The Frost Is On The Pumpkin...

Guess what? I love fall, and Halloween! Maybe because my birthday is this time of year, maybe because I like cool weather, maybe - who knows?? I love a crisp fall day, with the leaves falling and the smell of smoke. Something about it just really speaks to me and makes me happy. Every year I seem compelled to make yet another fall/Halloween wallhanging. Maybe someday I'll even make a full-size quilt! Because this time of year makes me want to cuddle up into a cozy quilt with my kitties and a good book. I've seen a lot of great fall/Halloween quilts around blogland this fall. They're very inspiring. Now, if I only had more time!

I made the quilt with the yellow kitty 2 or 3 years ago. The cat looks like my daughter's cat Hamlet, except I think Hamlet is perhaps more pumpkin-shaped than this. (sorry, sweetie!)
I started this quilt with the dark kitty not long after Hamlet's, but never quite got it finished. This one is Shade, because we didn't have Dunkel then. When I was going through my (many) bins of projects, I found this again. It only needed the eyes and whiskers added. I finally got it done! Yay! Another finish! But, after I took this picture, I changed the eyes to brighter green buttons. I forgot to take another picture. Oops! But just try to imagine how it looks, OK?

This is a little stenciled quilt that I bought one year at a quilt show. I think it's a great little quilt, and I love the little buttons. I have to be careful where I put it, because the kitties want to chew on the stick.
I found this link to a quilt show on someone's blog a bit ago. Unfortunately, I can't remember where. It's a quilt show put on by The Country Loft quilt shop in La Mesa, California. Actually you can see the shows from a number of years. (Just scroll down on the menu on the left to see "Quilt Show".) Very fun!

Crazy Aunt Purl had a very thoughtful post today about consumerism, credit cards, and "stuff". I really enjoyed her take on it, and mostly agree with her. Here's another essay on "stuff" by Paul Graham. Having just moved in recent memory, I can understand this "stuff" stuff. I have too much stuff. It can become a burden and a hindrance. I haven't even unpacked all of my stuff because I'm enjoying the minimalism. Don't get me wrong - I still have lots of stuff out. I just don't have it ALL out. We have sorted and culled many times since we moved into this house, and I still have more to do, in almost every room, not to mention the garage! We have more than we really need. I think we quilters often buy more fabric than we really need, just because it calls to us. We need to stock up for when we can't afford more fabric, or to have a choice of fabrics for our art, or whatever our rationalization is. I know I have. And not just fabric, but books, tools, patterns, toys - really, just about anything used for quilting. I don't have any answers. I've really tried hard to not buy fabric just to have it, but it's a hard habit to break. Sadly, it's my addiction. Well, besides chocolate. But, I'm out of room for any more quilt-y stuff. Like the bumper sticker says, "You can't have it all - where will you put it?"

I'm trying Tonya's suggestions on my photos this time and sized them to 800 pixels. I've used 3% of my space for photos in 9 months. One thing I've learned is that there's a bug in Blogger. If you load your photos in the center position, and then move them, they are no longer clickable to a bigger size. I don't know why. If you load them on the left or right, you can move them and then still click on them, but your text gets goofy going around the photos. So, hopefully this will work.

One last link for you. I found pictures of "liberated" churn dash quilts on Flickr. Very fun to see!