Yesterday was (for those of you not in the US) our annual food-family-Americana feast. For me, Thanksgiving is the best holiday: it’s all about those we love, the bounty of the table and being together, about being an American, and it isn’t grossly commercialized like Christmas and like Halloween has become.  Our small band gathered again this year, and it was wonderful–though we all did seem subdued.  Paul had the Redskins playing arch-rivals the Dallas Cowboys (U.S. Football) on the TV, and our team–the Washington, DC, Redskins of course–was doing so well I had to snag Potomac, our troll wearing a Redskins jersey, to join us on the table.  They won 38-31.  Hail to the Redskins, hail victory!  (That’s part of their fight song FYI.)

My Peeps, the best peeps on the planet!

And I even managed, FINALLY, to sneak in some time for art.  I’m taking a Watercolor Lettering class with Val Webb online; we’ve only had one class/lesson so far, and I learned something not two minutes into the first video!   I clearly have a lot to learn, but I’m learning and really enjoying it.  I wasn’t going to take her next class about herbs and watercolor, but think I will just have to sign up….great stuff.  So  this is my first watercolored word:

From Val Webb’s first lesson, block letters, painting in the negative space.

I’ll be back with all the blogposts about Houston soon–I’ve resized the photos, just need to write and insert photos.  Since I got back, I’ve  ad Joshua’s birthday, then massive garden clean-up for the winter to do before I can sit down with the laptop, plus need to do all the Christmas shopping before my next foot surgery on December 7.  Hope you all had a wonderful Thanks-Giving day, no matter where in the world you are.  It is good to remember, be grateful, and say so–to yourself, to the others who make your life better (including the doggie down the street who wags his tail, the bird that sings, the kind lady in the checkout aisle at the grocery, all of them).

Talk to you soon with lots of pictures from Quilt Festival!

My favorite picture of the day…the boys warm up for the Class B (Maine) Eastern Regional Cross Country Championship… notice the muddy handprint? This was BEFORE the race…. competitors were, by the end, covered head to toe in mud!

Or make that RACE!  Today was an incredibly sodden day for the Maine High School Eastern Regional Cross Country Championships, held at Troy Howard Middle School in Belfast, Maine.  It might just as well have been called Mudfest 2012!  When driving home from dropping Eli off at the bus this morning, it was raining so hard that even though I had my wiper on “whip”, I could barely see.  The road surface was not visible…the rain was coming down so hard it was bouncing up and the top of the road was a gray haze.  That meant MUD!  But the kids were AMAZING!  The Girls Team WON Class B Eastern Regionals and for the first time in memory the Boys Team qualified for States!  The top 8 of 15 teams get in, and the boys placed 6th!  Awesome job!

After the meet, a VERY happy Camden Hills Regional High School (Maine) Cross Country team!

From the boys team, Junior Ben Trapani put in an amazing run coming in second in Class B!  Eli Smith and best friend since first grade Ben Winchenbach both turned in amazing times–if the boys team had not qualified as a team, they each would have qualified for States by placing in the top 30:  Eli was 19th and Ben 26th!!!! As FRESHMEN?!!!!!!   The rest of the boys also exceeded their previous bests for a combined performance that earned the entire team a trip to the State Championships for the first time in memory…. at least 7 or more years since a Camden Boys team has qualified.  WELL DONE, gentlemen!

The Girls Team has been a local powerhouse for quite some time, and thrillingly, they won with Brittany Bowman coming in third in the Class B girls, and with three of the girls in the top ten, six in the top thirty.  That’s why they won!

Looking across the field to the starting line for the boys’ race

And they’re off…. Ben Trapani is just to the left of Eli (who has a red arrow pointing at him…yes, Mama is proud!)

A little blurry photo, but that is Eli running in the red, about halfway through the race at 20th! We knew he needed to make 30th or better if the team didn’t make the cut–which it hadn’t in years! Paul and I were dumbfounded that he was so far up in the pack! THEN, Ben W. comes along seven runners later!!!! He could make it too!

Eli is nothing if not determined. Here you see the boys coming down the hill into the straightaway into the chute (and BIG HUGE puddles)…Maybe 200 yards to go?

Then Eli gets this look of determination on his face and you know you are about to witness his “final kick”…. here the legs and arms start churning, puddle or no! Notice how he has closed the gap from the previous photo.

And into overdrive…this is what makes Eli a winner! Not just physical ability, but mental fitness and determination and drive! (Yeah… I’m totally, deliriously biased!) We did not know it at the time, but just before the last uphill, he twisted an ankle a little bit and fell behind the kid to his left in this photo.  Without the slip, he might even have overtaken the boy in dark blue.  As it was, he finished 19th!  as a FRESHMAN!

After the race…can you say MUDDY? This is before Eli went for his chest-slide. The mud was so slick in places you could have put a sled on it and gone downhill!

L to R: Forest P., Ben W., Ben T. and Eli…well done!

And now, the GIRLS are off! I didn’t get many photos of the girls…somehow I wasn’t “on” with the camera today and many of my photos were blurry.

In the stands…notice the change in color in Eli’s shirt? This one is AFTER sliding on his chest in the mud!

The Girls Class B Eastern Regional Champions! WOOT!!!! Well done to one and all!

And lest you think I forgot about quilting, nope. Wondering: would this photo of the mud turn into a good Thermofax screen?

And last and best, teenagers being teenagers!

Having fun at the end of the day…great job to everyone!

And I am happy to report, as soon as Eli got home he went out to the hose, in the rain, to hose down his running spikes, then came in and peeled off all the grimy muddy muck into the washing machine and himself into the shower.  What a wonderful day!   And yes, I am REALLY GLAD I wore my Bogs boots…rubber up past the ankles!

