Fiber and Pulp

Moving Along, pt. 2

  Isn't this little quilt lovely? :) This is the quilt I received today from the Spring Blooms Quilt Swap. It's made with gorgeous batiks in bright, happy colors. <happy sighes> The quilt was not signed and the box only has a return address (Salina, KS) with no name, so I'll have to dig around in my files at home to see who the maker is -- she did a WONDERFUL job! :) 

I found the box on my front step this morning and picked it up and tucked it into my big carry bag of stuff without opening it. Just got around to unpacking my 'schlep' bag and opened the box. What a nice color shot of joy for a crazy day!! :) Thank you, giver (I'll find you and send you email, you can't escape the thanks from me!! LOL)

Now, to finish up with my "It's My Life' entry for today:

4. Did your grandparents live nearby? How often did you visit their homes? Did the house have any special smells? What did their couch feel like? How big was their kitchen?

I wish I could put the picture in my mind directly into a jpg to show it off! LOL I have very clear and tangible memories of both my set of grandparents homes. None of them live in those places anymore, of course (all four of my grandparents are dead, now). The house my Mom's parents lived in is being occupied by one of her younger sister's families. The house my Dad grew up in is entirely gone -- the farm was bought by the Army Corp of Engineers by right of Eminent Domain in the late 60's and bulldozed. The yard (and the huge Elm tree in it) are now a picnic ground near the lake that resulted from damming the creek that bounded the farm.

What I remember about my Mom's parents house -- it sits on the side of a hill in Betsy Layne, KY, above the railroad tracks. Between the house and the tracks is a deep creek bed. There were always OODLES of tiny frogs that came out during the night -- I think they came up from the creek? You had to be very, very careful where you stepped when you went out in the yard at night or you'd slide down the hillside on squished frog. :P They were adorable little frogs -- I was never squeamish about them, they were fascinating. :)

The house has a big porch along the entire front side that is the second level -- long stair way going up to the porch. Much life got conducted sitting on that porch. :) There was a foot path along the way in front of the property and every one who came along was greeted and visited with. Trains passed several times a day -- mostly coal trains, full of freight and coal cars. We'd always wave to the engineers who usually waved back and honked the loud horn. 

There was electricity in the house but no running water -- we'd have to 'pack' water from the well next door (carried two buckets wide on a shoulder yoke; used to be the chore passed to the youngest which was usually me and my youngest uncle:). The house had no central heat, just gas stoves or fireplaces in each room. The first level was a basement where the laundry was done and such -- I wasn't allowed in there so I have only vague recollections of it. At each outside eave was an enormous drum (100 gallons?) to catch the rainwater which was used for bathing and laundry. Grandpa made sure there was always an oil slick on top to discourage mosquitoes.

Since there was no running water, eating was a big operation. There were always lots of people around at mealtime. There were many children in my Mom's family and always friends and visitors, too. I remember the folks eating in shifts -- men ate first, then kids, then the women folk. One of my aunts or I generally got to wash dishes (sometimes several shifts of dishes were done, depending on the size of the crowd) in water boiled on the stove then mixed with cold drinking water. This was a novel operation from the way we ate and washed up at home (we always lived in 'town' with all the usual amenities of contemporary life). 

I remember the kitchen/dining area as small and crowded by big table, stove, cupboards...there was always a big metal bucket of cold water sitting in the corner on a high stool with the ladle hanging above it. We learned early the correct way to ladle and drink without contaminating the water bucket or ladle. :) Any waste water from dishes or such was pitched out the back door onto grandma's flowers.

My grandfather was a smoker and the house always smelled (rather pleasantly) of fresh air mixed with Prince Albert Smoking Tobacco. He rolled his own cigarettes and I have clear memories of him standing on the porch, leaning at the rail or sitting in the kitchen rolling a cigarette. My grandmother did not like the smoke and would fuss at him till he took it outside. :) I remember most of the male adults that visited smoking -- but not either of my parents. When I was quite young my grandfather's parents were still living (across the tracks on the other side of the little valley, within eyeshot) -- both of them smoked a corncob pipe. Small, birdlike folks with white hair and real wiry strength. 'Cantankerous' is how I remember them -- very iconic mountain people. . :) I think all the folks in my Mom's family were argumentative, strong willed, caring and community oriented with definite opinions about everything. LOL

Their house had a large 'yard' which included the usual grass/flower beds as well as a truck garden, a chicken house (Grandma kept hens for eggs and meat), and some land higher up the hillside that I never visited (somewhere up there was a small cemetery where ancestors are buried; we'd usually go home over Memorial Day so my Dad could help mow, weed and spruce the plot up a bit). My grandfather was as coal miner all his working life but by the time I can remember he had retired on disability as he had Black Lung (which eventually killed him).

