Two Scary Starts

Good morning, my friends. Camping is fun. Getting back to normal is also fun. We had grocery shopping to do yesterday, but we were finished and home before noon. Earlier, I had time to stitch up Tiny Treasure #70. This one has stem stitch, stem fill, lazy daisy, and fishbone stitches.

The garden is looking good. The green beans are getting a once-over every morning as I train them to climb their poles. They’re getting the hang of it, and some are nearly to where the poles come together at the top. There are a few tendrils still too short to reach the pole, but everyone seems to have gotten the idea that they’re not supposed to wrap themselves around the protective fencing.

When I was able to get to my sewing, I did the top-stitching for the Blueberries block. 

Here are the 14 blocks I have for this quilt so far. There are two to go. When it gets my attention next time, I’ll finish the remaining blocks, and then ready it to be sewn into a finished quilt top.

Upstairs at the quilting machine, I turned my attention to setting up “Kittens” for quilting. Starting a new quilting project always makes me a little nervous. I have some ideas about quilting this. Probably I’ll outline the embroidery and then do some sort of simple filler in the background. In the borders and sashings, I have an idea for a specialty motif. So, there’s nothing fancy going on here, but I’m still apprehensive about getting started.

I’m going to continue with the same bobbin already in the machine from my last project.

It’s a 50-weight So Fine thread from Superior Threads. It behaved well on my last project, and so I’ll just keep it going.

For the embroidered blocks, I’ll ust a white thread. I don’t want to distract from the embroidery with another color or anything fancy. Keeping it simple. Plain vanilla.

It’s another 50-weight So Fine thread. 

For the borders and sashings, I wanted a variegated thread that would include the many colors seen in the fabric. The one pictured below did that better than anything else I had available.

It’s another 50-weight Valdani thread. The Valdani threads come in little spool-sized zip-lock bags. (As always, thank you, Ila.)

Okay, and then I threaded the machine, checked my tension, and left it needle-down at the first kitten. There are four rows of three embroidered blocks each. My goal will be to do three blocks each day before moving on to the borders and sashings. If I can stick with that goal, it should be ready for binding in about a week.

Okay, and that took me to the super scary part of my day. As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m going to attempt to do an art quilt of some lemurs. This is a photo I took when we saw them at a Madagascar exhibit at the Florida Aquarium in Tampa, Florida. And let me just say that the Florida Aquarium is well worth a visit if you ever find yourself near Tampa. It was the aquarium that hooked us on aquariums (aquaria?) in general. When we’re traveling, we’ll never miss a nearby aquarium, and we became scuba divers so that we could see the really big aquarium of our planet.

So I spent some time digging through my stash, looking for appropriate fabrics. While I was at it, I reminded myself that sometimes the wrong side of the fabric is the best choice. I’m not sure yet what to do about that bland background, but I pulled some fabrics I thought had potential. Now the photograph is taped to the table, and there is a piece of plastic sheeting taped over the top. The tape prevents anything from shifting. Today, I’m hoping to trace all the elements and details onto the plastic sheeting creating a pattern for myself. For this I’ll use a fine point Sharpie. It’s the only thing that will write on the plastic without smearing. And there, I gave myself a couple of attagirls for not letting my anxiety get in the way of getting started. 

Here’s the thing: If you’ve been reading for a while, then you know I’ve made several of these art quilts from photographs. For some of them, it took me years to work up the nerve just to get started. (Now that I think of it, this is one of the ones I’ve waited years to start.) And, knock on wood, so far I’ve not attempted any that made me decide to give up. The “Tin Cup” quilt was among the most challenging. When I was able to complete it successfully, it boosted my confidence. Still, each time I try one of these, it is with considerable angst that this could be the one to defeat me. And as I’m writing those words, I’m asking myself, so what? Yeah, really. It’s supposed to be fun. Okay…shaking it off. [Straightens posture.] Thanks, you guys. It always helps when we can have these little chats.

Okay, and so I promised you some kitty news. There was no kitty help in the sewing room, although some loud purring would have gone a long way to calm my nerves. You know how when you’re too warm under the covers, but it’s too cold not to have them, and so you stick one foot out to cool off? (Maybe I’m the only one who does that, but I’m betting you do it too.) So anyway, Sadie, being a black cat, is too hot in the sun. But it’s not warm enough to just choose a shady spot. She does the opposite. She keeps most of her body in the shade, and just puts her paws out to soak up the sun’s rays.

Smitty purrfers the full-face sunbath. 

Okay, so I’m getting a haircut today, which will cut into my afternoon. There might not be that much time for sewing today. If there is, I’ll start with the quilting. Getting my backlog of quilts finished up is my highest priority right now. If there’s time to work on the lemurs, I’ll do that too. It seems doubtful, but not impossible.

