Friday check in: hemming up August with OMG

It was fiercely hot Monday and Tuesday but that did not keep us from checking two more trails off the Hike Lake County list!   We went before lunch when it was marginally cooler.  

 

No walk on Wednesday but yesterday we revisited Lyons Woods which is close to home (on the border between Beach Park and Waukegan).   The HLC designated trail was the opposite direction from the way I usually walk so it was the same-but-different.  

Bumblebee on goldenrod, Carolina horse nettle (also called Radical Weed or Tread Softly).  Wild cucumber, giant hyssop.

I hope we can do the final trail of the twelve this weekend.  (As I type this it's raining, so not today.)

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In the studio:  it's time to report progress on August goals.  

#1   a fabric box to hold binding clips -- DONE!

#2   a jumbo tote bag to take quilts, etc., to guild meetings -- DONE!   I used the class sample from  the June workshop taught by Jane Sassaman.   She was a great teacher and her applique technique is one I want to try again, but I was not inclined to make the entire moth-in-moonlight wall hanging.  

#3   necktie project samples -- I have been asked to talk about working with ties at a guild workshop on September 14.  I've pulled out books and projects I've made.  I have more prep to do, but thinking about it is part of that prep!

#4   acquire less/give away more -- I have moved some yardage forward, though two estate sales have added . . . stash report in Monday's post!

Linking up with August OMG link up  and Finished or Not Friday  

Weekly update: hikes, Equality Day, rummage sale, a bunch of blocks, and 44 years!

 We checked three more forest preserves off the Hike Lake County list.  Wednesday:  Lake Carina is a reclaimed gravel pit  quarried to build the Illinois Tollway, traffic on which can be heard though not seen from the one-mile trail around the lake.  Friday:  Capt. Daniel Wright Woods and Half Day are adjacent but divided by the Des Plaines River.   Though there's a bridge to cross the river it wasn't on the marked trails this year so we drove from one to the other.  

Top: water lilies at Half Day, thistles, Jack-in-the-Pulpit seed bundle. Middle:  burning bush seeds, river at Half Day, Lake Carina.  Lower:  boneset, the sign to look for, and trail at Daniel Wright.  

I could get close to the blue lobelia but the cardinal lobelia was farther away.  (Both at Daniel Wright.)

It has turned VERY hot -- low 90's today (Sunday) with higher temps in the forecast Monday and Tuesday.  We are staying inside in the air conditioning.

Four more trails to go!

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The Lake County Women's Coalition observed Women's Equality Day on Thursday evening. The program was terrific!

Performers Catherine and Anita sang a medley of songs from "Sister Sufragette" to "I Am Woman" with many more in between.

I contributed this quilt to the raffle (my friend Steffi won it) and in turn I won a gift basket with wine (the LCWC president owns a winery).  

And I was home in time to see Kamala Harris give her acceptance speech.

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Our church has rummage sales in May and August.  Mary Lou and Laura are the long-time chairs and they have their process perfected.   I helped set things out on Monday (I always get women's pants and sweaters, and this time I also got books and media).   I had selling stints 9-11 on Friday and Saturday.  The perk is that helpers get 1/2 off the already rock-bottom prices.  Saturday is $5 to fill a grocery bag (no discount).   

I spent a grand total of $21, which included two of those $5 bags.  My bargains included a never-worn pair of khaki jeans (tags still on) and a Talbot's long-sleeved t-shirt.  No actual quilting yardage but I got a Laura Ashley twin sheet set, all-cotton, for $1, and a half dozen men's shirts (bag sale).   

All of these hankies were $2!  A number of them were unused (I could tell from the creases).  

The original owner saved some of the stickers.  

Preliminary proceeds for the sale: $3000.

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And, yes, I got in some sewing time.

These are 100 8-1/2" jewel box blocks  for Cynthia's next block drive.  (The instructions:  purple/blue/green and WOW for the HSTs, white/black and black/white for the four-patches.)  6-1/2 yards!

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August 23, 1980

 

Happy 44th anniversary to us! 

We are still smiling.  

Linking up with  Oh Scrap!  Sew and Tell

Design Wall Monday

Midweek: beautiful days, an unplanned project, and reading

 

Lots of sunshine, mid-70's, no humidity = ideal for walking!  2.7 miles at Sun Lake on Monday afternoon.   It counts as two trails (because of the distance) for Hike Lake County. 

