This is not going to be a nice post

Hunting season is over after a dreadful 6 weeks of watching this cruel "sport." When we first moved up here, I was told it was a way to thin the herds, put meat on the table, commune with nature, the heritage of the Montana way of life. I know there must be some ethical hunters, but what I have seen is stupidity, carelessness, and a lack of consideration for wildlife and personal property in general. I read an article just the other day about how many women are taking up the "sport", one woman actually stated as she sat in a blind to shoot birds or whatever, how she got to watch two otters play, all I could think was, good thing otters aren't hunted, because for sure they would be dead also.

We had two deer die on our property, trespassers shot one buck and left it to die on our driveway. A neighbor down the hill, stepped out of his house and shot a buck as it was walking down to the river to drink. That close to others houses, that close to the deer and he only wounded it, it ran back up to the hill to our property where there is sanctuary and died in our corral. It made me physically sick.

At the beginning of the season we had at least 15 deer who would come by to drink or lounge under the trees, play with each other, we have only a handful today. I'm just sick.

These two deer who are sparring with each other are dead now. It makes me sick.

A Mighty Ram

If I had waited one more day, there would have been snow on the ground, snowing all night and very cold, but I have been trying to get a picture of this big horn sheep, the big ram for days and finally yesterday he was obsessed with mating one of the females that I was able to sneek behind a boulder and take a picture from the door of him, hope you can see how big his horns are, he's very mature. Click to enlarge and it shows him so much better and then all around him are his females and their first young.

Mercer Lane, one border to go

Just need to add the right hand border, I added the scallop along the edge, since this was in Sue's line drawing, but not in her pattern and I liked the look better with the scallop, there should be beads inside the orange circles, but I misplaced them so I used blue wool instead. Can't wait to finish it.

Black Friday

I hate that term, the media or whoever thinks of these things seems to think every day, every thing needs a label. When I was younger, the friday after Thanksgiving, was just that, the friday after Thanksgiving, a time to start thinking about decorating for Christmas, spend more time with visiting relatives, but there certainly wasn't this advertising frenzy, doors open at 5 am for sales. We are being lead by our pocketbooks to join each other at 5 am to save, to buy, to save and perhaps buy just a little more than we should.

"Black Friday", personally instead of it reflecting a financial term as in the black, making money, it reminds me of death and shouldn't be used to reflect prosperity.

Happy Thanksgiving!

May we all give thanks for the good things in our life and a special thanks for all my internet friends, Nancy

Hand quilting

Decided to do some hand quilting today instead of working on Christmas ornaments, using wool threads for the hand quilting. When I'm done hand quilting, I will cut the backing to fit the scallop edges and bind with a button hole stitch in perle cotton. My little Bailey has been my helper all day.

Not your ordinary Christmas ornaments

I have so many ornaments and Christmas gifts to make, one of these will be for a friend at work as an early Christmas gift and birthday gift. At the clinic, we have a birthday breakfast for the nurses every month, it's a nice get together, just for the nurses before we start work. We get to laugh, gossip and eat a nice breakfast before we drive to the clinic for work.

Punchneedle

I just started doing punchneedle, love working with the wool threads and making these projects. Fast and easy. The moose punchneedle is my own design and I sewed it to a background of wool.




From Jan Patek's newletter, "art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time" by Thomas Merton

A sneak peek

Another ornament I finished, the little tree is made up of wool embroidery and tiny, tiny circles of wool that were hole punched from a wonderful green plaid and then stitched to the background.

Remember the Big Horns

I wanted to show how much in awe I am of them every day. This is how they come down to our property, I guess they could take an easier route, but they climb up and down the cliff beside out property. Something to remember when I want to do things the easy way, just to be done with it, instead of always giving my best.

Yellowstone in the Winter

Wanted to show you all some pictures of what Yellowstone looks like in the winter, brutal weather for both the wildlife and the tourists, it was 30 below when we were there. The first pic if of the falls that actually freeze over during the winter, I think Lucy showed what it looked like in the summer.



The second pic is of the historic Mammouth Hotel where we stayed, no TV or telephones.











Here's me in my younger days, I was freezing.




Bison trying to make their way thru the snow.

Christmas gifts

I'm going to work on Christmas gifts today, the first is a Christmas ornament that is my prototype, have made two more in different wools with more embellishments which I love to do, adding embroidery or couched yarns, buttons and then the rusty tin for a hanger.



These are rags balls that I made for myself, but I'm going to make a basket full for a quilting friend. I start with a foam ball and wrap the fabric around the ball.



And then the last is a wool purse made from some wool scraps that have wildlife depicted, bind it with either wool yarn or strips of wool and add an elk antler button.

Wildlife Monday

We are having chinook winds, gusts up to 70 miles an hour so all our snow has melted and we have lots of wildife this morning. It's hunting season and we have a wolf pack nearby so all the deer and big horns are staying here where they seem content.

Those are big horns in the first picture and second picture is of a fawn that had a wound on her leg, you can barely see that it is healing well.




Another picture of one of the deer and that's my to be studio cabin in the background with the red roof.



And the last is of the Big Horn with her baby coming up to the bird bath to drink, it use to sit up on that concrete pedestal, but they kept knocking it down with their holves until it broke.

Have you noticed

I tend to blog only on the weekends, I guess life gets away from me during the week and we aren't allowed to use our computers at work for anything but work.
May has seen a quilt peeking out with baskets, made many years ago, is a Linda Brannock pattern called Favorite things, those are elk antlers in the way. It is hand appliqued and machine quilted. Before Jim got sick, he use to hike miles picking up antlers to use for decoration, they are shed during the winter.



All those pictures on the walls are album covers that Jim collects, old Beatles, Pink Floyd, we really went round and round on him taking all my quilting space so you can see on peeking out from the celing. The red and white quilt is from Jim's Grandmother that I hand quilted.

Winter pics

May was asking how cold it gets here, the worst winter we had so far it was 30 below for weeks, that was several years ago and here are some pics from then when we had so much snow. The rock wall is along our driveway, I build it over several summers after watching the movie Babe, just wanted one of those rock fences like you see in Europe. Jim thought I was crazy, but it looks wonderful leading up to the house.

Another sewing spot

During the winter with football on the TV on the weekends, I do like to set myself up in the livingroom with my handsewing, everything I need to put my feet up, sew and watch football, especially fun when it's cold and snowy outside and I can sit with my quilts on my lap to keep me warm, having a running joke that every year I put my winter clothes away, and of course this year, like last year, I can't find my long underwear. I refuse to buy another set, they have to be here somewhere, this house is not that big, so I use my quilts to keep me warm.

Saturday

Saturday chores take up so much of my time as does college football which I love to sit down and watch while doing some hand work. Have goals for this weekend, start my Mercer Lane borders and decide on a Christmas ornament to make for a swap with my Yahoo group. Think I will make one with a Sue Spargo influence, bright colors and lots of wool with embelishments. This will be fun. Here's a quilt top I made several years ago, yikes, how the years go by, sold it on Ebay, wish I had kept it now.

Plus it's hunting season here in Montana and I hate it, too many trophy hunters killing for the sake of killing instead of those who need to put meat on the table.