Fun weekend - no hiking

This year most of my time with my sister, Nicola, has been our periodic days spent hiking on the Bruce Trail. On one of those days I mentioned how much I hate decorating for Christmas by myself and Nicky offered to come and help. Our only agenda item was to get the tree up.
So, right after coffee and breakfast, on Saturday morning, we did just that. And only that. We then took off, to Tillsonburg, to find a pattern for the bed runner that Nic is going to quilt for me.

Rasta giving his approval for

the fabric that we picked out about a month ago, in St Catherines, for the bed runner.

In Tillsonburg we "hiked" the main street and then went into the quilt store, "Cherished Pieces", which Nicola declared her favorite so far; lots of fabric choices, patterns, books, accessories and really nice and knowledgeable staff.

Good prices too. As well as a book that had some lovely runner patterns, Nicola also bought these "fat quarters" as they were beautiful and well priced.

 Lunch at a place called Cup and Cake, a visit to a bakery and good coffee rounded out the visit. It was late in the afternoon when we got home but we walked into the Provincial Park and came out with a basket of greenery and berries.

Wove them onto a couple of wire wreath frames

(the red berries are High Bush Cranberry but I have no idea what the orange berries are)

wrapped in battery operated twinkly lights and

Ta Daa, 2 outdoor wreaths

completed just as the sun was setting.

Next job

was to decorate the tree.

which didn't take long

with 2 of us doing it, and a couple of glasses of wine.

When we had been coming home from Tillsonburg we found a couple of flocks of Sandhill Cranes, in the corn fields near Port Rowan, but I didn't have a camera with me. So, on Sunday I went looking for them with Nicola and Dave's camera. A good chance to see how good the zoom was for wildlife photos.

They were not in the corn fields but driving further along the road I found huge flocks of Sandhill Cranes and Snow Geese.

I found it a bit challenging to capture

moving wildlife

but it was great practice.

Back a home, I finished the next sample for my Monochromatic McGown teaching piece. This one was hooked with 3 blue and 1 white yarn.