Sometimes it just takes a change of venue to open your eyes!  We went on a vacation–something we do about every 4 years–this past month.  Back at the beginning of middle school, when our younger son came home with honor roll grades the first quarter of 5th grade, hubby made a deal with him:  if Eli was on Honor Roll for all 16 quarters of middle school, he could pick the destination of his choice (in the continental 48 United States) for a family trip.  Well, Eli did it, plus added in three individual championships in three sports his 8th grade year (Cross Country, Wrestling and Track)!  He is interested in marine mammals and the ocean, so he picked the Florida Keys and off we went!

I opted to lug my heavy DSLR (new, this is its first out-of-studio major excursion), and am so glad I did.  I took a deep gulp (hoping not to get dumped into the water) as we sat on a small kayak and paddled into the warm waters offshore our first day in the Keys and (thanks to rapid fire shutter speeds!) got  fabulous photos of a cormorant–several duds, two great ones:

Cormorant taking flight

and

Cormorant airborne. Granted the horizon is tippy, but I was on a kayak!

We stayed at a gorgeous, fancy resort…nicer than any place I’ve EVER been…for just the first night.  The grounds were amazing…I wandered with my camera in the Florida heat (90+ degrees, 90+ percent humidity…drip!) and found inspiration at just about every turn:

I love looking up at palm trees, and I love those berry-like things that change in habit (upright, drooping), size and color depending on the palm tree.

A palm trunk like this makes you want to grab some fabric and Shiva painsticks and do a rubbing. In the absence of those supplies, a camera and making a thermofax screen for printing… or using just the shapes for a filler quilting design. Or use the shapes and make a modern quilt in undulating strips…..

Fan Palm…again, reinterpret in cloth….

I had never seen palm trees with silver-gray leaves/fronds. As you can gather by these three photos, I REALLY liked them. They were beyond round, so the center would fold in on itself…this is just ONE frond! The light part in the center is where the frond folds in and tucks into the center of the beyond-a-circle shape.

Close up of the silver-gray palm frond…love those curly rivulets of leaf peeling off from the edges of the frond

And another–going for symmetry this time.

And the canopy of fronds overhead…can you tell these just grabbed me?

An employee spotted me and said she, too, was a photographer, and sent me off in the direction of this cool path.  The trees were trained to grow diagonally across the walk, and there were tiki torches along the path to light your way at night.  On one side you look back through the arch/tunnel to a pool……sigh!

The palm trees are trained to grow at this angle to form this tunnel!

I’ve got TONS of photos to share, but I’ll try to alternate between Florida and what I’ve been doing the past couple of months!  TOO MUCH catching up!  I’ve been busy DOING life and not blogging about it <grin!>!!!

We were a small but content twosome this month.  Deborah of course is far afield, and Kate is busy beyond belief, so Kathy and I got together at her house (OH how wonderful it is to have her living locally!) and we enjoyed her new screened in porch!   Last time, we managed not to get around to collaging, so I lugged WAY too many pounds of magazine clippings and STUFF (including the square and round paper punches I have) to her house and played!  Before that, though, Kathy showed me the progress in the garden, including the newly sunny spot where a tree is no longer.  There were two stumps, so I asked her what she was going to do with them…..heh heh!  But first…

My collaged pages from my play day with Kathy. Yes, kindergarten for grown-ups in OH SO the BEST way! Pass the glue-stick please!

Kathy’s page–just love the cascading houses, and that blue on the right and and and… you can tell she liked playing with my punches, tho I must admit I’m not thrilled that several of the ones I’ve bought don’t seem to cut cleanly for me. I’ll try the aluminum foil trick for sharpening the one that was acting up. Not sure if it is uneven pressure by me (as in operator error) or if the punch isn’t quite so well machined… Anyway, thank you Kath for a PERFECT June day (and letting me share your page).

Then those stumps….Kathy was going to have someone come take them away, so I asked if that someone could be ME…YIPPEEEE!   Paul (hubby) didn’t even roll his eyes at me when I called to consult on their soon-to-be use….just said yes, he and Eli would come help me haul them away!!!!  Herewith:

Our new end table for the front porch! Next time Max or True is over to chop some tree trunks into firewood, I’ll ask them to take the chain saw and flatten two of the tops of the stumps so the glasses won’t tip quite so much!

And the Hammock Step! At first I thought the multi-stump end table would be too low and I would use this piece underneath, but that wasn’t necessary. So we rolled it over to the hammock…. I’ve blurred Paul’s face as he doesn’t have a pic of himself even on his FB page (yes, we finally got him onto FB!). As you can see, he is engaged in his favorite summer passtime….

And because I couldn’t resist…. Eli and I went shopping for shorts for him (he keeps doing that eating and growing thing), we stopped to stock up on cat litter at the big-box pet store up in Augusta (the capitol of Maine, an hour west of here by 2-lane route).  I had been wanting since we moved early last year to get a doggie bed for Widgeon to use down in my studio, as the floor gets COLD even in summer, and he’s gonna squish/trash the settee cushions.  So I found this lovely one with zip-off/washable cover (from Martha Stewart no less…. is there anything left in America that she doesn’t have a line of product for? –to use some horrid diction).  Isn’t he ADORABLE?  He LOVES it!

When you are a small dog of even smaller brain (with apologies to Pooh and Mr. Milne), it is simply too difficult to hold up one’s chin or keep the eyelids open…..Plus the doggie bed is quilted in dog bones like the background quilting I did on the portrait of him, AND he matches the color, so it won’t show how much he sheds!