Pie Season

Pie season began at Rose Cottage yesterday.  This beauty is organic gala apple pie.  The tarts were made with homemade cherry jam that a friend made.  All delicious.

I've been toiling away on my piece for Fiberactions' current challenge -- neutrals -- to be revealed November 15.  I've made a series of small quilts, am beading them now, and then will turn them into a fabric book.  More work than I bargained for...but hey, I've got nothing better to do these days anyhow.  If there's time, I've got a second piece in mind for the challenge.

I've been reading a lot this year ~ I love to read.  I read throughout the day between artmaking sessions, I read most evenings, sometimes spend most of the weekend reading.  So glad I have the time at this point in my life.  Here's some of what I've read this year, and if it's on the list, it's recommended ~

• all of Daniel Silva's Gabriel Allon series of international espionage novels, beginning with The Kill Artist
• all of Henning Mankell's Wallander series of Swedish mystery/crime novels (I read Steig Larsson's trilogy a couple years ago)
• most of Jo Nesbo's Harry Hole series of Norwegian mystery/crime novels
• Appassionata by Eva Hoffman
• The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje
• Sea Change by Jeremy Page
• True Believers by Kurt Andersen (mid-way through this one and loving it)
• Hotel Paradise by Martha Grimes

I recently completed the first of my art journals (now called Wild Journal) and am slowly working toward the end of the second...while at the same time working in volume three, which will be called Design Journal.  That black & white fabric-covered book I made not long ago has become my zentangle journal -- I'm doing new work in that (white pen on black paper, black on white) plus I glued in the small zentangles I drew previously in an early book that I dismantled after I'd used all the pages.

I've been making entries in my shabby Autumn Journal every few days, wanting it last for the entire season.  There's not a lot going on in my life now, and this is blissful.  I rarely write in my writing journal any more, because there isn't much to report.  I used that vehicle over countless years to work through difficult things.  Life has really mellowed out as I've aged.  It's such a blessing to just live peacefully and without stress or strife.  To take each day as it comes, to do what gives me pleasure and not worry about anything else.

As always there are countless projects I'd like to begin, ideas I have in my head...but I no longer have the compulsion to power through anything.  If it gets done, great...if it doesn't, that's okay too.  My muse is definitely in kick-back mode now.  And that's just fine as well.