Lucky Friday the 13th, Kimmy Brunner & Susan Branch.....pt. 2

Well, I am on my way home from the template workshop......it is raining.  Now my mind turns to getting to meet Susan Branch tonight.

I really didn't know any details other than it started at 7 PM.  I was worrying about getting there by then, because of the Silver Fox's work schedule.....he never knows when he is getting away from the hospital.  I just kept telling myself....you can't worry about that, we will get there and it will work out.  :)

So in the meantime while I am waiting for him to come home, I log on to my computer and clean up my email for the day and then decided to read through my bloggers.  I am reading Kansas Troubles Quilters from Lynne Hagmeier and all of a sudden..... I am reading words....I wrote that.....holy smokes, that's my name...... I won a pack of fabric.  Lynne also collects acorns and asked the question why do you like acorns?  Here is my silly response.....

KT Winner

Sheri in Iowa says:

I have a special "thing" for acorns. Don't know where that comes from? Probably the same place where my love affair with lace, vintage hankies, salt cellars, quilts, fabric and.......you get the idea! A little jacked up! :) What a nice giveaway.

Congratulations, fellow acorn addict! Send your shipping address to lynne@ktquilts.com and we'll send out your KT Collector's Club pack. Enjoy! 

Yippee!  This day just keeps on giving! I can't believe it.  Isn't that a hoot!

It wasn't too much longer and the Silver Fox came roaring up the drive and we jumped into the van and headed to CR.....trip No. II today!  The only trouble was we really didn't have time to eat before getting to Barnes and Noble...... I had no idea how many people would be there.....would there be chairs still open???

I have had this event on my calendar for weeks, May the 13th,  Susan Branch will be in Cedar Rapids at Barnes and Noble.  I could not believe she was coming to NE Iowa......she had come to Iowa City a year ago and I didn't realize it till after it was over.....because it never occurred to me that she would come near our corner of the planet. I never thought I would get to meet her.....EVER!

I think my friend Betty Anne, told me about her first book 30 years ago.....I won't mention what that says about me or my friend....it is, what it is!  Sigh!



Heart of the Home was her first book and I fell in love with it then......it has been out of print for years and she is doing a reprinting right now with a few extra pages included and a ribbon bookmark that the first one did not have.  I think it will be out this fall.

She hand writes every page.....so the recipe books are in her own hand writing, then does the art work to go with it in watercolor.  Every page is a work of art and the recipes are wonderful as well.  I use them to decorate my kitchen all year....they are rotated from shelf to counter depending on the season. I love to sit and page through them and do it quite often.  They are fuel for my creative soul.

Check out her website and her blog Susan Branch.....you can sign up for her blog postings and "Willard" if you would like. Willard is a newsletter she writes to her girlfriends (I would be one of them & you can be too.) about 3 times a year maybe and they are longer......like getting a letter from a friend.  Also just wonderful!

Since then she has written numerous books, the first several were pretty much recipe books done in the same manner.  But the last 3 books are quite different, much more biographical.



She took us girlfriends with them as they traveled to England on the Queen Mary II and spent weeks there in the countryside.  I LOVED this book and learned so much about England.  It is a travel journal with stops at Jane Austen's & Beatrice Potter's homes and that barely scratches the surface of what she writes about.....this trip is on my bucket list (if I had a bucket list).  She also starts the book telling of finding the love of her life after getting her heart broken years before.

The last two books are her own biographical story from her diaries.....The Fairy Tale Girl and Martha's Vineyard, Isle of Dreams  I am reading right now.

So we finally pull up to Barnes and Noble and at least I don't see people lined up outside the door and there were parking spaces.....so I purchased the last two books she had written.  I also brought with me most of her other books in case she would sign them ALL!  :)  And guess what she DID!

There were a few seats left open and one was an overstuffed chair in front of a post.  I took that one....couldn't believe everyone had left it, but it was toward the back, but right in front of an aisle, so I could get a good camera shot from there without people right in front of me.

