My Blue Heaven

If you're of a certain age, you'll remember as I do this old song.  If not, just take your cue from the photos posted today.

The garden is about at its end.  I forced upon gave my sister as many of the mountains of ripe tomatoes as I dared, but there is still an abundance left to gift some lucky soul who hasn't yet made their winter supply of salsa.  Early this spring on a whim I picked up one "blue pumpkin" plant at the local farmers market, and this is what I harvested yesterday.

 I wish I knew which of the many varieties of blue pumpkins this is; I understand they are excellent for pies, pumpkin bread, what-have-you.  We'll find out shortly.  Oh, the largest one weighed in at 21 pounds, the medium one at 15.  I didn't bother weighing the smallest, but it's somewhere in the 10-12 pound range.  That's a lot of pies ...

While my camera was out, I thought it worth recording the last of our blooming plants, our lone Caryopteris.  The bumblies just love this plant, often there are 20 or more feasting on the nectar from this sprawling beauty.

And, completing the blue heaven round-up, here's a sneak peek at grandkid #4's quilt, now just awaiting stitching down of the binding.

A lot of practice with Wendy Sheppard's "Jester Hat" August tutorial from the FMQ Challenge.  I really liked the effect of the variegated thread with these hats.  Even after all this practice I still find myself stitching into dead-ends with this design, and since I detest travel-stitching to get out of a bind, there were a lot of end-threads to tie off and pull into the batting.

Onward to ditch grandkid #5's quilt today, plus working a bit on my Susan Brubaker Knapp sample for our FMQ bonus challenge.  Finished soon, I hope.  I'm loving working on this little project and hope to have something to show here very soon.

Celebrating one of our last blue-sky days here in the great northwest, our blue heaven ...