 Today the weather is warm and sunny but it's also very windy. My planned day of kayaking is probably going to be replaced with a lovely day of sewing. We expect rain tomorrow so I'll go into Bar Harbor with the boys again and shop while they enjoy some pub food. I could go with them to the pub but since I can't eat anything served in a restaurant and can't have beer, I'd rather walk around and do some shopping. But today will be sewing because I'm hiked out for a couple of days. We did two pretty strenuous (and fun) hikes Sunday and Monday so my feet have called for a break.  I've got a lot of vacation photos today so I'll start with the one crafty photo with the progress of my quilt. I've got 3 block sets of the outer section of the quilt center done. I've roughly laid out some of the parts here so you can get an idea of how it will all go together. I'm still loving it. Now on to the two hiking days.  Being the list maker and tracker that I am, I bought this map the first year we came to Acadia and started marking our hikes with an orange Sharpie. I also have a list by year in Google Keep. We are at the point where we are started to double some trails and I'm marking those in red. I'm happy to do all of the trails multiple times. But Ian has been a bit obsessed with doing new trails and we've added miles of orange to the map.  Since we have 2 cars here this year, he planned a 4.5 mile one-way trip for Sunday to knock out the A Murray Young Path and Gorge Trail. We dropped one car at the pink parking area and then all rode to the yellow parking area to start our trip on the Canon Brook Road.  What a beautiful trail! We learned later that this trail was laid out about 100 years ago and funded by the widow of A Murray Young because of his love for the park. Can you imagine what an effort it took to lay out miles of trails with granite blocks? A lot of the trail looked like this. One thing is for sure, once you lay out a granite trail you don't ever have to do much trail maintenance!  Some of it was quite steep. I always hike in the rear because I'm slower and I occasionally like to stop and look around. They keep an eye out and periodically stop to let me catch up. This photo was on the Gorge trail on the way down. When necessary, I am not ashamed to slide down a granite face on my butt and I swear by the durability of my REI hiking pants that are at least 6 years old with no rips.  At the top of Dorr mountain a kind hiker offered to take a group photo. That's Ian next to me, then Chris and Dave. Dave is an old college friend of Chris' so the stories have been non-stop. The views from Dorr are incredible as you can see behind us. The peak is at an elevation of 1270'.  The only mountain higher in this section of the island is Cadillac. This is the one that people flock to to watch the sunrise because it's where the sun rises first in the US. You have to make reservations to drive up Cadillac but plenty of people get up at 3 or 4 AM to hike up there in the dark. Not me. I won't even get up that early to drive there. I value my sleep way too much. But in this photo you are seeing the North Ridge of Cadillac and we hiked that on my 60th birthday 2 years ago. I had to work really hard to get in shape for that adventure.  This is the South Ridge of Cadillac and we did that one last year. It's a lot longer because it's not as steep. It's also mostly bare granite and south facing so it can get really hot. We started very early so it wasn't so bad but I remember passing people as we went down about 11 am and the up hikers were panting.  Yesterday was a spectacularly beautiful day and I wanted to do a 3-mileish "easier" hike just to get some exercise. After much discussion, Ian and I agreed on the Norumbega loop. We have done this before but it's been a few years and we didn't remember it. It only goes up to 852 feet so how hard could it be? Well, the first section (green arrow) is called the Goat Trail. That's a clue!  I actually love steep climbs and rock scrambles but you do get a work out. This was one of the easier sections of the climb where I could take a second to get a photo. We got our cardio in on this hike.  This hike turned out to be a really good one. It doesn't offer much for views but it has every possible trail type from ankle-breaker small rocks to grainge slabs to pine needles.  This is the root ball of a tree that had fallen over. That tree was just growing over the granite slab. Not a very stable base for tree roots.  At the base of the mountain we were treated to the Lower Haddock Pond. It's the water reservoir for the local town so no fishing or swimming is allowed. Only fish pee in this pond.  In my opinion, the .9 mile walk back to the car on the Norumbega Connector is the hardest part of the trail. It's flat but it all roots. You have to watch every step.
