I can't believe it's been almost three weeks since I last posted. How did that happen??
Well, I had a small vacation that took 10 days; I had my grandkids both before and after. And there you are... three weeks gone.
I have done almost no sewing but I did promise to send you pictures of the darling little bee mug rug I made for my friend. The front was made using a modified log cabin pattern. It seems that bee fabric is quite the rage these days. I bought most of this fabric in Sisters last summer.
The back was a panel: I mean the whole thing was maybe 4".
Here are some pictures from my travels, since I seem to be better at traveling than sewing!! ;-)
Check out these shoes we saw... Couldn't imagine walking on them, can you?
Do you like orchids? Check out these colors!
Ever seen turtles looking like this?
My friend and I went hiking and found this very secluded rock waterfall
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday; it's when I have all my kids together in one place! This year we also had my brother visiting, which was a treat. I hadn't seen him in several years.
Here is a fabulous shot (I think) of me with 3 of my 4 grandchildren.
And here are my 3 adults (well, mostly) kids with their two spouses:
My two daughters are the left and center girls in black; my son is back right in blue t-shirt. My daughter's husband is always joking around.
Lastly,fall has come to Northern California. I love the fall colors and have many trees that change colors! This is one of my favorites, a Japanese Maple, by my front porch!
Not to be gathering moss around my feet, my dh and I are leaving tonight on a two week bucket-list trip... I'll try to post some pictures and definitely leave some clues for you to figure out my whereabouts. Let me start out by saying that it's about a 13 hr flight! And I'm not going to Paris.
Hope you all had a fabulous Thanksgiving. We do have so much to be thankful for, regardless of our station in life.
Does this look familiar?? Any idea what I've decided to work on?? Maybe the second picture will help!
I started out using the companion ruler and then realized that I have an Accuquilt die (that I'd never opened) so BOOM!! I cut a bunch of strips and rolled that baby over the die and VOILA... I even got the kids to help!~
Quarter square triangles sewn into rectangles = Bonnie's leader/ender project from a few years ago. Suits me just fine now... Here is the link:
http://quiltville.blogspot.com/2016/07/hourglass-leader-ender-challenge.html
Then I figured as long as I was cutting strips, I might as well pull out a very old UFO, but it's been so long, I can't even remember how it was supposed to look. I know that I was making 25-patches of green and pink! Since I was cutting pinks and greens, I just cut some smaller strips (these finish at 1")~! Any suggestions? I've made a couple of quilts using 25-patches with a sashing in between. I guess could do that, but these are small blocks!
I did get most of the next border done on my Mount Mellick DiFord quilt... have started working on the corners, which consist of 4 little hexies appliquéd onto a background. Sadly I cut the backgrounds too small. UGH... And these hexies are REALLY tiny. They are the same as the corners of the center, a theme that gets repeated throughout the quilt. You may notice that my side borders are a little short! Claire suggested I take out some of the seams from the triangles, which I may wind up doing... GRRRR.
Tomorrow is Halloween and whereas my grandkids used to come to our house to go trick or treating, they're now staying in SF and going around there. My grandson, Ryan (7) always wants ME to be there for his school's parade so I'm headed up to SF for a half hour parade! Oh well. I'm listening to a good book on tape.
Here are my 4 grandkids this weekend, helping me wash my car. The weather was gorgeous. Little Eli will be a year in 3 weeks and he is already walking! The driveway's slant makes it hard for him to do it by himself so his mom is helping him. I bought three brushes for the kids at Harbor Freight so they each have their own to scrub away on our cars. Something they definitely don't do in SF! Oh and walking around barefoot is another activity they enjoy at my house.
We spent just one night in Paris before we flew back home last week and I couldn't waste an opportunity to take some historical shots. This is from a place called Place des Vosges. It is literally a square block of garden surrounded by these lovely brick buildings. The entire block has art galleries and some shops--it's a covered walkway all throughout.
Victor Hugo is purported to have lived here and there is a museum in his honor.
That is my husband who photo-bombed the picture in the bottom corner!
The area where we stayed for the week is the burgundy region of France where they grow grapes for wine everywhere. At this time of year, all the vineyards have been turned gold, as the leaves get ready to fall. Just gorgeous!
My husband and I enjoy France so much. We love the breads and cheese and frequently will have a light dinner of cheese, bread and paté (with wine, of course). The house we rented had a fabulous patio where we'd sit each evening to watch the sunset and enjoy a glass of wine from the region.
We picked up the olives at the farmer's market from a small booth, the cheese and meats from a couple of small stores in the town of Beaune; the wine was from the adjacent town of Meursault, where they make delicious white wine.
This was the little bakery in the town where we stayed. My husband just loved his little walk up to the bakery early in the mornings for our croissants and bread.
We love wine tasting and doing it in this area is quite an experience. Most of the "wineries" literally have caves where they store their wine. We visited several of them and frequently their tasting rooms were in the caves!
This is my husband with our guide for the day, Pascal, who has been living in the area for over 40 years involved in the wine industry. Note his scarf! In France, everyone wears scarves, men and women, hot or cold!
This area of France has a fabulous paved bike path system which runs the entire valley. The house we rented had bikes so we took a bike ride one afternoon to the next town. This is what we would see along the way! The green signs with the bikes were the guides to follow.
This is the town we rode to and we stopped in the center of the town to enjoy the sunshine and a beer!
Look at the roof on the city hall building! It's not unusual to find one or two buildings in a town with a roof like that. This is the where we parked ourselves to reward ourselves for our strenuous bike ride through the vineyards! JK
When the weather is nice, as it was when we were in France, it's very common (and kind of typical) for people to sit outside of cafés or restaurants. This was the view at the farmer's market on that Sunday. Note that we could not find a single seat at the dozen or so cafés that lined the main square! We figured that people parked themselves early in the morning and didn't leave until later. We even saw people who bought chickens from the rotisserie vendors and brought them to the cafés to eat with wine!
This was the church and its organ on the center square in this small town where we went for the farmer's market on that Sunday morning. The small town was Chalon-sur-Saône, on a beautiful river.
Perhaps you'll enjoy seeing the tiny car we had for our trip. It was really small and perfect to navigate the very small streets were drove throughout our journey.