My father's parents lived on a real farm in the western part of Virginia (Wise County, near the Pound). It was about a four hour drive or so to go see them -- I remember the trip as weary and long (child's perspective;). The highway we drove in on was high on a hillside and we could look down to see the  house before we left the road and drove down the gravel county road to get to it. I have nostalgic memories of watching for Grandma's house out the window of the car and down into green valleys (hollers as we called them).

My grandfather built the house himself when he and Grandma were married. It was small but very neat and clean and always seemed fancier than my other grandparents' house to me. At least part of that was that the house had electricity AND running water. :) Also, my Grandma Hampton was a devoted house keeper -- there were glass knobs on every door (which I loved:) and it was always dusted and tidy. Not so many people moving in and out since all the children were grown and gone and there were no near neighbors. The house was built on a single level and there was an expansive porch on the front and a large patio on the back. It was nearly always warm weather when I was there and I remember most of the life of the family conducted either out of doors or in the kitchen.

There were two bedrooms -- one that was used only for company that actually belonged to my aunt (who was away at school then, later, married) and the other where my grandparents and everyone else slept (all the kids). The sound of the wind-up alarm clock ticking at night was always soothing to me. My Grandmother's nightly routine was to let down her very long hair (which was usually done up in a single braid and bunned), brush it, wind up the clock and turn out the lights.

Every bed in my Grandmother's house had a feather down mattress -- waaaaay comfy to sleep on, like clouds. :) In the morning, after breakfast, her first daily chore was to go around and make every bed up. She had a long, well-polished stick that she used to smooth out the feather mattress and then she spread the sheets and quilts up and tucked them under the pillows. I have a lot of memories of following her around as she did these chores, chattering all the while (I know I must have done because I have a very clear memory of her turning to me, laughing, and saying "My you are a little chatterbox, aren't you!" I was probably three or four (because there were no other children with us) at the time. :)

There was no sofa in the living room, just several comfy upholstered chairs and my grandfather's rocker. He sat beside the radio in one corner, listening to the news daily (we were not allowed to interrupt or disturb him:). The middle of the living room was filled by a huge (by my child sized standards) coal burning stove. Around the bottom of the stove, on it's platform, were usually a number of small figures -- a duck and three ducklings, a frog or two. In the summer these were outside on the front porch so it must have been cold weather. I learned at a _very_ young age to avoid the hot stove surface!

The kitchen was the center of the house. Grandma cooked on a wood stove (the contraption always fascinated and frightened me:). There was  a pretty red and white formica and steel table in the middle of the room with many chair around it. The table had folding leaves which went up and down depending on the numbers of eaters. There was also a drawer in the center of the undertable where Grandma kept the silverware (I got to set the table usually). A couple of standing cupboards and a drysink on the side walls ... windows along one side of the kitchen that overlooked the vegetable/kitchen garden ... and a screen door out to the back patio.

The back patio was my favorite part of their house. It was a large concrete platform sitting on the ground. At the back side, opposite the kitchen door, were two enormous trees with a very large hammock hanging between them. It was big enough to hold three or four kids easily. I have many happy memories of laying in that hammock in the warm summer afternoons, enjoying the shade and watching little songbirds hop through the tree branches (gold finches, chickadees, robins, cardinals). At one side of the patio was a large fish pond, also concrete, where my Grandfather kept many large gold fish. We were discouraged from paddling in the fishpond or trying to catch the fish ... but if we were good and quiet, the fish would come to the surface when we fed them and we could enjoy their colors and shapes. :)

The front porch of the house was less often used, generally if we wanted cover (it had a roof) from the rain or such. In front of the porch were three descending layers of 'steps', maybe 5 by 7 feet or so each, that my grandfather used to display his extensive collection of pottery jugs  (think 'moonshine' containers) and crocks. :) I learned many years later that my grandfather had actually _been_ a moonshiner in his youth (and had spent 18 months in the Federal prison near Richmond for that). I gather than he was a really wild guy in his youth. <grin> I do not know what came of those jugs and crocks but everytime I see one I think of him. :)

