1/18/15

Saturated Saturday

Good grief it rained yesterday! It came down in buckets. Our indoor weather station literally told us that it was "raining cats and dogs". So there you go. And you thought that was just an expression, didn't you?


Despite the rain, Mike and I spent a nice day together. We had to drive over to the Oregon Garden in Silverton to drop off my quilts for the Stitches in Bloom quilt show next weekend. When we'd accomplished that, we had lunch at a restaurant on Silverton's main drag called Mac's Place. We'd been there once before. I think I read about it originally in Sunset magazine, and we had lunch here about ten years ago.


Silverton, Oregon, is a great little town with a long history. If we were ever to think about leaving the Three Cats Ranch, I would consider living here in  Silverton. Originally a farming town, farming continues to be the dominant usage of the land in the area. It also boasts the first openly transgendered mayor in the entire United States, elected three times, and so the folks of Silverton obviously like their mayor.

Here's a picture of the main drag through town. Mac's place is just outside the frame on the right.


It was kind of hard to get a good image of the street because of all the cars parked along the road. Inside the restaurant, there is a full bar. They also have a lot of local brews on tap. Mike had one of those, and I had some hard blackberry cider. Yum.


When you walk out the back door, you can see that the restaurant (and, indeed, this whole side of the street) backs directly onto Silver Creek, for which the town is named.


My thanks go to Edmund Garman who took a better picture (below) of Silverton on Silver Creek.


I like restaurants that have old pictures of their towns on the walls. There were a number of images that we enjoyed, but these were especially interesting. There's no date on this next image, but look at the dirt road through town and the horses and buggies. If you scroll up and compare it with my image above, you can still see the same building with the cut-off corner on the right. (It's to the left of the frame in my image.)


Contrast that with the image below where they are laying the first hard pavement on the main street. The date on that image is October, 1912.


Mike had a French dip sandwich for lunch. I had this German sausage sandwich which was served up on their home-made bun. It's a little hard to see against the color of the sausage, but this came with marionberry mustard (yum). The ketchup in the cup there for my sweet potato fries was habanero ketchup (also yum).


After stuffing our faces, we headed for home. On the way out, we happened to notice this sign, so we drove on over to have a look.


As it turns out, the city of Silverton commissioned copies of Norman Rockwell's Four Freedoms to be replicated on the walls of a warehouse-style building on the 50th anniversary of their creation. I'm a Norman Rockwell fan, and so I enjoyed seeing this. The accompanying mural explains the "Four Freedoms" and what caused Rockwell to create them.


Here they are: Freedom of Worship


Freedom of Speech. 


I was curious about the pamphlet in the pocket of the gentleman seated in the foreground, which says "UAL Report". I have done a little research trying to figure out what "UAL" stands for (I'm assuming it's not United Airlines). I couldn't find any information. I have an idea it might have been the initials of a labor union, but that's just a guess. And just as I wrote those words, I looked again at the picture and noticed the partial word "rmont". I know this was based on something Rockwell saw at a town meeting in Vermont, and so I tried one more time to see if I could figure it out. This is what I found:


That's the best I can do, so if one of you knows something, please chime in. Continuing on...

Freedom from Want



Freedom from Fear


And after that, we came home and I continued on with my quilting. When I left you yesterday, I was just about to use this thread to quilt some moon glow.


I didn't do all the moons, but some of them (where I had enough room, and I didn't think it would distract from the other quilting).



Then I switched to the green thread and stitched some veins into the leaf here


I used brown thread to give the wolf some fur


And I stitched some woodgrain into the tree.


I went back to to the gold thread to quilt a rocket ship in the sky.


I'll use some crystals to put four windows on the rocket where I left those marks.

Then I used some yellow thread to give the hedgehog some quills. I gave him some grass too.


Also, I did some grass and put some details in the cheese...nothing special. I wasn't exactly sure what to do there, but I wanted to do something.


I put some water in the ocean and some mountains on the continents.


And that's as far as I've gone. All that's left now is to switch back to the black thread, outline all of the applique, and then quilt the cornerstones and sashings. I'm hoping to finish it up today or tomorrow.

So that brings me to Slow Sunday Stitching.


This morning I finished up the Peppermint Arch block for the Gingerbread Square quilt.


The next time I work on this, I'll be doing the "Snowman with Cocoa" block.


And that meant I was ready to make something new for my hand stitching. I traced out the first block for Jenny of Elefantz's new free block of the month, The Vintage Kitchen. You can find the link to her free BOM right here.

Here's what her finished quilt will look like:


Recall that I purchased that "Home Ec" fabric a little while back:


Today, I traced out the first block. These are tiny, and I'm using my tiniest hoop, which encompasses the entire motif. It's done in redwork. I expect this won't take me more than a day or two to stitch.


And now you're all caught up on the life of the Crazy Cat Lady and Company. Time to get stitching if I'm going to finish up my Shoot for the Moon quilt.

