November Banner

After a fabulous weekend at a quilt retreat where I did get a lot of work done, today was a crazy day.  In addition to the usual laundry/chores/catch-up "stuff", we had our gas fireplace insert put in.  Finally!  We've talked about it for a long time.  We have a wood burning fireplace in the living room, but we haven't used it for - well, a very, very long time.  It became a chore once we purchased a cast iron stove for our family room which really heated our house, so we put a metal plate over the living room fireplace and forgot about it.  Until we discovered how far gas-inserts have come.  Now I can sit in the living room with a cup of coffee and a book, turn on the fireplace, and read- and then just - oh, joy - turn off the fireplace and walk away!

We also had the furnace man come for a general check-up.  All I had to do about that was clear out the area around the furnace - not a fun thing to do on laundry day!  But they came, did their magic, and leave.  Laundry was done - well, except for the sheets, and I was able to go upstairs and lay out the November banner.  The photo below shows the central portion of the banner.  Once again I used one of my fabrics with printed letters/words (and in this case stamps and cancellations).  I chose to use a robin instead of the rather cutesy bird that came with the pattern but kept the gorgeous maple leaf shapes with the ribbon-like stems.  As is the case with my cell phone photos, the color is dreadful; maybe I should go back to using the "regular" camera which isn't as fast/easy to use but has better color.

I really need to stop using the word "cutesy".  It's clearly dismissive and shows my prejudice against designs that are what I think of as "cute".  Baby animals, baby-talk, funny vs witty, all those are on my list.  BUT, just because they aren't my idea of interesting doesn't mean that they don't resonate with other people.  And I need to remind myself to be respectful of others.