Moving Along

 This is a photo of Queen Anne's Lace growing near my home. It is High Summer is Maryland and the weather is very pleasantly summer-ish. We've had a LOT of rain and everything is green and lushly growing here. :) 

I have always loved QAL -- I remember as a small child being fascinated with the delicate tiny flowers and wondering _who_ Queen Anne was that she had such beautiful flowers named for her. :) Much later, in graduate school, I learned the word inflorescence and the name Daucus carota (which in common English is wild carrot). I was excited to expand my knowledge of Queen Anne's Lace to include the carrot idea -- if you pull one up some time, sniff the root. The smell will convince you of the accuracy of the 'carrot' part, even if the look of the root will not. :) Domesticated carrots are developed from this wild progenitor, I think. :) No matter how much knowledge I accumulate about the plant, the flowers are just as beautiful.

I am still without breathing mask for my sleeping and so am getting space-y-er by the day. :P Every effort I have exerted to speed up the health insurance process has been for naught. :P Well, as per the Moles (unwritten) motto, "I endure". <sigh>

I am nearly finished with making the twelve mariner's compass blocks -- I have to sew the center circle on each one and then will be mailing them out. The task took much longer than I anticipated and I had a lot of nice help from my staff. I have decided that next year (fingers crossed that there _is_ a next year:) I will pay someone competent to make these things for my shop!!

Today is the second installment of the 'It's My Life' story line. For the Record:

1. Was yours a religious family? Were Sunday's spent together with family? 

    Religion has a special and perhaps not unusual role in my childhood. Both of my parents come from the Appalachians where populations are thinly spread. Neither of them grew up with regular churching (that is, a church with pastor and congregation always present). 

     My mother's parents were devoted Christian fundamentalists and attended the circuit minister's sermons every six weeks or so. I do not recall ever actually seeing a Bible being read in their house. I knew there was one as all the family data was kept there -- who was born when, who was married and died when, etc.

     My father's parents were similarly 'unchurched'. I think my Grandfather was actually an atheist but Grandma often said prayers and taught us the child's prayer to be said at bedtime. I remember asking my Dad once about religion and he explained the meaning of the word 'agnostic' to me. He was open minded but felt no particular need to be church-going. The God he allowed _might_ exist was able to speak to him wherever he happened to be and could hear him from any place he chose to pray. :) My mother was a quietly religious woman.

     Going to church was a frequent event in my childhood, but it was always with friends. In small towns, the church tends to be the center of social life. My parents never attended or participated in churches but we, as kids, nearly always did. I went to a variety of different churches as a child, depending on where we lived. Usually they were Southern Baptist in denomination but also there was Church of Christ and Unitarian, I think. I was often in choir (I still love to sing; I know all the words to nearly every Christmas carol) and always in the youth fellowship. At one point in my early teens I joined a Baptist church and was baptised ... went through religious training in the gospels. 

     I have always been fascinated by religious belief systems and have long studied different religions. I think my father's agnosticism influenced me heavily. I believe that all religions are aiming at the same goal -- to be closer to 'God' -- and that they are all equally valid/invalid (depending on your viewpoint:). By nature I tend to be a Mystic (something  I only realized about myself relatively recently) ... my daughter once came dancing home from school (I think she was a freshman in High School) and told me that she had finally figured out what my belief system was called. In her English class they were studying the Transcendentalist literature and she declared me to be a Transcendental Humanist. :) Never having read any of this material, I reviewed some of it (read Walden and such) and I think she is right. :)

     I did not raise my children in the church. My husband was raised to be a staunch Presbyterian (but, again, not much in the church-going mode). He was ... um ... disinvited ... to Sunday School as a kid because he sassed the minister. Well, was perceived as sassing -- I think he actually wanted to know. As he tells the story, the pastor was giving a lecture to the Sunday School classes about tithing and the need for them to devote some of their allowance/money to the church each week. Skip asked  him why this was so since the Bible clearly said that God took care of all his children, even as he cared for the Lilies of the Field. <smile> Didn't play well at all! :)