Have a good day, Everybody! Try to stay cool.

Homeward Bound

Good morning, my friends. We have one more day of time traveling to do, and then we'll be caught up. It seems a good way to start a Monday, doesn't it? So, let's start with what happened here at home yesterday, and then I'll tell you about the final day of our camping trip.

It was time to fill the birdfeeders, and it was time to water the flowers. Of course, my mornings lately have all start with me checking in on the green beans. They're doing a pretty good job of climbing their poles at this point, but there are still a few stragglers that need redirecting. Two plants have started flowering. Can eensy-weensy beans be far behind?

Also in that image above, you can see right below the flower where a critter took a bite out of the vine. This worried me significantly. There are several other areas in the garden that have been similarly gnawed upon. A few leaves were bitten on the zucchini, and one of the zucchini had a bite out of it. Also, a few leaves were bitten on the cucumbers. We believe raccoons are to blame for this, but they have not been back after the one night when this happened. Apparently, they were unhappy with the items on the menu.

Also, a few more sunflowers are opening. I forget the name of this one, but I have it marked, if I'm not too lazy to bend over and find it. Maybe when it opens all the way.

I believe this next one is called Ring of Fire. When it opens, it will have a dark red ring in the center. And if you're like me, just reading that name will give you an ear worm.

Gazing out across the bee garden, I'm pretty happy at all the new color I'm seeing. The bachelor buttons are blooming in profusion, and this red flower is a newbie. The bee garden is planted by broadcasting a wildflower mix over the prepared ground. Next year, I've decided to be more selective about what seeds I choose. I'd really love to get some California poppies growing here.

Before I came back inside, I harvested another zucchini and four more tomatoes, including the first yellow tomato.

On the sewing front, I stitched up Tiny Treasure #69. This one has stem stitch, stem fill, satin stitch, and straight stitch.

Also, I finished the binding on Shop Hop 3.0, and that makes a finished quilt. It ends up at 65 x 53 inches.

Here's a look at the back.

And this was my project for July's 

Also in yesterday's sewing, I was able to finish the top-stitching on the "Glacier" block for the Northern Wilderness project.

For this, I'm using a monofilament thread and a microtex 60/8 needle to stitch right along the edges of the applique.

Okay, so let's turn our attention to our drive home from our camping trip. We'd always planned to eat breakfast in Cathlamet, Washington, on our way out of town. We broke camp and headed back to the mainland. We parked at the City Dock, which was kind of fun. Everything in this little town is very old.

Okay, and you guys have been really good about staying out of trouble this trip, but I feel I must warn you about this. Here's how you could die today. Please stay out of the water.

From where we were standing, we could get a good look at the bridge out to Puget Island.

Turning in the other direction, I liked how this boat looked. But those of you with sharp eyes might be able to see the bird's nest just above and to the left of that letter "B" on the boat.

Zooming in, it turned out to be an osprey nest.

As we walked up the hill to the restaurant, this sign gave me a chuckle.

We had a very filling breakfast and then headed for home, paralleling the Cowlitz River most of the way.

Eventually we crossed back over the Interstate Bridge and into our home state. 

Traffic was heavy getting home, and it seemed as if it took forever. Actually, we were home around 1:00 p.m. Greeting us was this red-tailed hawk sitting far out in our field. I've seen this bird a few times. These must be its happy hunting grounds, and there are plenty of small furry mammals to choose from.

And that pretty much brings us up to date.

Today is a grocery shopping day, but that's the only thing on the day's agenda. My next quilting project is queued up. I'll be quilting the "Kittens" quilt next. This one should be pretty easy. I already have some ideas about how to quilt it, and I'm hoping to get started on that today.

When time ran out yesterday, I left the "Blueberries" block needle down, and I expect to finish this today, for sure.

When that's finished, I will reach the "Quilter's Choice" section of my white board. I've decided to make an art quilt this time. These are always approached with some trepidation, but I'm going to attempt to make a quilt from this image of some lemurs we saw when we visited the Florida Aquarium in Tampa, Florida some years back.

When we visited a quilt shop in Lawrence, Kansas, during our Eclipse Trip in 2024, I purchased this fabric in anticipation of making this quilt.

It seems the lemurs' time has come...ready or not. I'll build the lemurs on a teflon pressing sheet, and then I'm kind of at a loss what the background will be. I'll figure something out. For now, I'll just focus on the lemurs. It's best not to get too far ahead of myself on this kind of a project.

