Vacation Day 4

Yesterday we drove through Zion National Park on our way up to Bryce Canyon National Park. We’ll spend a little more time at Zion today, but we wanted to get to Bryce because it is farther away from where we are staying. We ended up getting a later start than we intended, and didn’t get to see as much as we wanted. The pictures don’t show just how RED all of the mountains are. The formations are just amazing. We took tons of pictures, of course, but I’ll just post a few here. I’ll try for a slide show when we get back home.





Along the way we saw some buffalo outside of a restaurant serving buffalo burgers. We did not partake, but instead took some pictures for posterity.


Still posting from the coffee shop. I'm not happy about this situation, but the rest of the vacation is going great, so I can't complain too much...

Vacation Day 3

Just a quick post - sorry, no picture. We are having a tremendous amount of trouble getting internet access. Constant trouble where we are staying, and a bit of trouble at the coffee shop, too. There is outdoor musical theater during the summer at a high school for the preforming arts located about 5 minutes from where we are staying. Last night we saw Sound of Music and it was wonderful! They utilized the red rock mountain behind them in the staging and it all worked out very nicely. Well, we're off to a late start on our trip to Bryce Canyon today. This is the farthest. Tomorrow we are planning on Zion, which is closer. Hopefully we'll have better luck with the internet tomorrow!

Vacation Day 2

On Sunday we made our drive from Las Vegas to St. George, Utah. We ended up driving through the very corner of Arizona, and my plan was to take pix of the state signs. I got a great one of Arizona's, but we flew by the Utah sign and there was no way to turn around for miles. Oh well... It was a desert drive with a lot of this:

We ran around and did a lot of Geocaching -- we found six on one day (four in that tiny bit of Ariziona and two in Utah). However, searching around the desert in 100+ heat was totally exhausting! In and out of the car and slowly searching around was brutal. Lance and I grabbed a couple of pix.

The place where we are staying is absolutely gorgeous. I'll post pix of those next time...

Vacation Day 1

Well we've been without internet access for a couple of days. I even missed my own Blogoversary which was yesterday! We are having trouble logging in from our where we are staying now, as well. Right now I am posting from a coffee shop in St. George... We flew out of SFO on Virgin America. The flight was great. They have a tv in the back of the seat in front of you and you can watch tv or listen to music or even play video games. I'm not the best flyer, and this made the time just fly by. We got into the Las Vegas airport and got our car, which is a Ford Mirage -- a small SUV. Lance is a Hertz gold member, so they had given us a free upgrade! The heat hit us with a blast when we walked out of the airport. It looks like 100+ degress for us the whole time we are here. A short drive over to the Orleans Hotel and we were on our way. We were surprised to find that they do not offer free WiFi service, and since we were pretty busy so we didn't bother logging in. After a few beers and video black jack (Lance won the $10 that I lost), we headed over to the show. We saw the Steve Miller band with Joe Cocker opening. What a great show. Amazing how everyone is aging. I imagine both artist must be in their 60's by now... Most of the crowd was about the same, but I was surprised to see quite a few younger people. I guess good music spans generations.

Stitchery Project

Lance and I will be going on vacation soon and I thought it would be a good idea to bring along something to work on while we're gone. We'll be flying to our destination (more on that later!), so I knew that what ever I brought would have to be very compact. I thought about bringing some applique blocks for my Flight of Fancy quilt, but that would involve a lot of prep work before the trip. There is another project I heard about from several of the quilting blogs I read. There is a blogger named Lynette Anderson from Australia who designs quilting and stitchery patterns. To celebrate her first year of blogging, she has decided to post a free Block of Month with a Noah's Ark theme. These are very tiny stitched blocks -- the smallest one so far is only 2" square! The pattern has us sewing strips around each stitched block log-cabin style. We don't know what the final design will look like, but the blocks posted so far are adorable! Here is a link to the page(s) on her blog with the patterns and a description of the overall project.

Now I know that I have LOTS of irons in the fire right now, but how could I pass up this wonderful project that is perfect as a take-along? There is really very little investment in the one. The pattern is free, embroidery floss is cheap and I'm using all fabrics from my stash. If only I had a stash of time and energy I could pull from...