     Um, anyway, churching was not important to me -- I was teaching ethics along with everything else you impart to children, this being a natural part of existence (to me). I told Skip that if it was important to him, he'd have to look for a church and take responsiblity for their religious education. Clearly it was not so important. <grin>

Back to my childhood ... Sundays were special days in my family, but not because of church. We nearly always had a really good evening meal (my Mom is a great cook) and otherwise spent the day quietly. Some of us would go to church with friends. Others would stay home and play. :) My mother was a nurse and Sunday was often another work day for her. Daddy usually had a 'nine to five' kind of job although there were many times he'd need to go to the lab and check on samples or some such. I remember several very pleasant visits with him into the creamery. :)

2. Did your family take vacations? Did you go to the same place every year?

     Nearly every trip I can remember making as a kid was to see one or the other set of grandparents. I know we did go to Cumberland Falls, in central KY several times (I love that place:) -- we have some old reel-to-reel movies of my sister and I as small girlies, dressed up in our Easter best, playing along the rock shelves. We probably went to other places, too, but my memory is kinda vague on the matter. The trips I remember are to the mountains, either in Ky or VA.

3. Do you remember any special stories your grandparents told you? Did you sit on a lap when you heard these stories or did you hear them when you and your granparent would walk hand-in-hand, taking a stroll? Do you tell any of these same stories to your children?

     The culture from which my parents come has a rich oral tradition and story telling was a regular occurrence in daily life. Usually I was a little girl quietly in the corner eavesdropping on the grown-ups who ignored me if I was quiet. :) Most stories were centered on family -- things happened in the past or the present ran together seamlessly in the telling. At one time in my young adult-hood I became interested in genealogy  and interviewed my father's mother. She could tell me from memory the names 'certificate' names, birth marriage and death dates of not only her family for six generations back but her husband's as well!! Family roots, relatedness and history was important to those folks! :)

     Many of the stories I learned from my father's parents I did pass on to my kids -- usually they came up in conversation in the form of realistic 'fables', stories with a moral. :) There were a few from my mother's parents, too, but I spent less time with them as a child and had fewer of theirs to tell.

4. Did your grandparents live nearby? How often did you visit their omes? Did the house have any special smells? What did their couch feel like? How big was their kitchen?

 

I will have to return to this as duty calls (and my lunch is probably stone cold by now:).

It's My Life

 Julie Isa is leading a journaling project called 'It's My Life" and I have decided to join in. One of my purposes in keeping this blog is to record _for myself_ what I am doing and making (and, maybe, thinking). A secondary purpose is to make the record for my descendants. I often wonder about my female ancestors and what kind of lives they lived.

Whenever I think of my childhood, the iconic images I come up with are right out of my elementary school Dick and Jane readers. :) Of course, I was oldest in my household so that picture above is a little off-base. :) Here are this week's questions:

1. What was your mother's name? Olga Octavia Moles (She told me once that her mother named her for the heroine in her favorite dime store romance novel.:)

Your Father's name? Otto Hampton (no middle name, a fact that often came up in conversation when he complained about 'official-dom'. Apparently his parents liked the name Otto a lot but none of his older siblings did ... so his parents went off and registered his birth while the kids were in school. In their rush to get it done, they did not give him a middle name -- all his other siblings had them. He used his mother's maiden name (Pennington) if anyone pressed him.)

Your grandmother's names? (paternal) Edna Mae Pennington; (maternal) Gaye Nell Hatfield.

Your grandfather's names? (paternal) Vollie Patrick Hampton; (maternal) Richard LeRoy Moles.

What did you call them? Hmm. I think I called my grandmothers both Gran'Maw or Mamaw. My grandfathers were Gran'Paw or Papaw.

2. Do you have brother's and sisters? Oh, heavens, yes! I am the oldest of five children. Linda Jane (me), Doris Elaine, Jeffrey Darrell, Alan Patrick and Kevin Otto.

How old were you when they were born? I remember each and every one of them coming home from the hospital very clearly, even my sister (I was only 17 months old!). What I have no memory of any kind is of my mother being pregnant. :) Let's see, I was 17 months when my sister was born, three for Jeff, six for Alan and exactly eight years old for my brother Kevin who was born on my birthday. :)

3. What about your aunts and uncles? Both my parents are from very large families. MY Dad was fourth born (had two older brothers and a sister and two younger brothers and a sister; two of his siblings died when he was little -- the next older sister died of Scarlet Fever and the next younger brother died of Typhoid). My Mom is oldest of seven (if I can count high enough on my fingers at this moment:).