All right then. Grocery shopping is next. Our list isn't too long, and so I'm hopeful we can get in and out pretty quickly. I hope your week will get off to a better start than ours. I realize some of you are probably getting weird, nervous, and thirsty waiting for some news of the kitties. Everyone on the kitty front is just fine. Hopefully, I can get them to help me with my sewing today. 

Sight-Seeing in Two States

Good morning, my friends. There's a lot of ground to cover this morning, so let's just get to it, shall we? First, I'll tell you about what happened here at home, and then I'll tell you about our Thursday sight-seeing excursion with Erik and Mae. Sound good? I hope so because that's how this is gonna go. I have a lot of pictures. Feel free to top off your coffee before we start.

The garden needed hoeing after being neglected for nearly a week, and the flowers wowed me. Since I hadn't seen them in a while, a lot had changed. The bees were crawling all over the many echinacea flowers that bloomed while we were gone.

Their fuzzy bodies made me want to pet them, but I resisted the urge.

In the vegetable garden, the sunflowers are beginning to bloom in abundance. In the image below, I've already shown you the flower on the left. The one on the right is from the same seeds. This is the "Infrared Mix," meaning a mix of colors, including some red.

This one is the Procut Gold Lite.

This next one isn't quite open, but it is the Procut White Lite

All of the zinnias are blooming now. There are more coming, and I don't know if there will be more colors.

This was the first one to bloom. It gets prettier every time I look at it.

And there were some newbies to the bee garden. I haven't tried to identify any of these.

There's a pickling cucumber about the size of my thumb. There are others too, but this was the largest one I saw. They still need some time before they'll be ready for harvest.

Also, I harvested one more zucchini that tried to hide from me. I have enough zucchini now that I've added a dish to next week's menu that will use all of them. Gotta stay ahead of the game, you know.

There was still much to do on the home front. I needed to go into town, and I needed to finish unpacking. With all of that going on, I didn't have a lot of time for sewing, but I stitched up Tiny Treasure #68. This one has stem stitch, stem fill, straight stitch, and lazy daisy.

And I made some more progress on my quilt binding, turning the third corner. I should finish this easily today.

Okay, and before I talk about our day on Thursday, I wanted to tell you about this quilt we saw at the restaurant where we had dinner on Wednesday evening. We were nearly finished with our dinner when I realized this was a quilted wall-hanging.

Okay, so the weather cleared overnight. Thursday was cloudy and cool, but the sun was shining by day's end. We had a bit of a drive to get to the Washington coastline. As we drove along, we were enticed to take a little side trip to see the historic Gray's River Covered Bridge.

We turned off the main road and drove about two miles to see it. Along the way, we passed this rustic barn. As you know, I always enjoy seeing the barns. Finding one with a quilt block is a special treat.

This is what Wikipedia tells us about the bridge:

The Grays River Covered Bridge is a one-lane covered bridge over the Grays River in western Wahkiakum County, Washington. It is the only covered bridge still in use as a public highway in Washington State. 

The bridge was built in 1905 in order to allow horse and wagon agricultural traffic to cross the river. Hans P. Ahlberg, whose dairy farm spanned both sides of the river, was instrumental in getting county commissioners to authorize the project, which was built on his property by the Ferguson & Huston company of Astoria, Oregon. The bridge was covered three years later in 1908 to preserve the expensive wooden trusses from the ravages of the area rains. The roof of the covered bridge was originally built of board and batten cedar siding with a capped tin roof.

So Erik drive the van across. The rest of us walked. 

Here's how it looks inside. That's Mae up ahead.

From the other end, it looks like this:

And here's a side view.

And that was a fun little diversion of about 30 minutes. After that, we continued on our way. We were driving parallel to the Columbia River. We could see ocean-going vessels in the river awaiting a pilot boat to accompany them down the river to whatever port city they would end up. There are several ports along the way in Woodland, Longview, and Portland. There may be others, but those three spring to mind.

We passed by the tall scary bridge that would take us across the river to Astoria, Oregon.

By then, we were nearing the westerly part of our journey. When we started heading north, we were driving alongside the Pacific Ocean.

Whoo hoo! A tunnel. If you travel with us regularly, then you know we always take pictures of tunnels. 

Not too much farther down the road, we entered Cape Disappointment State park. This is the Cape Disappointment Lighthouse.

This is what Wikipedia tells us about the Cape Disappointment Lighthouse:

In 1848, it was recommended a lighthouse be located at Cape Disappointment in what was then the Oregon Territory. An appropriation of $53,000 was made in 1852. After the lighthouse was designed, a first-order Fresnel lens was ordered. When the lens arrived it was found to be too large for the tower. Rebuilding the tower took an additional two years. The first lighthouse in the Pacific Northwest was finally lit on October 15, 1856. In addition to the light, the station was equipped with a 1,600-pound (730 kg) bell powered by a striking mechanism.