Right at 7 PM here she and Joe came......I would pick them out of a crowd any where.  She spoke briefly and then answered questions.  One of the more interesting questions was how much did she pay for her cottage on Martha's Vineyard from the Isle of Dreams book?  I think she said $52,000 and it was on an acre of land.  The audience did a collective sucking of air.....unbelievable!  She said she has tried to buy her cottage again, but the owners are not interested in selling, at least not right now.

There were tons of questions but, they cut that off about 7:30 because I would guess there were between 75-100 people there to have their books signed.

Joe was taking lots of photos.....little did I know we would get to have a wonderful conversation with him, before the night was done.

Susan's Joe!

Because I was toward the back of the room, I just settled in to wait my turn and visited with a couple people around me.  I got all my books out of my bag and then those around me wanted to see the older books and we had a little show and tell going on!  It was a fun way to pass the time!

I waited 2 hours before it was my turn and I had the Silver Fox instructed to take pictures.....lots of them.

We talked about Jack the cat, her fabric, farming, quilting and because the Silver Fox was taking pictures, we talked about nursing too She laughed and said she sooooo understood why I have a stack of her fabric and I don't want to cut into it because then it will be gone.  She totally got that, since she was into fabric before she was painting.....she likes fabric too!  She likes to mix up dishes and linens.....she has never met a good piece of linen that she did not like.....me too!  We ARE kindred spirits.

We are talking our way through my whole stack of books!  

BOOK SIGNING TIP:  If you want to get to talk to an author for a little bit of time, make sure you bring every book they have ever written for them to sign.....just sayin! 

 I have my girlfriend name tag on, she designed for us to wear.....so we would know each other.  How fun it that!

Can I just say I am floating by this time???  I don't care we haven't had supper yet.  I don't care that I had to wait 2 hours to see her.  I was just taking it all in and enjoying the opportunity.

As we are walking away from the table, Joe comes up to us!  HER Joe!  We then have a delightful conversation with him about farming here in Iowa, he tells us a story about one of his friend's kiddo who mows the lawn for one of Prince Charles's estates.  But he was really interested in the crops, land, & farming.  He was so easy to talk to and asked really good questions.  Then he wanted to take our picture.  I really wished we had gotten a picture with him, but I was sooooo excited that never occurred to me.  :0

Out in the parking lot here is there van.....hard to miss!  We finally went to get something to eat, was 10 PM by then.  I told the Silver Fox before we left the restaurant, we could probably go find the hotel they were staying by roaming the parking lots.  Tee Hee!  No, we didn't.....time to drive to the barn!

The Silver Fox asked me what my favorite thing was from the day?

Ooooohhh, a lot of cool stuff happened today, but meeting Susan Branch was my absolute favorite of all the things that happened to me today.

I was reminded of the verse in Job where he says....

The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh, blessed be the name of the Lord!

I am going to remember this day when the Lord gave and gave and gave and allowed me to have, and experience some really wonderful things, during those times when I don't have my health like I would like or any other loss that comes my way....because they will come.

Christmas Books

Can one have too many books?  I think not.....although I am trying to restrain myself as my shelves are bulging.  I have an affinity for Christmas books, old and new.....quilt related books, civil war history, anything Susan Branch, just to name a few.  Susan recently wrote about some of the Christmas books she has collected over the years. http://www.susanbranch.com/archives/2602 

And I thought what a lovely collection to share this time of year.

What fun to be reading someone else's blog and find you have some of the same things, I noticed right away that Susan also had The Fireside Book of Christmas Stories.  Mine came from my Grandma K.'s bookshelf...she gave it to me years ago.

Here is a collection of old and new titles that have come to live with me....some you might want to try to find for yourselves....how about The Christmas Stove, Lucy's Christmas and Alexander's Christmas  Eve....especially for someone named Lucy or Alex.  :)

Here are some more of the titles for you to peruse....of special note is the one with part of the binding missing.  That is a vintage Hallmark pop-up book of The Night Before Christmas.  We read that to our girls every Christmas Eve before they went to bed.....so it is well loved and worn.

