history.

walk at the battlefield

jogger running up the to the Stonewall Jackson monument

This past Friday morning November 11th 20011, I was home in Manassas, the scene of one of the first major battles during the civil war 150 years ago and where there is a large national park on those battle grounds. I had an hour free on Veterans day and decided to go take a walk in the park. It's been a good while since I was up there and this time I discovered a new trail leading to a new section of the park I didn't know could be accessed by walking down this new trail through the woods! Perfect time of year if not the perfect day for a walk there. On the main ground site it was painfully windy and cold 36ºF wind chill they said as I was driving away at 11 in the morning after my walk! I had the small Kodak handy to make a few pictures and enjoyed a woodland and over field walk for 45 minutes by myself. There were a number of runners, joggers and dog walkers there too but I was one of the early birds at 10 AM.

cannon on the ridge overlooking Henry house and Manassas Mountain in the distance, beautiful woods ablaze with color between the field and the mountain.

cluster of oak trees looking kind of red orange stand against the intense wind which made the flags stand straight out this veterans day.

as I approached the woods this red grassy field and the colorful trees beyond built my excitement to see more leaves 

The entrance to the trail a wooded section of the park behind the visitors center.

Look carefully at the blow up to see the deer in the woods

It was a doe but about 100 feet further down the trail as a jogger came towards me a buck sauntered across the trail between us and seemed to be limping a bit. He had about 5 antlers on his head.

golden leaves of a young beech tree which may be as much as 15-20  years old they grow very slowly

at the edge of the forest were several more fields along the trail I followed

This reddish grass is one of my favorite things in the fall fields . 

The field beyond the trial's edge seen from the woods casting shadows in the foreground

Lots of colored leaves but they didn't photograph as well as they looked with the naked eye. 

I want to go back and try one of the long walks. They have one trail that is a full 5-6 miles long! Woods and fields and hills and valleys and Bull run the creek that surrounds one edge of the battlefield is another place to visit during the early spring. It has some great wild flowers that bloom just before the leaves come out on the trees. Next trip will be a winter walk. Maybe on Thanksgiving weekend? Or perhaps during Christmas holiday visits.