The lighthouse had several shortcomings. The fog bell was sometimes inaudible due to the roar of ocean waves. It was discontinued in 1881 and moved to West Point Light in Seattle, and eventually to Warrior Rock Light near Portland. Also, the light was not visible to ships approaching from the north. This problem was corrected by building a lighthouse at North Head, two miles from Cape Disappointment. 

In a minute, I'll tell you about the North Head Lighthouse, but first, let's visit Waikiki Beach. (Yes, that is the name of this beach in Washington.) It's a wide beach and seems to collect a lot of driftwood. There's a Coast Guard station nearby, and this area is used for training. Coast Guardsmen are sometimes dropped off here and use the driftwood to build a shelter for themselves in the event they are ever stranded and in need of rescue. The image below shows only about half the expanse of this driftwood covered beach.

Looking west at the water, we were mesmerized by the movements of these pelicans fishing in the water...

And flying overhead.

Up the road, we took a short hike out to see the North Head Lighthouse mentioned above.

This is what Wikipedia tells us about the North Head Lighthouse.

North Head Lighthouse is an active aid to navigation overlooking the Pacific Ocean from North Head, a rocky promontory located approximately two miles north of Cape Disappointment and the mouth of the Columbia River, near Ilwaco, Pacific County, in the U.S. state of Washington.

The North Head Light was constructed in 1897 after mariners complained that the Cape Disappointment Lighthouse, installed in 1856, was obscured to ships approaching from the north by the headland extending southwest from the light. The new lighthouse was designed by Carl Leick, with a 65-foot (20 m) tower set on a 130-foot (40 m) cliff directly facing the ocean and clearly visible to ships traveling from the north.

The first-order lens at the Cape Disappointment Light was moved to North Head and was first lit at its new location in 1898. In 1935, the first-order lens was replaced by a fourth-order lens. That lens was eventually replaced by an aerobeacon in the 1950s, and later by a modern optic mounted outside the tower. A Crous-Hinds aero marine beacon was put into use at the lighthouse August 1, 1961, and the light was automated in December of that year. A VRB-25 aerobeacon was installed in 1999.

The image below is an informational sign that can give you some idea the orientation of the two lighthouses. 

On the rocks below we saw a flock of cormorants.

Looking south, we could see the state of Oregon off in the distance, and the confluence of the Columbia River with the Pacific Ocean.

Here's a sign showing how the area once looked. Mike and I often camp at Cape Disappointment State Park, and I can assure you that we are camping on dry land with plenty of beach between the campground and the ocean.

There were plenty of blooming wildflowers. Below are two colors of sweet peas.

And this area is thick with Sitka spruce. They are big trees. The redwoods are bigger, but the Sitka spruce has to be a close second in size.

We were all getting hungry by then, and so we decided to head into Astoria for a late lunch. Here, we approached the tall scary bridge (the Astoria-Megler Bridge) from the other direction.

Okay, hold onto your hats. Here we go.

Looking east, we could see more vessels awaiting a pilot boat.

Just before reaching the Oregon side, we went up and over the tall, scary part of the bridge.

We had some lunch, and then had to decide how to get back to our campsite. We had a choice of returning the way we came, or we could take the Westport Ferry back to Puget Island. The ferry was the better choice, but it ran on the quarter hour. According to our navigation devices, we could make it there with just four minutes to spare...if traffic cooperated...and if nothing else delayed us. We managed to get there on time, and we were last in the line of cars waiting to board the ferry.

Cars were just beginning to disembark from the other direction.

So phew! We made it aboard the "Oscar B."

I was sitting in the backseat for this picture, but here we are...safely on board.

Looking back...there's where we came from.

It was only a 12 minute ride across the river, but we got out and took in the fresh air and aquatic views anyway. 

Along the way a sailboat and a tugboat crossed our path.

That's where we're headed.

Our navigation unit was still speaking out loud at this point and it told us to "Disembark the ferry." That gave us a chuckle.

Okay, and here we are back in Washington again.

These flowers were growing out of some driftwood. Not sure what it is. 

On the short drive back to the campground, we saw a few more rustic barns.

This next one could be seen from our campsite.

After taking that picture, I noticed some California poppies blooming all around me.

Okay, so things are pretty much back to normal here. We'll have our usual Sunday morning pancakes, and there are a couple of housekeeping chores on today's agenda. (I've done no housekeeping at all for about a week.) My goal for the day is to finish the quilt binding, and then there should be time to get busy top-stitching the latest Northern Wilderness blocks.

In tomorrow's post, I'll tell you about our journey home, and then we'll be caught up to the present day. For now, I'll leave you to your day.