Four Frantic Days

Some people hate Mondays, but often, I can't wait for Monday to get here so that things will settle down a little. Last time we spoke, I had just come home from walking with Sue. That same day, Mike and I headed over to the venue for my guild's quilt show to help hang quilts for the show this weekend. Although this is my second year as a guild member, it's the first time I've seen one of our biannual shows. When everything was set up, it was a colorful venue.

The show was held at the Tuality [Hospital] Health Education Center in Hillsboro, Oregon, and it was a perfect venue.

There were lots of people there helping hang quilts, but here are a couple of bad actors. It seems you can never keep out the riff-raff.

My thanks go to our member AnnMarie for most of these great pictures. The venue was large enough to accommodate the quilts of our many talented members and yet maintain a small and intimate atmosphere. Some of the larger quilts were hung from the balcony. At the bottom of the image were items for sale in our guild's "boutique". 

This next shot was taken from the opposite end.

In addition to the large main hall, there was another room filled with row after row of member quilts.

We had a small vendor mall and a few displays, including this display of vintage machines.

The guild honored member Roni, who passed away in the last year.

I like this creative way of saying "Hands Off the Quilts, Buster!"

Our guild has several smaller groups, including an art quilt group. They had two displays.

Also, there was a table with information about the Washington County Quilt Barn Trail. Our guild has been the catalyst in getting the quilt barn trail up and running in our area. I'm not sure how many barn quilts have been hung at this point, but I'm thinking it's something on the order of 15. The goal is to hang at least one per month, and the hunt is on for some appropriate barns. 

I took this picture in a technogeek moment. I doubt it will work if you try scanning it from your computer screen, but you can give it a try just for grins.

And if that doesn't work, you can see information about the Washington County Quilt Barn Trail (including pictures of the barns with their quilt blocks) by clicking right here.

Many of our members have had a hand in this. It started with a heap of the proverbial "red tape" when the county held things up because of a sign ordinance. They were looking at the barn quilts as signs rather than art work, and it took quite some time to institute the necessary changes to make the quilt barn trail a reality. You have to hand it to these women for their persistence, and they got 'er done!

In recognition of our past president's work on this, she was awarded this President's Quilt from guild members.

Peak under that barn quilt, and this is what you'll see.

The quilt show hasn't taken all my time this weekend, however. I had planned to go over on Saturday, but then I started feeling a little frantic to get my canning done. I spent almost all day in the kitchen on Saturday canning dilled carrot spears

and diced tomatoes from our own plants. 

The carrots were from our CSA shares, but I purchased a bunch of organic rainbow carrots at the grocery store to make them prettier. Now that they've been processed, I'm thinking the red carrots might dye their jars red.

Yesterday evening we headed over to Matthew and Valerie's place for dinner with them. Matthew made a very tasty Italian Sausage Ragu. It was delicious, and we were all clean platers. He hasn't shown much interest in cooking before now, and so it was wonderful to see him developing his kitchen skills. I brought along a spinach salad and some baba ghanoush, both dishes from our CSA share. The baba ghanoush was from this recipe. I thought it needed more garlic, and so I added a full six cloves to last night's mixture. Matthew and Valerie also taught us to play a board game called Small World 2, and that was great fun.

I've done no work in the sewing room since making Gracie's portrait, but I've been keeping up with my embroidery. How can I not when Helper Cat is holding me down?

This morning I moved the hoop again on Hocuspocusville. I think about two more rehoopings and this one will be finished.

And with that so close, I made up the next quilt block for the Live, Love, Teach quilt. This is the block submitted by Maureen.

This morning, I traced it out and colored it in preparation for the embroidery. When it's finished, I'll add the green border.

And that brings you up to date. I have pictures of some of the quilts from the show for you, but I'll be posting them separately.

What's been going on in your world?