Rural Roads

There was no sewing yesterday. Instead, we spent the day driving from place to place, running errands, and seeing some pretty rural areas. Although we were never more than about 90 minutes from our home, we still managed to see some parts of Oregon we hadn't visited before. Our own place was socked in with fog when we left home. We were only hoping we'd find less as we headed downhill. It turned out to be a pretty nice day weather-wise, with no fog or rain, and even some periods of sunshine. 

We made a stop at the post office to mail some packages. Then, Staples. We needed more printer paper, but we also had two big laser printer cartridges to recycle. I always wonder if the recycling depot is just the first stop on the way to the dumpster behind the store. Whatever the case, they're no longer our problem. 

From there, we headed south toward Salem and the former Witness Tree Winery. It changed ownership a couple of years ago, and has been renamed "Elemental Cellars." I'm sad that it no longer honors the actual "witness tree" on its hillside. Here's a picture I took a while back.

Driving the backroads from McMinnville, we enjoyed the colorful rolling hills. There are some huge farms in this area.

We saw lots of barns.

After picking up our wine, we decided to scout out someplace to have lunch. We drove to Dallas, Oregon, and had some good sandwiches at North Dallas Bar & Grill. There were plenty of fast food options available, but when we travel to a new town, we like to get something we can't get anywhere else. We were on our way to see an exhibit of panels from the AIDS Memorial Quilt on display at Western Oregon University, in Monmouth, Oregon. It's been a while since either of us were on a university campus, and we'd never visited WOU before.

There be wolves here.

The exhibit was a little bit disappointing. I'd only seen one panel of the quilt before, and that was back in the early 90's when I was in graduate school. The one panel I'd seen was an actual 3-layer quilt. The ones we saw yesterday would qualify more as banners than quilts, since they were all in a single layer. Also, they were hanging in front of a window. We were there mid-afternoon, and the bright afternoon sunshine shining through the panels made it difficult to see them. Still, I took a few pictures. It was sad, knowing these people were all someone's child, and they left behind people who loved them and would grieve their loss.

They were mostly single layers of fabric with stitching, applique, and stamped or photo printing. This next one had some hand stitching.

Here's a detail of the section just to the right of middle.

Here's another with some hand-stitching in the lower right.

Here's a detailed photo.

I'd always thought the panels represented individuals, but there were also panels from organizations in support of research into treatment and a cure.

A reminder that AIDS is everyone's disease.

I liked the stitching on this one.

This is another section of the same panel.

When we left the exhibit, it seemed appropriate to find this lone rose blooming outside the building.

If you're interested, you can see all the panels in the AIDS quilt at this virtual exhibition right here. To get a sense of the scale of the whole quilt, you can see an interactive exhibit here where you can zoom in or out to see individual panels or the whole quilt. You can also search for panels by name.

From there we headed for home, seeing more barns along the way.

You can see that the sun is shining in some of the images above. This next photo was taken as we neared our home on Chehalem Mountain, where the ridge-top never broke out of the fog all day.

It was late afternoon when we arrived home, and we spent the rest of the day relaxing. I spent a little more time on my slow stitching, finishing up the next section. 

Now I've moved my hoop to the right, and I'll start working on the barn this morning.

I have a few housekeeping chores to take care of this morning, but then I'll have plenty of time for sewing. On today's agenda is to get to work on the next block for the New Mexico Kitchen quilt. Get ready...December will be here tomorrow.