Lower right is white snakeroot, a poisonous plant. When cows grazed on it they absorbed the poison When people drank their milk they contracted milk fever.  Here's the story of Anna Pierce, the white woman who learned about the relationship between the plant and the sickness from Native Americans. 

I had a woman's club board meeting Tuesday afternoon, so no walk.

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I am practicing avoidance on my two remaining August goals (hey, there's 10 days left!).  I had a box of 4.5" homespun HSTs.  I made a bunch of 4-patches and here's the work in progress.  (Yes, the two blocks at the upper left are mis-oriented.)  The blocks are 8.5" unfinished.  

Cynthia said her next block drive will use these blocks but in a different colorway.    

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My recent reading:  four novels, all published in 2024.

In 1960 Francesca Loftfield, an American field worker for a British aid agency, is sent to open a nursery school in the remote Calabrian village of Santa Chionia.   The villagers view her with suspicion.  She must figure out the power structure (men dominate but there are a few formidable women) and the relationships among families.   Because of its isolation the village has been neglected by the provincial and national government.    A flood washes away the rubble of a long-ruined municipal building and a skeleton is revealed.  Who was it?   A lost son? A missing husband?   Francesca tries to help.   

I found the story long and rather confusing.  There is a list of characters at the END of the book that I didn't discover until I was more than halfway through.  It would have been more helpful to have that at the beginning.

This fast-paced mystery is saturated with local color.  FBI agent Ryan Tapia is assigned to the Maine bureau, as far away as he can get from California where his wife and children were killed in a car wreck.  He is sent to Liberty Island (Deer Isle) to investigate the death of a lobsterman whose corpse washes up on shore of an Indian reservation.  The lobsterman was a thoroughly despicable person, as Ryan finds out, but who among the locals hated him enough to kill him?

The Weyward women are linked across five centuries in this absorbing novel that echoes the magical realism of Sarah Addison Allen and Alice Hoffman.

1619:  Altha is a healer, an herbalist, on trial for witchcraft.   1942:  Viola's father restricts her every movement, confining her to their country estate.  Then the dissolute cousin comes to visit and upends everything.  2019:  Kate inherits Viola's rural cottage, just in time as her controlling and abusive lover threatens her life.  

Yes, the connections and the outcome are obvious, but the story is so well-written that you'll want to read to the end.

I didn't know what to expect when I started reading this twisty thriller -- but it kept me in suspense. 

Esther is an accomplished artist who has the unfortunate tendency to make rash decisions that have affected her family and her career.  She and her partner are living in Asheville and looking forward to starting a family.  Without warning the partner departs without any explanation, leaving Esther not only adrift but with the mortgage.  Then a wealthy philanthropist offers Esther a job she cannot refuse:  take the documents stored in hundreds of file boxes and make them into scrapbooks, ostensibly as a surprise gift for the woman's husband.  As Esther works to recreate the woman's history she uncovers family secrets. Weeks into the project the woman dies. What is Esther to do?  She has to solve the mystery and pursues it to a most unlikely conclusion.  

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Linking up with Wednesday Wait Loss  Midweek Makers   

Weekly update: three hikes and a finish

 

I planned to do the Hike Lake County trails systematically, starting with those farthest away and ending with those closer to home.   That didn't quite work out -- the most-farthest is yet to come -- but we did go to the next-to-farthest as well as two others sort-of-far.  Two on Friday:  Cuba Marsh and Heron Creek.  

Ripe blackberries at Heron Creek.  I left my cap in the car.  If I'd had it I would have harvested more than a handful. 

One on Sunday:   Fourth Lake/Millennium Trail.  This was something of a cop-out because it was mostly an asphalt path through a subdivision.  

A collage of wildflowers from all three sites.

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The Kamala banner was too wide for the front door and the screen door obscured it.  After some finagling to stabilize the edges (leftover molding top and bottom, broken-off yardsticks on the sides) I got it hung from the nail that holds the Christmas wreath. 

The yew bushes need trimming.

The back.   (The cat batik was one of several similar hand-prints from Barb M's ongoing estate sale.) 

I stayed up too late last night reading a good book, so I woke up later than usual, and now I'm late for my shift setting up the church rummage sale.  Gotta go!

Linking up with Design Wall Monday Oh Scrap! Sew and Tell

Friday check in: HLC 2024 list, a finish-and-a-half

 

The 2024 Hike Lake County Challenge list was released yesterday.    

