Bermuda!

Photos:

(1) At Horseshoe Bay

(2) From the ferry (Hamilton to Dockside)--the water really is that color!

(3) The group on the steps to the residence hall at BIOS.

We had a splendid time at the Elderhostel at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences. We left two weeks ago (2/10) and returned last Monday (2/18). That gave us a day before and a day after the Elderhostel itself.

The theme was "The Real Bermuda." We learned the history and ecology of this 21.5-sq-mi island nation, which never had indigenous people. Europeans discovered it in 1505 (Spanish) and the English colonized it in 1609. Over the centuries its native cedar was known as a superior wood for furniture and shipbuilding. Its gardens provided produce for 19th/early 20th-century New York (Bermuda onions). Tourism began in 1883 when Princess Louise wintered in BDA. Now the major industries are tourism and being headquarters for many reinsurance companies.

BIOS was established in 1903 by Harvard oceanographers. It hosts the longest-running ocean water quality project, used as a benchmark by oceanographers worldwide. The BIOS research vessel was in port so we got a tour. We also went out on a smaller craft, with one of the BIOS scientists, to collect plankton which we viewed under microscopes. (http://www.bios.edu/)

We learned about the Bermuda petrel, or cahow, which was nearly extinct. Ornithologist Dr. David Wingate who led the preservation effort still monitors the preserve where they nest. He gave a presentation for us. (www.audubon.bm/bird%20conservation.htm)

We were there in the "low" or off-season so shops had reduced hours and there were no cruise ships in any of the ports. Yet it was in the high 60's each day, even the day that that a gale came through with rain and very high winds. (The day we were at Dockside, the historical museum complex.)

Bermudian architecture, both residential and commercial, requires that roofs are made to catch rainwater. Houses have underground tanks to store the water, which is used for drinking, etc. (Toilets are flushed with saltwater.)

Last Sunday we worshipped at St. Peter's Church in St. George's, the oldest continuing Anglican church in the New World -- est. 1612. (www.anglican.bm/j3r.html)

Our cohort of 27 had the mix of interesting people we've come to expect and enjoy when we travel with Elderhostel. It was a grand trip!

P.S. I found a place to buy fabric--the crafts dept. at Gibbons Department store had about 100 bolts (all U.S. manufacturers). I bought four different fabrics, total four metres, of the most "island" looking prints.

Little Dipper

Little Dipper has 8" Drinking Gourd blocks. The big Drinking Gourd has 12" blocks. I used the same setting with the cutaway triangles creating the inner border. They are 1" (fin.) in the smaller version. I got the outer border fabric in Philadelphia. (That fits into the whole theme of these two quilts: the Drinking Gourd is another name for the Big Dipper, which guided slaves who were escaping via the Underground Railroad. The quilts are in CW reproduction fabrics. PHL, with its large Quaker population, was a major center for abolitionists.)

Caron at the Valley Quilting Studio did a fabulous job quilting the Drinking Gourd. I put the binding on this weekend.

Here is a comparison photo of the two.

Ava's Stars

I finished quilting and binding "Ava's Stars" this evening (while NOT watching the Super Bowl). Ava will be 3 at the end of March so this is two months early! Her grandmother is my college friend Alex. I've done needlework for Alex's three children (back in my needlepointing days) and quilts for her grandchildren. The quilt is 51 x 59. The pattern was in the 4/99 issue of McCall's Quilting.

Crossroads with borders and Bargello

When it came time to put the borders on Carolina Crossroads I found that I had only one purple fabric that looked right and I didn't have enough of it. I did not have the creative energy to come up with something clever so I bought another "perfect" purple. Glad to have this one to the "flimsy" (unquilted top) stage!

I had to join the gang for Bonnie's Superbowl Bargello project. The 2.5 strips from the BlockSwappers' exchange came in handy. I pieced most of it last night and put the borders on after church and before lunch.

In preparation for our Elderhostel trip next week I bought a new digital camera. It replaces the Kodak EasyShare that dates back to 2002 ( all of 2 megapixels and no zoom). The new one is a Sony, same model as the ones we use at the library. I used it to take these pictures. (My challenge now is retrieving them. My desktop computer is too old for the software so I'm using the new laptop, which I'm still getting used to.)

All but the borders!

I'm not sure how I'm going to border it, but I love the way it turned out.

Carolina Crossroads Step 6

It was good to get back to my studio last evening. I finished Step 6 of the mystery quilt and here are the photos.

Carolina Crossroads progress

Here are photos of Steps 3, 4, and 5. I did 3 and 4 last week and completed 5 last evening. (I don't know why the photos are such different sizes!)

