Catching Up and a Quilt Shop

Only a fool would try to catch up just now. There is so much to do to get ready for our upcoming big trip it's hard to hold it in my head all at once. Mike really has the lion's share of the work, making sure the RV is ship shape. "Ship shape" seems the wrong term for this..."road worthy" might be better. He noticed a strange wear pattern on one of the tires recently. He thought it was a problem with the trailer suspension, but then realized there was a broken spring. He insists it will be ready to go by Sunday, but these things worry me. And don't even get me started on the basement project. The soonest we'll see new carpet now is Monday, and I'll be surprised if it happens then. I tend to be a worrywart, and so I'm trying to stay calm. But, honestly, I feel it is my responsibility to hold up the worrying end of things. If not me, then who? 😳

The kitties seemed mostly back to their old selves yesterday. Sadie didn't hide all day long, but she still kept to herself. They went outside early. When Smitty came back, his dirty feet would indicate he'd been digging for gophers.

I was out watering the thirsty flowers. When I checked the greenhouse I found the first pickling cucumber of the season.

Once the baby cucumbers make an appearance, they grow to pickle size fairly quickly. I'm hopeful I'll be able to harvest enough to get at least one jar of refrigerator pickles. Fingers crossed. It wasn't a good year for vegetable gardening. Our cold wet spring would have made for a slow garden this year, and we knew we'd miss the harvest even with a fast-growing garden. We only planted the cucumbers, and even they were too slow to meet our timeline requirements. Oh well. 

There was time for some slow-stitching, and I filled my hoop once again.

There are still at least a couple of days left before this is finished. The rest of my embroidery projects seem to have left the building. I'm thinking they must be in the garage with the rest of the sewing room. Fortunately, my take-along project is set aside. When this one is finished, I guess I'll start on that one, even if we're still here at home.

So, it was a lackluster day yesterday. The only real accomplishment was getting the camper unpacked. I had to reroute the beginning of our trip. We wanted to drive the Salmon River Scenic Byway in eastern Idaho, but there is a large fire burning near North Fork (the Moose Fire), where we had reservations. I've been watching the fire map closely. I'd written an email to the RV park and asked them how the fire was affecting their area. They wrote back with a rosy report about how good the conditions are and informed me the fire was only burning to the south of them. Well...we're coming from the south, and so that just worried me more (see "worrywart" above). When I looked at the map yesterday, it looked like this:

You can see North Fork at the top of the map. If you move your eyes in a nearly straight line down to Salmon, at the bottom of the map, you can see that the fire is burning right up to US Hwy 93, where we'd have to travel. Okay...so that was just too much for me. I tried calling the RV park to cancel and listened to their recorded message, where a chirpy voice informed me that the fire is 100% contained!! Hm. Someone should tell the Idaho agency that updates the map. This morning's update says the fire has actually jumped the main highway, and that pilot cars are being used to lead people through. Um...no thanks.

Okay, so I spent some time finding an alternative to North Fork, and we ended up choosing Bannack State Park near Dillon, Montana. It's a well-preserved gold rush ghost town, and I loves me a good ghost town. We'll do that instead. Fortunately, we don't live so terribly far away from the Salmon River Scenic Byway that we can't do this trip again at some point in the future. Now, all we need is the suspension issue in the RV figured out and we'll be good to go! And carpet. Carpet would be nice.

Let's talk about something more interesting, shall we? When Mike and I travel, no matter how remote the area we happen to be in, I speak to my friend Google, saying "Okay, Google. Find a quilt shop near me." Sometimes, I'm amazed to find one in the smallest of towns. Thus was the case with Reedsport, a city with a population of 4,085. 

It was only about five miles from the campground, and located inside this little craft mall.

Walking inside, there were all manner of hand-made items, including clothing. This was the business card for the place.

A friendly woman sitting behind a counter greeted me and asked me if she could help me find something. "I was expecting to find a quilt shop in here," I said, questioningly. She told me to turn around and walk to where the fishing reels were on the left in the image below. To the right was a room full of fabric.

She told me the quilt shop was bursting out of its room, pointing to the sewing notions cabinet across the hall.

Walking into the room, there were more notions and thread cabinets inside.

Just to my right were these cute mouse pads. 

It was a large room with shelving in the middle running the full length. Looking left, I noticed these were all flat folds...no bolts anywhere.

I walked to the far end of the room and turned around. Now, to my left were pre-cut fabrics on hangers. Things were arranged by theme.

Walking around the shelving units and back the other way were more flat folds on the left.

And more fabrics on hangers to the right. You can see this is the section for solids.

Standing at the far end, it looked like this:

That's a serger you see sitting on the floor there. It was for sale. I walked to that far end. Hanging on the wall was this framed cross-stitch. I liked the message, and yes, it's mounted crooked in the frame.

Below that were some of these drawer units. There were pre-cut fabrics stored there too. Some were fat quarters. Some were long skinny pieces like the ones you get when you square up a quilt for binding. It was a lot like shopping in someone else's stash. I think it's entirely possible that this "quilt shop" actually *is* someone's stash. I guess that's one way to do it.

There were a few fabrics that caught my eye. I thought the one below was so pretty. 

Everything was pre-cut, however. When I buy yardage on the road, I generally stick with one yard cuts. If I wanted this one, I had to buy a full five yards. I couldn't think of any purpose for this off hand, and I didn't want such a big piece. Same goes for this next one stacked just underneath.

I liked this next one too, but the cut piece was a full three yards. It was too much. The prices were good for these at $7 per yard, but I knew these would sit in my stash for years...and frankly, I don't have that many years left in me.

Well, okay, so I decided against all of those, but I really wanted this mouse pad to replace the plain black one I had at home.

And I picked up these two fat quarters. I couldn't decide which one I wanted to use in my Shop Hop quilt, and so I got both of them.

After getting them home, I decided I'll use this starfish fabric in my quilt. I'm sure I can find a use for the other one at some point.

So that was one of the more unusual shops I've visited. Kind of fun. I was just happy to find fabric for sale in such a small town. There was on-street parking only, and our ATV trailer was kind of sticking out in the road a little bit. I would have liked to spend more time snooping the craft mall, but I knew Mike would want to get moving again. It would be worth a stop if you find yourself in Reedsport, if not for the fabric, then certainly for the crafts.

Today we're towing the fifth wheel down the hill. We need a level and flat area to measure something about the distance from the axel to the hitch. We measured this the other day, but Mike doesn't trust the flatness or levelness of its gravel parking space in our field. My job will be to hold the end of the measuring tape. (I'm very good at complicated tasks.) Aside from that, there's only housekeeping on the agenda...and exercise. It's easy to get off track with my exercise, and so I'll get back on the treadmill this morning. And there's no time like the present to start packing the fifth wheel for the next trip. There's plenty to do...just none of it very enticing. You know the feeling, right?