Each year Lake County Forest Preserves selects a dozen trails for the challenge. Participants have until December to walk (or run, skip, hop....) seven of them.    

I took up HLC in 2020 as a pandemic exercise.  Each year I've overachieved by doing all of the designated trails.  Regular readers know I keep going all year.  

A couple of these are new.  Some are close to home, others are at the opposite corner of the county.   

It rained off and on yesterday but the sun is out today. Tune in again to see my progress!

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There is progress in the studio.  On Wednesday I wrote that I had two time-specific projects. 

#1 is a mug rug for a P.E.O. sister who's retiring at the end of the month.  

When Modern Quilt Studio announced the Kamala Quilt pattern I bought the download.  The full quilt has five rows.  Blocks are 8 x 12.  I'm thinking about a banner to hang sideways on the front door.   I've spent a lot of time auditioning borders and hope to have that worked out soon.

P.S.  Be sure to see Preeti's political statement in this post !

Linking up with Finished or Not Friday

Midweek: cranes, estate sale again!, and a sneak peek

 

Mr. and Mrs. Crane ambled through a back yard a couple of blocks away.  I saw them because someone else was taking a photo.   

I was en route to month #11 of Barb M's estate sale.  Paula and her friends took July off.   Months 1-10 have raised $20,000 for local charities.  Proceeds this month go to Bricks of Hope which provides Lego sets to seriously ill kids.  (Read the founder's story about how having Legos to play with when he was treated for childhood leukemia.)  

My purchases at home.   $2.59 per yard this time.  

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This is the fourth out of six months for the guild round robin.   I used the Studio 180 Split Rects ruler to make the units for LT's quilt top.   The RR is a surprise so I can't show you the entire piece, but I really like the colors in this one!

I have two small projects, neither of which is on my OMG list but both of which need to get done soon.  As I root through the stash to select fabrics I am distracted by so many ideas for other projects.    I hope to have something to show you on Friday!  

See what other quilters are blogging about at Wednesday Wait Loss and Midweek Makers

Weekly update: beautiful weather

 The weather was glorious this weekend -- temperatures in the mid-70's, low humidity, and lots of sunshine.   We went out both Saturday and Sunday afternoon.

These are scarlet lobelia or cardinal flower.  I've found them in only two forest preserves (here, Sedge Meadow Canoe Launch)  though surely they grow in others.  The red is really red!   

We've visited Volo Bog when we've had enough time for the 26 not-very-direct-mile-drive.  Today was one of those days.  I hiked the entire trail -- 2.75 miles -- which took so long that I didn't take the boardwalk through the bog itself.  (See  this post from our visit this past May).  Yes, I had to push for that 2.75 miles but because it was cool and not-humid it wasn't bad.  

This was a section of the trail.  The floating walkway is very bouncy, it's narrow, and there are no handrails! 

Clockwise from upper left: monarda, boneset, nodding onion, rattlesnake master, elderberries, spotted joe pye weed, ironweed. Center:  sunshine through the trees. 

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I finished one of the wheelchair quilts and I'm quilting the border on the other.  (See Friday's post for the flimsies.) 

Here's where I'm stuck. 

One of my OMGs for August is to make a jumbo tote bag big enough, for example, to take quilts to a guild meeting.    

At the June workshop taught by Jane Sassaman (details here) I made most of the parts for one of the collaged moths.  I neatly folded those parts and all the fabric and put them in a box.  I knew I didn't want to make the entire wall hanging but I didn't want the partial moth hanging around forever.  Aha!  Why not use it for that jumbo tote bag?  

The moth was five pieces -- four wings and the body/head/antennae.  Jane doesn't use fusible web for her applique, but I added it.  ("Windowed" so there's just a ring of fusible around the edges.) I used satin stitch to sew the edges down.

Uh-oh.  The applique comes all the way to the selvage.  I  intended to have a top margin of 1-1/2".  I can't rip out the applique. I can't cut it away.   I'll need to carefully sew a strip along the top edge. 

I couldn't find the jumbo tote pattern I used a couple of years ago so I have been proceeding without one.  However, this evening I found another, similar pattern and I'm going to use it as a guideline.   

Linking up with  Sew and Tell, Oh Scrap! and  Design Wall Monday.

P.S.  Evening sewing time is TV time. 

We binged two seasons of Under the Vines, a "dramedy" (drama + comedy) about a vineyard in New Zealand.  There's a third season in the works, which is good because the second season ended with a cliffhanger.

It's on Acorn.