Did they play an important part in your growing up? We visited both sets of grandparents fairly often during my childhood. My mother's youngest siblings were only a little older than me (my youngest uncle is 18 months older than me) so they were playmates during my childhood. My dad's younger siblings were older and were away at school.

My paternal grandmother LOVED children and we used to spend a month or two each summer with them on the farm in Virginia (the backroads of Wise County, near The Pound). Best times of my childhood! My maternal grandmother was still raising her brood so our visits tended to be shorter. They, too, lived in the mountains , in Kentucky (Mom is from Betsy Layne, Pike County, KY, near the Big Sandy River).

Did your family get together much casualy or did you have to travel to spend time together?  We went to one  grandparent's or the other at nearly every holiday. I have many happy Thanksgiving dinner memories ... and Christmas ... and Easter. :)

Happy Solstice!

  One of my most favorite memories from childhood is of chasing fireflies in the summer twilight. Last night, on my way home from the store at about 9:30 p.m., I saw the first firefly of this summer. It was rising up out of the grass in the median strip along Broken Lands Parkway in Columbia (near my home).      

Since I grew up the south, we called the little twinkles 'Lightnin' Bugs', not fireflies. We'd run around in our big yard in the sometimes- dewey grass trying to catch as many little lights as we could stuff into a glass jar (sometimes a mason jar but more often a cleaned-out mayonaise or ketsup container). We paid little mind to the death and destruction we were dealing out right and left. <grin> We were only interested in the magic of the little lights and in holding some of that for ourselves.  I guess it was a valuable life lesson to see the dead bugs in morning light and know the results of our actions. <sigh>

My husband and I decided to buy him a new computer for Father's Day so he and Hugh went out to the Apple Store in Columbia Mall last night to get it (while I was still at the store with a private student:). In the process of moving his files and installing the new computer, he completely blew away our wireless network at home and has not rebuilt it. So, I am posting this  from my work computer. :P Not sure how long this email-blog-and-connection outage will last. I _can_ tell you that I"m glad it wasn't _ME_ that messed things up. <grin>

The painting above is one of my favorites but I still can't seem to find out who/when/how it was made. Do you know?

Whose Mess Is This?

I cannot tell a lie <snort, choke>, it is mine! :) This is my corner of the small classroom in the store where I am busily sewing. Have to finish making those eleven Pisces blocks (Mariner's Compasses). For a rare change I am reasonably well organized and working in 'production' mode -- chain piecing, pre-cutting fabric for foundation spaces, etc. Unusual for me to be so orderly, but the need to get these blocks completed in a timely way makes order a necessary time investment. :)

I am liking how our block is coming out ... I was surprised to see that only three of the shops chose to include the color brown in their blocks. I _thought_ we had agreed on 'brown and blue' as our color palette. Clearly brown is no more popular with shop owners than with other quilt makers. <grin; I _like_ brown but I have noticed myself in the minority on that point before>

 These are the various shops' blocks (mine is represented by the small white paper circle; I was the _only_ shop not to get our blocks finished <sigh>).

My CPAP machine's face mask self-destructed Friday evening so I have spent the past two nights sleeping upright in a chair or on the sofa. :P I'm not a zombie-reeling-with-fatigue-poisons (yet!) so I'm guessing that the sleep has been at least minimally restful. It took me about fifteen phone calls and a LOT of aggravation to finally get a new mask ordered (had been trying all week to order a new one and getting total run around from the insurance company and their 'allied providers'). Of course, I don't know when the new mask will actually arrive (the 'durable goods pharmacy' folks said they'd talk to my doctor and get the necessary paper work and then send the mask via UPS).