I used the Companion Angle ruler for the first time. (I had purchased it long ago but had not taken it out of the package. I'd completely forgotten that I had it, but was pleased to find it before I bought another one.) The ruler makes it easy to cut quarter-square triangles from strips, but I learned that the strips have to be lined up precisely.

Final Piecing for 2007 and The Annual Reckoning

I finished "Quad 9 Patch" on December 31. The blocks are from the BlockSwappers exchange. The size (72 x 81) was determined by the amount of sashing fabric I had. There was no rhyme or reason to the arrangement of the 9 patches.
And now, for the Annual Reckoning:

I began keeping track of fabric bought/fabric used in January, 1998. By then I had been a serious quilter for four years and had a considerable stash underway (fueled by 25 years of garment sewing). At the beginning of each year since I have been brave enough to post the results to the supportive and appreciative audiences in my online quilting groups. This year I’m being braver (or more foolish) by posting the results on the blog, where just about anyone can see them.

In 2007 two quilting friends and I bought a quilter’s estate. My share was 1400+ yards for which I paid $650.00. In addition I bought 318 yards for $1,252. Total: 1718 yards, $1902, avg. price $1.11 yd.

I used 335 yards. Here's what I accomplished:
I completed 41 quilts. (Some of them had been started prior to 2007.) Of those, 12 were gifts, 9 were donations, and 4 were sold (for $430!).
I completed 8 tops which are not yet quilted.
I made and donated 100 tote bags to Care Bags for Kids. I made 200 HeartStrings blocks. I completed 2 24-block quilts and 3 24-block tops, and sent the rest to the HS coordinator. I made 44 coasters and 15 pillowcases. (6 of the latter were a commission —I got paid to make them!)
I remembered how to sew with a 5/8" seam and made a blouse, a dress, a pair of slacks, 2 jackets, and a tote ag for myself. I emptied 83 spools of thread.
Here’s to a wonderful, fiber-filled 2008!

Some reminiscing

Today would have been my mother's 82nd birthday.

We used to tease her about the gift-giving challenge caused by having a birthday three days after Christmas. (To add to that, their wedding anniversary was December 14!). I look around at all the things I have that came from our parents, either as gifts or as inheritance--from the family antiques to the bathroom wastebasket. That purchase (post-Christmas 2001) was her way to demonstrate that even though she was so ill she could keep up with the ads and want to have some home improvement, however modest. She gave me the money and asked me to go to Kohl's to buy the wastebasket. IIRC it was $35, way more than she would ordinarily have spent, but she decided to keep it. That's a lot more than I'd spend on a bathroom wastebasket, too! (I can imagine her saying, "I'm glad you're getting good use out of it, dear.")

Far beyond things, of course, are the values that she and Dad taught. Another piece I kept is a cross-stitch picture that I made for Mother. The message, attributed to John Wesley, describes her so very well.

The picture and the wastebasket (!) are pictured here. The wastebasket is on the counter just for photography purposes . . . My next blogging lesson is to figure out how to put photos into the middle of posts.

Pieceful Christmas

Ours is a small congregation. In recent years we have settled on having a Christmas Day service rather than a Christmas Eve service. That allows those who have families who belong to other churches to spent Christmas Eve with them, and then on Christmas Day to come and celebrate Christ's birth and participate in the sacrament of Holy Communion. DH's homily emphasizes God's gift to all of us, the Son.

That means that we are unscheduled on Christmas Eve! This year we watched "A Christmas Story." (The screenplay evolved from a combination of several chapters in Jean Shepherd's "In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash." All of Shepherd's books are classics of American humor.) The movie came out in 1983. I'm was curious and I looked up Peter Billingsley, who played Ralphie. He's 36 now.)

While we watched, I sewed. After the complexity of "Storytime Readers" I was ready for something simple. I cut up contents of the 1.5" strip box into 7" lengths. I sewed them into 6's, then trimmed them to 6.5", sliced them in half, and reassembled them. I pieced the resulting squares randomly--no layout, just one square attached to another. The top is 60 x 60--and I quilted it last night. How nice to have a started-and-finished object ready for the next charity request! [The quilt was contributed to a Boys & Girls Club fundraiser in February, 2008, where it brought $125.]

Santa (in the person of DH) was VERY nice to me with two triple-digit gift certificates, one to Royce Sewing in West Bend and the other to Willett in Fond du Lac!!!

UFO COMPLETED!!

Shout it from the housetops! This UFO is done!