Friday check in: a flimsy and a half

 

A post to a local FB group yesterday drew my attention to this stone circle on the lakefront at North Point Marina.

I didn't realize that it is an art installation.  It was created in 1990 by Marcia Weese as an homage to the prairie.  

The quotations continue around the circle.

I took photos of all of them. (Twenty or so.)  

Apparently the intent was to have prairie flowers and grasses in the center, but it hasn't been maintained that way. 

There are other sculptures at the marina that I'll need to explore.  

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The quilting week began on Monday when Stevens and I took a semi-field trip to Wisconsin.    When he served the church in Campbellsport (1999-2008) he bought two pages of an old atlas that depicted Campbellsport in the mid 1800's and had them framed. We haven't hung them on the walls here, nor do we want to, so we dropped them off at the Campbellsport Public Library.  We then drove a little north, a little west, and then south to Beaver Dam. (That's to go around Horicon Marsh.)  I delivered my quilt for the Wisconsin Quilt Expo to the Nancy Zieman Sewing Studio .  Yes, I could have mailed both the quilt and the pictures, but the field trip was a nice outing. We left at 9 a.m. and were home by 3 p.m. with lunch at a restaurant in Waupun.

In the studio:   I've written about my contribution to the guild charity challenge. To qualify for prizes the quilts must follow this specific pattern (10" square-in-square blocks) and be made ONLY from fabric donated to the guild (blocks, border, back, binding).  They are wheelchair sized and will go to a nursing home. 

This one counts -- all donated.

It will be my entry in the contest. 

This doesn't because I added some from my stash (the coral and four of the yellow corners).   

 

BUT I'll have two others to show off next month.   

The SIS blocks created cut-away triangles.  I sewed them and trimmed them to 4.5" 

 Look what I've done with them! 

These are also wheelchair-sized for the guild charity.   

Once again: the coral print and some of the yellow is from my stash.  The remainder is from the guild donation fabric.  

 

Linking up with Finished or Not Friday

Fifty years ago: graduation and new beginnings

 

Fifty years ago last Friday I graduated with a Master's Degree in library science.  A real librarian!

But I didn't go to work as a librarian right away. 

Fifty years ago yesterday (August 8, 1974) I began my new job as a Chapter Consultant for Alpha Gamma Delta.  

Now called Leadership Consultants, LCs are recent  graduates who travel to the sorority's collegiate chapters to assist with recruitment (rush) and chapter management.

The appointment letter came in April . . .

But I was tipped off.

There were four in the LC class of 74-75.  We had one-year appointment.  (Nowadays there are 8-10 and most serve for two years.) 

 I had two huge American Tourister suitcases. One was a fold-over 'wardrobe' bag.  Back then suitcases did not have wheels.  I also had a big gold corduroy tote bag to hold the files and notebooks.  

We sewed AGD crests to the pockets of our pantsuits. Mine was tan because I already had a dark green pantsuit. (I spent a lot of the summer sewing.) 

The international officers were old, or so we thought. (They were younger then than we are now!) 

The international headquarters is still in Indianapolis but it is now in an office building rather than a house.  I'll need to ask if they still have the clock. 

Each of us   carried those three big ring binders. 

I went to two chapters for rush visits and to two other for organization visits. Then I began a new assignment as the first LC for extension. That meant I visited campuses where we did not have chapters to see if they were open for extension.    

Fall term I was in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, and North Carolina.  I also visited Michigan and Wisconsin.   In the spring I went to Texas A & M University and spent two and a half months on the organization of a chapter, with several side visits to other prospective campuses.    TAMU had only recently gone coeducational after decades as a men's school with an extremely strong military component.  There was no existing Greek (sorority/fraternity) system so it was quite a challenge.    

While I was working on that I was applying for library jobs.  I met with Hazel Adams Richardson, the director of the Bryan Public Library (Bryan and College Station are one metro area).  I made a good impression on her and when the library board in Brenham, Texas, asked her advice when they needed a new head librarian she gave them my resume. I rented a car and drove to Brenham (40 miles), had the interview, and they hired me . . . but that is a 50th anniversary story for next year. 

My LC year was life-changing and more importantly life-course-determining.  I would not have become a public library administrator.  I would not have thought about living in a small city in rural Texas.  I would not have thought about Pittsburg, Kansas, for my second job (see the LC schedule, above) which is where I met Stevens.   I am so grateful that Alpha Gamma Delta took a chance on me!