MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

I opened my Christmas present early and this is what I received. It is just the coolest thing!!!! A John Deere Gator!!!

I had asked my cousin Duane to find one for me earlier this fall and this is what he found!!!! Well, not exactly. He asked Joedy if he wanted to give it to me as a Christmas present so it was spruced up, quiet a bit from what I understand.

Duane sandblasted the metal areas and repainted them, new
stuff on the floor so that it is not slick, new fenders and hood as they were all torn up. He placed new decals on it and then he detailed the seats and tires. It looks brand new, thanks to my cousin and his expertise and I thought it might be for a few moments when I first saw it!!! He can fix, build, re-design or repair anything. And THANK YOU to my dear husband who gave him the go ahead to make it great!!!

The box will even even raise and lower. Should come in very handy when hauling things around here, running errands and when I have to help the guys re-nozzle the sprinklers. It is also living in the garage.

And Duane even threw in the bow!!!

MERRY CHRISTMAS to my family and friends who read the blog.

Christmas!!

We celebrated Christmas yesterday. Might have been a good thing as it sounds like Christmas day or rather the next few days leading up to it might be a little messy. We are under a winter storm warning starting tomorrow night until 5am Christmas morning.

Two of the items we gave for gifts this year were quilts. Yes, quilts

I made and quilted. I actually do piece and quilt. One is the Irish chain and the other is the Lucky Star quilt. Both Jennifer and Chad were pleased.

Merry Christmas to all who read this. Hope it is a Blessed Christmas.

A little dyeing

Sometimes I actually do dye fabric. Not as much as I did a few years ago though. Probably has something to do with the stacks of hand dyed fabric in the sewing room. Need to start overdyeing it and working on complex cloth techniques. There is always next year.

The online dyeing group I belong to recently had a blue/orange swap. I was pleased with the results. I used DT Midnight Blue and DT Deep Orange. I think the colors are a little richer in person than what they show in the photo. The results were intersting and I thought everyone ended up with some wonderful pieces.

FINISHED!!!!

They finished picking corn today!!!! Oh happy, happy, happy day it is too!!!! I can't remember the last time we were in corn harvest this long. I believe the length even exceeded the lengthy and stressful wheat harvest we went through earlier this summer.

The photo is honor of the last day of 2009 corn harvest. I took it a few hours before they finished the last field.

Two long harvests in one year is a momentous thing. Some friends who live here also raise sugar beets and it was a long, muddy harvest for them as well, so they got 3 long harvests. Plus the grapes in their vineyard were hailed earlier in the summer.

We use to raise sugar beets. I remember some of those mud grinding, grueling harvests. The first year we farmed, we lost 1/2 of our sugar beet crop. It snowed and snowed and then the ground froze. The beets were frozen in too. And to think we still wanted to farm after that.