It started in 2005. The library received memorial donations for Mrs. G, who was the mother of Mrs. L who is one of our most devoted volunteers. Mrs. L and I talked about what to purchase with the contributions. A piece of artwork for the youth services room? Hmm. Mrs. G did a lot of needlework, as does Mrs. L. What about a quilt? I found a pattern called "Storytime Readers" by Cathy Wierzbicki (http://www.timetoquilt.com/quilts.htm). I began making blocks. Another library staffer made a block. And then I got stuck. Big time. No excuse, just frozen up. The blocks stayed in the box, growling quietly at me whenever I looked that direction.

I finally got tired of losing sleep over the embarrassment of this unfinished memorial gift. I decleared it to be my #1 Christmas vacation project. I took the blocks to the library and talked with the youth services coordinator about where the finished quilt might hang. Good thing I did, because we decided the most flexible way to set the blocks was as two panels. On Thursday of this week I made a special trip to Patched Works (http://www.patchedworks.com/) to get border and backing fabric. I sat down to sew. And the two panels are done!

BTW, the panels are 30 x 88.

"Drinking Gourd"

When I saw the Drinking Gourd block in Barbara Brackman's book on quilts and the Underground Railroad I knew I had to use it. I also wanted to make a quilt with a "butternut and blue" color scheme.

(Historical note: "follow the drinking gourd" was a folk song. The drinking gourd was the Big Dipper. Slaves headed north on the Underground Railroad would look for that constellation.)

I volunteered to coordinate a quilt to raffle as a fundraiser for the Illinois Library Association. The days got away from me and I never got around to contacting other quilting librarians. A call from the ILA fundraising committee chair saying that they'd like the quilt in January got me going. I made the entire top myself. The blocks are 12". The middle border is made from the cutaway triangles of the flying geese. The top measures 92 x 92. Yes, I'm sending this out to be quilted!

Dawn http://dquilts.blogspot.com/ also loves this block. She and I have made a pile of 8" blocks, though knowing her she's a lot farther along with them than I am. We're getting together next week so we can compare.

Carolina Crossroads Mystery

I've finished the first two steps in Bonnie's mystery. My color scheme is purple and lime, with yellow. I began collecting a palette of purples and limes last summer without a particular project in mind. What I've accomplished, of course, is to accumulate a big stack of fabric! This mystery project seemed like a good time to start to use them.

Stashbuilding for a good cause

We are starting a Boys & Girls Club in our community. (I say "we"
because I have gotten myself on the board. We really, really
need a safe, supervised, positive place for kids to go after school.
(We welcome kids @ the library but when they get bored they
get restless, and then they misbehave.) We have to raise
$100,000 in order to open the doors.

Last evening the Chamber of Commerce had a fundraising event
for the BGC: CommuniTies. Everyone who attended paid $5 at
the door and got a necktie.There were tie-related games:
ugly tie contest; a team effort to come upwith ways to use a used tie
(our team had 36--from belt, dog leash, and noose to g-string, jock strap,
and Boys & Girls Club fundraiser); and a novelty tie auction
(the Chicago Bears tie went for $400).

I said I would buy all the ties no one wanted to take home.
That turned out to be almost all of them (some were hideous!)
I got about 25 silk ties and have boxed about 50 polyester, etc.,
to give to Salvation Army.I'm happy to give (again) to this good
cause.

BTW, I wore my necktie patchwork jacket.

And, with my Rotary president's hat on, I was pleased
to present a check for$10,000 as our club's contribution.

Snow!

It's December. This is northern Illinois. Snow is expected, and it happened last night.

I got up at 5:00 this morning, bundled up, and went out to clear the stuff away.
The snowblower started right up -- thanks to (a) having it serviced two months
ago and (b) DH's trying it when he was here at Thanksgiving. I finished the job
when the metal ring/hook that attaches the spring & chain for the auger to
the deadman's bar BROKE. It would best if Pete-the-repair-guy affixes a new ring (I'm not
good at jerry-rigging such things) but I'll need help lifting the snowblower into my car.
Hopefully I won't need to blow any snow until after Friday, because until then I don't have
day- or after-work time to go to Pete's shop.

As I was using the shovel to trim up the edges of the snowblowing I slipped
(ice from last weekend's storm) and fell. I hit my left shoulder -- ouch!--nothing
broken, just tender.

(I realize I have just written one of those day-in-the-life blog posts. Other
bloggers would insert a photo of the snow here, but it's still dark outside.)

Putting my toe in . . .

. . . into the Blogpool.
Let's see how this works . . .