Good afternoon/evening, my friends. We had a full day to explore La Conner today. It was a beautiful sunny day, and it had everyone...customers and merchants...in a good mood. My plan was to visit the Pacific Northwest Quilt & Fiber Arts Museum. It didn't open until 11:00 a.m., and so I had some time to work on my slow stitching.
Since I knew I would need to move my hoop to do tomorrow's slow-stitching, I decided to get ahead of the game and move it today. Here's where I'll pick it up tomorrow.
By then, it was close enough to opening time to head to the museum. I left Mike drinking his coffee and watching Formula One stuff. It wasn't quite time to open when I arrived, but I scored a parking spot right in front of the building.
A couple of other women and two couples were there as well. When it was past opening time, we all moved up onto the porch like the Mervyn's woman and said Open! Open! Open! (Yeah, I made up that last part.) Just outside I noticed this blooming thing. This looks like a fuchsia, but I've never seen one growing as a shrub as this one was.
When the doors opened, I spent a little time wandering around their gift shop. They had some quilts and some other cute stuff for sale. I'm afraid I have a lot of pictures for you today. It might be a good idea to top off your coffee if you're drinking some. I won't have anything to say about all the pictures, but I'll pipe up if I have something to say.
These were hand-made batiks. I liked the cat at the lower left.
The building itself was interesting. There were three levels (and probably a basement). I happen to know this sort of stairway where you can see all the way to the bottom floor is frowned upon by fire marshalls these days. That opening acts like a chimney in a fire.
On the upper level, I enjoyed this "tower room." Looking at the picture of the structure above, this is the tower on the left side of the building.
Here's the room. I love that antique cradle.
Looking up, this mural was painted on the ceiling.
Here's some information about the mural and the artist.
There were some wonderful antiques sitting around...this spinning wheel.
This treadle sewing machine.
This is the exhibit going on now. Below this image, I've cropped out the main part of the text to make it easier to read.
Here's the text from above.
Okay, so I chose some of my favorites from this large exhibit. Keep in mind that the pieces you'll see are not traditional quilts. Rather, this is fiber art. On the first floor were works from this artist.
I didn't take pictures of all the tags describing each individual piece, but I did for a few that I thought were particularly interesting or appealing. So these next several pieces are from the artist above.
Where I've included descriptive tags, I've posted them ahead of the piece.
This next piece covered almost an entire wall.
This tag describes the piece below it.
These "kimonos" were interesting, but I didn't see any information about them.
They were made of paper and what I would call "big stitch" hand quilting.
This next one is a detail of the middle piece from above.
These were more like traditional quilts, but there was only one layer, and they were almost transparent.
Here's some information about the artist that follows.
And I loved the work of this artist.
With the hiking we've done recently, these pieces spoke to me.
When I showed this next photo to Mike, he said it looked like a photograph.
This next one is a detail of the one above. Those were like little colored washers.
This is another detail of the piece above.
This next one made me want to learn more about dying fabrics.
Okay, so from there I headed back to the RV. This is the view of the field behind us.
Of course, I had to zoom in on the barn in the distance.
Looking to the right, it looked like this.
Together, we drove back into town and had some lunch at this place.
These people were out front to greet us.
La Conner is pretty much the epitome of an "artsy-fartsy" little town. After lunch, we planned to walk up and down the main street. Paying a visit to the restrooms first, the hallway leading there had some beautiful art by this artist.
My pictures don't really do justice to this beautiful art. It was very shiny, and it reflected the colors in our clothing. When I edited the images, I removed the color to try to make them look like what we could see with our eyes.
And then we headed across to street to a coffee shop for our afternoon espressos. There, I picked up this refrigerator magnet.
And then, I just took pictures of things that caught my eye. Of course, that was often cat-related.
And how about this fiddler crab!
There was a yarn shop. Whenever I see these beautiful yarns, it makes me want to learn to knit. And, by the way, I decided not to go to the quilt shop. The weather was too pretty to spend the day driving the distance to Mt. Vernon.
Okay, are you still with me? That was a lot to see. We've had a really nice time here in La Conner. We'll be moving on tomorrow. We have four nights at our next stop just outside the entrance to
North Cascades National Park. We visited this park once before. It was so long ago that we were still tent campers with two little boys. We camped near Baker Lake where the mosquitos were so bad they were actually biting us through our jeans. Happily, we have not seen a single mosquito on this trip. Possibly, it's too late in the year for them.
So, tomorrow being a driving day, I may not get back to you until Friday. Until then, stay out of trouble. There will be plenty of opportunity for trouble in the days ahead of us, so don't use it all up before we meet again.
