Dead Dog Creek Ravine, November

I posted  last month  that I'd like to document Dead Dog Creek Ravine each month of the year.    Here are photos that I took this afternoon, just four weeks later.   

Christmas Crafting

The cottage-building boom (see this post)  didn't end with the 84 blocks made for the library and AAUW raffle quilts.  I made the "scrappy house" block in a smaller version (60 of them, to be precise) for Christmas ornaments for the library staff and trustees. 

The ornaments are 5" square.  They have batting but they're not quilted.

I made nine draft-stoppers for this year's crafted gifts.  They measure 32" x 6", with a 3.5" base. The blocks are string-pieced, 6.5" unfinished.  The draft-stoppers are weighted with cardboard tubes filled with kitty litter.  (The tubes are from rolled gift wrap, $2.99 each at T.J. Maxx and Marshalls--a better buy than mailing tubes from the office-supply store ($4.95 each).)  Stuffing them used up the remains of a once-ginormous bag of polyester fiberfill that I bought at BoSal foam in Scarborough, Maine, in the early 1990's, in the days when I made needlepoint pillows.   

I used a different Christmas fabric for each one.

And I have some left over blocks to play with!

Daisies in November

Some purchases are irresistible. 
These Mikasa dessert plates were $2.00 at the Salvation Army store.

And the winning word....

Last evening was the 5th Annual Community Spelling Bee to benefit CREW. 

The trophy comes back to ZBPL.

There were 18 three-person teams to start.  At the end it was ZBPL and Zion Park District.  In the 10th round we got "malapropos." They got "energumenen."  No one had heard of that one!   (It means "possessed by a demon.") 

And ZBPL won the prize for the best cheering squad! 

The fans were the planners' idea

Nervous?  Not us!