What's going on at your end?

18 comments:

Christine M said...

Your quilt is going to be gorgeous when all your wonderful quilting is done, Barbara. What wonderful murals. Enjoy stitching Jenny's Vintage Kitchen. I'm stitching it too.

Lee said...

I'm a Rockwell fan too & have a whole box of collector plates (thank you BradEx for helping me part with my money), and I suspect that "...UAL REPORT" should be interpreted as "ANNUAL REPORT" as was implicated in the blurb you found. And that's all I know about that.

Really liking your Gingerbread Square and The Vintage Kitchen looks like a fun project - love the Home-Ec fabric, reminds me of days gone by as our home-ec room looked very similar even if it was a decade or so later!

Quilter Kathy said...

Enjoyed seeing Rockwell's Four Freedoms.
Enjoy your stitching today... so many fun projects are on the go!

WoolenSails said...

What a fun town, love towns on the water, always nice to stroll on the streets.
Love the murals, those are really beautiful and so meaningful.
As usual you have so many wonderful projects going on and enjoy seeing your progress.

Debbie

Donna said...

Your quilting is going to be gorgeous!.. Thanks for the Norman Rockwell. I love his work and it is always nice to hear the stories behind them.

Sandi said...

I am totally loving your blog. It is honestly one of the first I go to each day. Being a cat fan and someone who lives out of town I can relate to much of your life stories both QUILTY and other. Love "Shoot for the Moon"

Diane Wild said...

Yes, Norman Rockwell info was interesting. What a neat little village. I finally found some ambition to start a new quilt project. My scrapbooking is coming to an end for now. Time to put papers & pictures away and get out the fabric. You moon quilt is looking great. I did four blocks and made a wall hanging for the Book Title Challenge our guild did two years ago. My title was Goodnight Moon.

QuiltShopGal said...

I spent the day working on some very small projects, as well as sandwiching some EPP table runners that I want to topstitch/quilt this week. You sound like you had a WONDERFUL day. Yummy lunch, history and inspiration, as well as time to quilt. Can't get better than that. Well, maybe the raining cats & dogs.....but I want you to know that I will gladly accept some of your rain, if you can just re-direct it to So. Cal. (pretty please).

QuiltShopGal
www.quiltshopgal.com

Jennie in GA said...

Fun visit. Thx. And I am in awe of your embroidered blicks.

Brown Family said...

I love looking back at the town I grew up in and seeing the same old buildings. Some of the streets are still paved with original bricks!

Lyndsey said...

Lunch looks yummy and the town looks fun. I love the murals and I shall have to discover more about Norman Rockwell. The shoot for the moon quilt is coming on leaps and bounds and is looking great and the gingerbread house block is so pretty. I have also started the kitchen block and it certainly makes a change to work on something so small.

quiltzyx said...

Great to see pics of more places you've been! Lunch sounded good - marionberry mustard, I'd try that! Don't know about the catsup on sweet potato fries, but maybe I'd dip into yours for a taste! I've never had hard cider, but blackberry anything sounds good to me. I actually just bought a jar of blackberry jam today.
Am so loving the quilting on your Moon quilt, really like the moon glows! As always, you have my address if you run out of room for this one, or any others....
I did a little jeans mending today & worked at the colleges for a few hours. Stopped at Smart & Final for some groceries. No rain again here, but it was gorgeous - blue skies, puffy clouds, contrails and 73*F.

liniecat said...

Oh thank you, its so lovely to see such an interesting post, well to be fair, yours generally are lol - about a delightful town like that! I bet that creek can get noisy when the waters high but I adore the way they have built up alongside natures creek like that. And to see a glimpse of what it was once like too, and that so many folks came out to watch the asphalt go down!
To think you might have missed those stunning murals had you not noticed the signpost!
Given all that's going on in the world, Paris and all, each freedom mural, still has a serious message for us today, rather sad that's the case but so good to be reminded.
And well done the town for electing their Mayor too!
I might have hoped a large urban city be that forward thinking, so its heartening to see a smaller town with a positive message to send out, even subliminally its a step forward for many.

Michele said...

I really like all the little details you are putting into the moon quilt.

Vroomans' Quilts said...

Thank you for sharing your stroll thru such a lovely and rich heritage little town. Your stitching (machine and hand) is wonderful. I finished up my FMQ and bound the charming stars quilt. Today being MLK day - my daughter's family is all home, so I will be off for a visit and get some grandkid hugs and a chat.

Dana Gaffney said...

What a great town! I can see why they would value Norman Rockwell, I especially liked the explanation of the murals and the part about stand back and ask yourself the status of the four freedoms today.
You're having way too much fun on the moon quilt, it looks wonderful.

Kate said...

Love the quilting motifs you've used on Over the Moon, very fun. Hope you enjoyed your slow stitching yesterday.

Claire said...

You have a lot of patience for thread color switching!