A5 Cathie's Campfire - practice

So I've finally chosen colors for my Dear Jane quilt, but now I need to buy enough background fabric for the entire quilt, which is quite a lot. Many people buy an entire bolt to make sure it carries them through the whole project. I'm going to head over to my local quilt shop this weekend and see what they have. If I order a bolt, I imagine it will take several weeks, and I'm dying to get started! In order to satisfy my Dear Jane urges, I made a practice block. As with all of the Dear Jane bloggers, the picture above doesn't really give a good idea of the scale of the block. It is a 4 1/2" block (5" unfinished as above). It is very cute, and I may have to carry it around with me for a few days so I can pull it out and look at it at will... Talk to me 100 blocks from now and I'm sure it will be a different story!!

Roaring Camp Railroad

This past weekend we celebrated my dad's 75th birthday with a family outing to Roaring Camp Railroad in Felton, CA. My parents had taken us there when we were kids, and we thought it would be fun to go back out there again. I knew my nephews would have a great time. We rode a steam engine train through the redwoods on a trip that lasted about an hour. The weather was beautiful and a good time was had by all.

Have I Gone Mad?

Okay, so it's not like I don't have any projects to work on. Why on earth would I decide to do this? Well, I just don't know. Some things just call to you, I suppose. As you can see from the picture above, I have decided to make a Dear Jane quilt. If you have not heard of this quilt, you can read all about it at the main website, hosted by Brenda Papadakis who wrote the book. In a nutshell, a quilter named Jane Stickle made a sampler quilt in the 1800's around the time of the civil war. It contained 225 blocks, most measuring 4 1/2 inches square. The others are triangular pieces in the border and also corner blocks. It is an astounding quilt that many many quilters have reproduced. There are clubs and on-line groups and all kinds of things designed to help quilters on their Dear Jane journey. I've joined one of the groups, and purchased the book, software and special rulers (see picture). I'm as yet undecided on my colors, but I'll decide soon and then I'll be on my way. This will be a quilt many years in the making. Wish me luck!

More Summer Class

Here are a couple more pictures from summer workshop. Here are some of the Buzz Saw blocks. We put them up on the wall as they were completed.


Here's one of my mom sewing on the first day. The folding chairs in the building are a little too short for comfortable sewing. Everyone had pillows and cushions with them on the second and third days.

Creative Blogs

July seems to be the month for sewing in Blogland. There are two blogs that I like that are celebrating sewing and crafting with great links and tutorials this month. The first is Sew Mama Sew!, which I've mentioned before. A great website that you can get lost in, with all of the links to creative people and projects.

The next is one that I just found recently, called WhipUp. They are having their "how-to month" with lots of links to tutorials. These may not necessarily be sewing projects, but definitely crafty and fun to look around.

I'm inspired to create now -- too bad I'm stuck at work all day!

Workshop 2008 Ends

Another summer workshop came to an end and we had a great time, as usual. It's so nice to spend time with these wonderful ladies. We shared lots of laughs and worked on lots of projects. Below are pictures from the first day of class. In back are my friends Lori and Susan who both take the evening class. In the foreground is Barbara, who teaches the afternoon class as well as one of the projects in this workshop. Aren't they just working so hard!!


Below are a few ladies from the afternoon class. On the wall are samples for Barbara's quilt.

Here are more ladies on the other side of the room. We had 15 students in all.

I have only a few more pictures, but Blogger is being fussy, so I'll put those up in another post soon.

Workshop soon!

The summer workshop grows near! This Thursday, Friday and Saturday (06/26, 06/27, 06/28) from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm at the Veterans building in Redwood City. Just show up and register on the first day. Above are the the projects being presented by Barbara Hall and Erna Koch. My project is shown in the previous post. It will be lots of fun!

Summer Preview 2008

The last Monday night quilting class of the session is tomorrow night, Monday, June 16, 2008 at 6:00 pm. We'll have a pot luck dinner, drawings, and a special challenge that I'll annouce tomorrow. Also, Erna and Barbara will preveiw their projects for the three-day summer workshop. The project that I will present for the summer workshop is called Buzz Saw, shown above. It will be sad to say goodbye for the summer, but it looks to be a busy and fun night, so be sure to come!

Really?

What do you mean not everyone likes quilt shows????

Quilting Bloggers

I recently found out about Quilting Bloggers, a new website that is a directory for quilt-related blogs. I've added Quilt Monkey to their directory and have had fun popping into different quilt blogs that I never would have found otherwise. I added a button over on the right, located above the list of blogs that I read regularly. The Quilting Bloggers website has lots of interesting things, including a gallery and free projects. Use the logo button to get to the website, then click on one of the random blogs, or search for a blog by state or country. How will I find the time to actually quilt anymore???