Busy but Beautiful Autumn

Blame this unusually beautiful autumn for my lack of posts to this blog.  Also blame how busy I have been - but part of that has been taking every opportunity I could to walk on the beach, until today, it has been barefoot although earlier in the week my toes got very chilled. So it's time for the sneakers again  and that's a sign.  The rose hips are a sign, in fact, this photo was take about a month ago and the hips have had enough chilly night to have shriveled and lost their smooth skinned loveliness -- not unlike a number of women I know.

I've had little time for quilting because I am very busy with the Academy for Lifelong Learning at the Cape Cod Community college, taking classes and teaching my writing skills class. Besides which this is the time my very, very competent committee is helping edit the submissions for the 2013 "Reflections" anthology of student writing. It's both fun and frustrating -- fun because people have such a variety of things to write about, frustrating because the rules of punctuation and, in too many cases, good grammar have long been forgotten -- shriveled, perhaps like the rose hips. That's why I decided few years ago to teach a skills class.  But I will quickly admit that some of the committee members are teaching me rules of punctuation and grammar that even the good old Word program seems to ignore. 

Quilting has not entirely gone bye-the-bye.  I've made blocks for my guild's BOM and for swaps -- mostly black and white blocks because collecting them leads to interesting quilts.  And I have a couple of special projects in the works, one a double sided batik quilt with dark, rich colors on one side and light and bright colors on the other.  It's about half done.  I love best the active part of choosing which color will go beside which. Although these are not scraps of batiks but 5 inch squares, it is the same process as scrap quilting when every piece added is a decision.