Fall things

Halloween is over, so are all the Dia de los Muertos celebrations, but I must mention one of the best events I went to during the last several days. Lonesomeville Pottery is a line of art pottery made locally in Portland, and sold on the web, but if you are very lucky, you will be invited to the occasional pottery sales where they also sell seconds and firsts out of their amazing old farmhouse in the city. It is a treat to go here at any time of the year, but is by invitation only. In the Fall they have what seemed like hundreds of carved pumpkins hiding amongst the vegetation in the garden, along with their ceramic pumpkins, and masks (think "the scream" by Mucha). In the Summer, their spectacular garden is a showpiece, and probably my favorite garden in Portland, and that is saying a lot as this is a city of gardens. Get on their mailing list!
Oh Sunday I taught a glass painting class to a group of women who were
all very enthusiastic! With little instruction, they dove into the project, which came about when Suzy redid her windows and had a surplus of neat old windows looking for a home.
We all loved this one done by Brenda, in the style of Mark Rothko

Fall leaves were on our minds and on the ground, and Kathryn painted a nice collection of them on her window. Can you tell she is a painter?
Joanne brought some stencils to use, and kept the original bright turquoise on the outside of her window. It turned out to be very fun and fanciful!
Suzy contemplates what to do next, and ended up adding a mauve background to her tree, which gave it a dreamy effect.
Too much color? Taking the idea from Brenda, I painted some bright circles, then at home added the stencils with spray paint. This one is going on back fence, to wake us up in the dead of winter. Will it frighten the birds away? Maybe just the squirrels that run along the fence...
Back to some more subtle colors of Fall. The gourds keep speaking to me, begging to be painted. I like how these two look like a pair of swans. Fall is really my time, as the colors are all the ones I gravitate toward, being a redhead, and a November birthday girl.
I think I have finally gotten my fill of painting gourds now, though there is still lots more of Fall to go. Go outside and find something Fall to sketch or paint. You will be happy that you did.
Probably one of the best things I did this year, which was one of the items on my list of "101 goals in 1001 days" was to begin to feed the birds. It was something I had always wanted to do, but with my garden window in the kitchen, I didn't know if they would fly so close to where the window was. I bought my bird feeder at the Backyard Birdshop, and they assured me that the birds would come. I waited for over a month,then one day, the finches arrived. Tom and Kathryn, I called them. Pretty soon they brought their friends, and now they are regular visitors. After we pruned the roses, I put up some mossy branches in front of the window as a perch, and they use that as the lounge, while waiting for a perch on the feeder.
I can stand only a few feet from where they feed, and now they are completely used to me being on the other side of the window.