October in Wisconsin - Really!

Last fall, I wrote a bunch of posts, even included some photography, and got so busy with my life that I neglected to publish them.  After I did all that work!  So now that we are at the tail end of winter (I hope), I will parcel them out and my poor blog won't be so neglected.

Yep, this has been sitting around since October..

I love this egret all fluffed up.

I was lucky enough to see this bald eagle flying over.  And even luckier to catch a picture!   I was so excited to actually see it, I can't believe that I remembered to focus and shoot!

Look closely to see the fish this egret has caught.  He must have caught and eaten a dozen or so in the ten minutes I watched. 

Taking off.  

This mallard was hiding under a branch at the water's edge.

I'm pretty sure these are American Coots.  There was a whole flock of them making cooing noises -- not the regular duck quacks.  Of course, they left when Rosie and I showed up. 

These beautiful trees are so typical this time of year.

Hard to believe that we are almost through the winter.  When I walked past the small ponds near my home last weekend, I noticed that the snow on top of the ice had melted.  Soon we'll have open water and then the migratory birds will be back!

Where's Karen?

Karen has not been a very good blogger lately.  But she has some very good reasons.  I know you all have been just sitting around and wondering what is going on here in Wisconsin.  Well, wait no more!  Karen went to Omaha!  For a quilt show!

My friend, Chris Daly, who is the creative genius behind Dye Candy (here) and blogs here, invited me to come along and help at the Omaha show (here).

Here is the booth shortly after our arrival.

And in almost no time, it looked like this -- that's Chris's back side.  There is a picture of both of us together in the booth, but it's still on Chris's camera and she hasn't sent it to me yet.  I'll post it or a link when I get it.

This was the Chris and Karen quilt show -- we brought examples of our work and set them up on one side of the booth.  A lot of people came in and asked about techniques used in some of them.  

The women who ran this show went out of their way to provide support for the vendors.  They had ladies assigned to come and provide "vendor relief" -- they would watch the booth while we got sandwiches or went to the "necessary room."

It was a lot of fun to go to Omaha -- my father grew up there and the last time I was there was the summer I turned 16.  Of course that was longer ago than I'm willing to admit...

I fell in love with this quilt.  It won a couple of ribbons.  I usually don't work with such traditional fabrics and therefore decided that  it would be fabulous made from our colorful hand-dyes.

Chris gave me a lesson in needle-turn appliqué.  I did the heart and first two leaves Saturday afternoon.  I'm all ready to start on my version of the quilt above...

This will have to serve as my entry in Design Wall Monday -- because my design wall hasn't changed since last Monday.  Go to Judy's blog (here) for more traditional entries.

This juvenile Bald Eagle lives near Chris's Shady Grove Studios in southwestern Wisconsin.  What a magnificent creature.  

And this is a rare picture of me -- I'm usually behind the camera and therefore very camera-shy.  The necklace and bracelet are jewelry my daughter made and presented to me the morning I left.  They went perfectly with the hand-dyes in our booth.

I have lots of news coming up in the posts I'll do later this week.  I promise!