IF you don't think we need health service reform, you haven't heard me rant -- we live a very comfortable middle class life in my household. If _we_ have issues with getting the coverage we pay for actually delivered, how much worse must it be for folks with little or no coverage? :P  :P

I am hoping/planning to get the blocks finished by Tuesday -- and then mailed off to the other shops. After that is done, I get to make a pincushion for my giftee in the summer swap ... and then try to finish my daughter's quilt so I can take it to her in August (we will meet up at GenCon in Indianapolis:). I have a number of other things in the 'pipeline' to be finished, too -- my Mom's quilt, one for each of my three brothers...and then some for us at my house. :)

Strange but Busy

I felt like one of the birds standing on top of this silo all day -- not 'together' enough to take flight and not on even footing. :P Scattered barely begins to cover it!

I spent three hours this morning with one of the independent fabric reps we see (Jim Y.) looking at new fabrics from a lot of companies, some of which were completely new to me. One thing we did was climb onto the Westminster bandwagon and order 28 bolts of Westminster Fabrics designed mostly by Kaffe Fassett but a couple by Brandon Mabley and Phillip Jacobs, too. Think bright, clear colors and BUSY patterns that blend together into a glorious cacaphony of riotous color. :) We have a small clientele that loves the stuff and I'm hoping we can infect others with their enthusiasm. :)

I answered the telephone more times than I care to think about today (there are days when I positively _despise_ Alexander Graham Bell!!). 

I managed to print out some of the photos I took of my Mom's nursing school friends and bundled them up to send to her (and mailed them off on my way home tonight, for a miracle!). 

Did spend three hours chained to my sewing machine piecing compass arcs -- next year I am for sure going to hire someone to make my Quest blocks! It is painful drudgery for me to make twelve of the exact same thing. <gag>

I went out and got my hair cut (it is going to get HOT this weekend, to add to the increasing humidity as it continues to RAIN). Sara, the young woman (I almost said 'girl' -- she's younger than either of my offspring:) who cuts my hair had fun with the styling part. I am going white at the temples and she artfully  arranged my left temple in a big swirl to emphasize the white streak. <grin> I need to take a photo before I go to bed 'cause my hair will not look this way again until my next cut. My idea of styling is to wash it and toss it dry. LOL

All my photos from the trip to OH are on my computer at the store so I can't share more of those tonight. <sigh> Maybe tomorrow? I have to drive down to Gaithersburg (1.5 - 2 hours each way) for a shop owners meeting tomorrow a.m. The only good part about the trip (besides seeing my colleagues) is getting to visit Capital Quilts (where we meet) -- very nice quilt shop. :)

(Don't Faint!) I WON! :)

 I cannot believe it! I actually won something during the May Give Away online! :) This was waiting for me at home in my mail pile from last week. From C&T Publishing (one of my most favorite book companies!), I won this great big book full of beautiful gift boxes. As it happens, I had four small gifts to package today (a tiny bit late -- these are gifts for four of my staff members, souvenirs of my trip to Ohio/Ky) ... so I opened up this book and got busy.

Now, I do have some latent engineering talent, but I'm pretty much an all-thumbs type of crafter -- no matter what the medium is, I'm guaranteed to get it all over my body before I finish making something (painted nailbeds, glue in the hair, that kind of thing:). The instructions was a bit short for my style of making, but it wasn't hard to figure out what to do just by looking at these goodies.

Looking at the pages was GLORIOUS, by the way -- the art work is beautiful. All the boxes, tags, sliders, pouches and such are printed on both sides and very easy to punch out. Lovely, lovely bits all around the margins of the big pieces for decorating, too. Even klutzy-me could do this and come out with a stylish gift container! :)

Here are the four I did make -- these containers are intended for _small_ gifts, so the book only had three of a size to hold the goodies I was wrapping. I had to settle for decorating the fourth one with punch-outs. :)

I won't reveal what I was wrapping until tomorrow 'cause I know some of my staff read this blog. :) Hopefully they will appreciate the gifts. :)

Longer Than It Seemed

I have been away to Ohio and Kentucky. The photo of a huge cloud bank shining in the sunlight was taken on my way home -- I've been away to neverland, it seems like, and am just re-emerging into reality. :)

I went to a lot of places and did many things in the short time I was gone (I came two days earlier than planned because of the pressures of unfinished business at my store). I will try to parse out the various adventures over several posts so as not to weary the reader (or my fingers:).