The Jolly Christmas Postman is a very cute book full of envelopes and letters to tell the story....very fun.

I have a fairly complete collection of Joan Walsh Anglund books.  Her illustrations are just darling and would be a fun collection to look for.  I read this often to my girls when they were small.

Christmas Is Love is another title of Joan Walsh Anglund......one of her small books with a fun photo of my 3 oldest grandchildren back when we only had 3.....so that has been quite a few years ago.  We took them out that night to look at lights and go see Santa.  It seems a lifetime ago as the oldest in this pic is 15.  :0

Eloise Wilkin is another illustrator who just communicates sweetness.  As this book has been loved on by my girls as well as their own children.  I think I have read this book to all 15 of them.  Miss Kate Anne has pulled this off the shelf every week this month.  This would be another great collection to start for yourself or someone you love.

Under my tree I have it full of vintage toys, books, several nativity sets, Christmas catalogs, games and the like.  Here is a page from a vintage pop up book.

A wooden sleigh full of small vintage Christmas books a midst a few New Year's noise makers and other pieces of eye candy.

Now for a couple of adult selections....this is a collection of short stories from Bess Streeter Aldrich.  She has her roots in Cedar Falls, Iowa and Nebraska, where she wrote many of her works.  Her books are a wonderful slice of a time gone by.

  A Song of Years and A Lantern In Her Hand are my favorite of her books.  They are mainly about her grandparents who settled, lived and are buried in Cedar Falls in the 1800's. You would cherish these books if you enjoy period historical fiction.  http://www.bessstreeteraldrich.org/bio.html

And for the quilt lover's and even if you are not, what is not to like about Jennifer Chiaverini and her series based on Elm Creek Quilters.  A delightful set of books revolving around a quilt retreat estate in Pennsylvania and the women that are connected to it, both past and present.  These books are readily available and would be a welcome addition to your own bulging book shelves.  :)

Hope you enjoyed this little tour of my book shelves.

Autumn Still Life

 I have glass shelves above my kitchen sink.  So I  place some of my favorite things there to look at each day.  I just noticed the photographer in the pic.....ha!!  I did the cross stitch scarecrow several years ago and have him stuck in a mini bale of straw. Also a mini vintage turkey planter that I did an arrangement in and raised it up a bit with a piece of Jewel Tea.

I did the machine embroidered turkey last fall.....  stitched out two of them and reversed one so I could hook them together back to back with a dowel in between the layers and used a vintage spool of thread for a stand.  Another nest I found in the yard is placed in front of the Autumn book by Susan Branch.  If you have never heard of Susan Branch, you need to check out the link under my favorite blogs.  I have loved her books and art work since she wrote her first book maybe 20 years ago.  She hand writes and hand watercolors the pages, which are full of recipes, decorating ideas, quotes and pure wonderfulness.

My Jewel Tea dishes are straight from my Grandma K's cupboard to me.  She gave them to me when I was first married.  They had been her everyday dishes for many years and I remember eating from them as a kid.  I get them out in the fall to display and use for a couple months.

 I stacked the Jewel Tea dishes with a stack of Longaberger leaf plates all ready to serve.

My granddaughter and I went for a short walk the other day and found this "flower" in the ditch.  I don't know what it is, maybe goldenrod???  Anyway we picked a handful of it and put it in this vase.  The color has dulled some, but it looks like it will dry beautifully.  The vase is very old.....from Great Grandma W.....used one of my fall quilts as a table covering and a cross stitch sampler from 1980.  That is probably considered vintage..... isn't that special!!!

I really like using various/ interesting containers and doing arrangements in them.  This wooden barrel has been all over the house.  I put it some where different every year.  I used another fall leaf quilt on the table with a couple vintage books.