Back to the Texas Hill Country

A while back I promised to show a picture of the quilt I made for one of the other screened cabins at our little lake place.  The girls call it the Jelly Bean Quilt, I suppose because the colors are so scrumptiously like those of jelly beans.

 

When I took out the quilt for photographs I found my crocheted afghan that has also become part of cabin III's linens.  I didn't intentionally match the afghan to the quilt, or even make it specifically for this cabin, but it was obvious once it was finished that the two belong together.  I guess at the time I just really liked this color palette.

In the background of the next photo you can just see a sliver of what currently passes for Lake Travis.  We are in the midst of a severe multi-year drought and the top of the lake is about fifty feet below where it is when full.

Given the gentle slope of the lake bed on the opposite shore from our place, fifty feet of water translates into a huge increase in the surface area of the lake and so makes an enormous difference in the view.  The sunrises and sunsets are still beautiful though.  Perhaps they subconsciously inspired my color choices for the quilt and afghan.

In case anyone is wondering about the colors in these photos, they are true representations of what I saw.  I only made minor tweaks to the RAW files using Lightroom -- and didn't touch the saturation slider.

Thanksgiving in the Texas Hill Country

It's not a long trip from Austin to our little weekend house on the north shore of Lake Travis - less than an hour's drive - but it seems a world away:  big skies, long views, and oak woods interspersed with open fields which are filled with wildflowers in the spring and summer.

Springtime flowers

Lake Travis sunset

We spend most of our time there outdoors, walking, running, biking, swimming, bird-watching, and clearing the land of all the spiny and prickly plants that took hold in the years when the native grasses were depleted by over-grazing.  Our work boots get a lot of wear!

We also frequently cook and sleep outdoors, the latter either on the sleeping porch or in a screened cabin, and this Thanksgiving was no exception.  As usual, we put the turkey - plus a  brisket and some sausages for good measure - on the smoker.  That yielded a deliciously smoky flavored turkey and left the oven available for all the yummy side dishes.

In spite of the generally mild central Texas climate, it can get quite chilly sleeping outside, and a good pile of warm bedding is called for.  Right now we rely on a rather rag-tag collection of blankets and old sleeping bags so I am working, slowly, on making quilts for each of the beds.  Here is one I just finished hand-quilting for Cabin II.  The wool batting I used to make it extra cozy shrunk quite a bit in the wash so the overall texture is very crinkly, but I think will age nicely.

Steve's mother, Winifred, hand-stitched the flowered whole-cloth quilt at the bottom of the bed.  I am guessing it is from some time during the 1960s.

This little butterfly kept Steve and me company while we were clearing some brush the other day and is a perfect color match for the new quilt.  Maybe someone can help me to identify it.  A clouded sulphur, perhaps?