I have decided to adopt a new hobby -- Quilt Barn Watching. Much like bird watchers, I hope to record my finds photographically and increase my life-count on every trip. :) I have seen about a dozen barns decorated with quilt designs over the past three or four years in my travels across the midwest of the U.S. and I hope to see/photograph those again 'for the record'. :) I have to remember how to build a photo album for my side bar here on the blog to keep my 'sightings' together. <grin>

If you are interested in Quilt Barns and sighting some on your travels, just Google 'quilt barns' and you will find an enormous number scattered across western PA, Md, OH, KY, TN, IN, IL, MI and WI (probably other states too --- oh, IA -- and spreading:). Since I grew up a country girl, I find this affirmation of rural roots delightful and arresting. There are no really good maps or guides for viewing or finding the barns, you do have to be an intrepid searcher from what I can tell. There are a couple of blogs about the barns which I hope to find again and link to eventually. :)

Here are some that I saw on this trip:

In and around Berea, KY:

  Downtown Berea, sidewalk cafe

  On the side of a retrofitted barn that is now a shop in the train station artist district of Berea

  On the front of a shop that sells artist-made goods on consignment (there is an excellent lamp-worked bead shop to the left in the building, too)

In Ohio:

This is the Dairy Barn in Athens, Ohio, home of the Quilt National and Bead National exhibits. The block is specific to the Dairy Barn.

On Hwy 32/50, east of Jackson. I do not know the name of this quilt block. I have to share a funny story about this photo. The barn sits on a hillside on the south side of the highway. When I spotted it, I pulled over to the verge to take a photograph. As I was rummaging in my purse for my camera, suddenly a white car pulled up on the _grass_ side of my car, scaring me thoroughly! It was a State Police man, stopping to see if I needed help. He was very sweet (but looked surprised and dubious when I told him I was stopping to look at a barn:). I guess I looked ok 'cause he went on his way and left me to my admiring. :)

Here are three that I saw but did not personally photograph (sighting is enough for me, especially when I am driving alone in a strange place that I cannot pull over:) -- luckily there are photos on the Web. All of these are in Madison County, KY:

I only saw the red/white star on this barn -- the yellow/blue one was obviously on the hidden side from my viewpoint. :)

I have long been an admirer of barn architecture (yes, there are LOTS of different kinds of barns). I"m sure a serious student could identify the cultural origin of these barns and maybe the rough time that they might have been built? :)

To finish this post, here are some of the beautiful flowers I managed to photo -- the wildflowers were blooming everywhere I went and the world was lush and green (it rained every day I was gone!).

Sunday Sewing Summary

 I managed to finish sewing up the circle section of the Pisces Mariner's Compass block today. I quite like how the colors turned out! I photo'd it hanging on our gray flannel photography/class wall at the store.

I am leaving on a trip for a week tomorrow a.m. (going to see my Mom in Ohio and the two of us are going to KY to see her college friends for annual reunion). While I'm gone I'll be sketching quilt plans to use this block and the other eleven (made by the other shops in the Quest). (hmmmm)

On the way out of town I"ll be mailing my Spring Blossom Swap Mini quilt to the recipient. Hope she likes it (fingers crossed!).:)

I am having serious avoidance behavior problems -- cannot focus or get things done that are necessary, keep getting distracted with tangential items and ideas. :P Wish me luck on this trip!!

A Day Full of Pleasant Surprises

I think this is a Lesser Blue Heron -- he was a complete surprise. We stopped for supper at a place which had the culvert you see in this photo running between it and the highway. It has been raining for days here, quite heavily at times, and the culvert and drainspout was overflowing. I stopped to take a picture of the overflow (small waterfall) and got this beautiful bird instead. He/she just walked into my view finder as I started to click. Went striding slowly down the culvert looking carefully for fish (don't think there were any there to catch). What a beauty and what serendipity. :)

Patty, Barbara and I went down to Chantilly, Virginia (B drove) to see the Quilters Unlimited annual show (this is the state guild of VA). Lots of great vendors. Lots of great quilts. Happy smiles and tired, tired bodies all around. ;)

I want to share some of the things I saw today .. but don't want to offend copyrights ... so ... in the same spirit that you can show a human in parts that do not allow the person to be identified, I'm sharing the quilts in parts that are abstracted from the whole. :)

    

  

   

    

These are just a few of the lovely things I saw on exhibit at the show! :) I also found a new vendor, for me -- Artistic Artifacts in Alexandria, VA. Definitely looks like a shop I'd like to support. :)