It was a fun trail that was maybe a little more effort than we expected so today we will enjoy a relaxing day of sewing and reading with our last lobster dinner of the trip. We don't leave until Friday but Dave leaves today and we want to have the last lobster dinner with him. Chris and Ian are actually kind of tired of lobster. I could eat it every night but I will savor it tonight. The loons are calling so it's time to go relax. I'll have my book review post tomorrow and that might be the last post until I'm home this weekend. It's been a few days but since we have a stay-at-home rainy day today I thought I'd take some time to catch up. Weather-wise, this has been one of our more "interesting' vacations to Maine. We seem to have a rotation of bright-sunny, cloudy-but-still-outdoor, rain-indoor days. Today is the rain day, yesterday was absolutely perfect and Wednesday was cloudy but still nice for a long hike. Today I'm going to start with the update on my projects because I know most of you don't care about my vacation photos.  On the crochet front I have mostly been working on the two blankets and only in the evenings after the Cribbage match is over. I'm at a point on the jacket where I need to be able to concentrate on the pattern instructions and that's not good to do when friends are around to talk with. I can do these blankets without any thought at all and I alternate between them. This is my brother's (Tim) blanket and it's over half done at this point. I'm on skein 5 of 7. He'll definitely have this by the time cool weather hits Virginia.  This is a donation wheelchair blanket and it's moving along at a good pace too. I'm not quite halfway through this one. It's going to be a very nice, soft and warm blanket.  Today I'm working on cutting out the next set of fabrics for the Judy Niemeyer Tequila Lime quilt. I'm calling it Red Sunset after the gradient that I'm using to make it. It took me an afternoon to get the papers sorted, cut out and the colors planned. Today is all cutting. These pieces will finish the main section of the quilt and then I have a whole other set of papers for a border to bring this quilt to queen size. I am still really enjoying working on it.  I thought I'd take a minute to answer a great question from Kristen. She asked if I wouldn't have the same quilting challenges that I had with the Summer Sunset quilt. If you remember, I had planned a lot of custom quilting on that quilt but there was so much bulk in the seams that it was really impossible to do that. It was that quilt that made me realize the genius of Judy Niemeyer designs. JN specifically designs her quilts so that points do not meet at major seams. See the green circled areas? You can see that none of the points meet at a major seam line. The yellow arrow shows an area where points should meet but they are purposely designed not to meet together. Visually, you can't tell but for quilting it's wonderful. Even the diamond at the end of the sawtooth border (white circle) has a flat bottom so that there aren't 5 pieces joining at one point. The curved petals in the center also meet off kilter (orange circle) to reduce the bulk. It's really genius and I'm sure that other designers use this method now too. Now on to vacation.  After my last post on Tuesday, we headed into Bar Harbor. The boys were headed to a local brewery restaurant and I, as the designated driver, was planning to walk around town and do some shopping. Well, I walked down to the harbor front and noticed people off in the distance walking on the "bar". It's never been low tide when I was down there so I immediately changed plans and headed that way. Bar Harbor gets its name from Bar Island and the land bridge that joins it to the town when the tide is low. This is the view from bar Island back to Bar Harbor. From this vantage the town looks kind of desolate but it's not. It's very busy and touristy and I'll try to get some photos the next time we go into town when I will actually do the shopping that I had planned. There's even a nice yarn shop there.  Because it rained Tuesday I put the brakes on any climbing hikes for Wednesday. You'll see why in just a minute. So we took a beautiful 5 mile hike along the Jordan Stream Path. We had low expectations and just did it to have a long walk. We were very pleasantly surprised by a beautiful hike and some great scenery along the path. You've got to love a place that can have granite stepping stones!  Most of the property on this hike is outside Acadia on the Land and Garden Preserve. We could hear people with chainsaws doing trail maintenance and we were gifted with this treasure on the trail. The tree had died and one of the workers created this chainsaw sculpture for the hikers to find. We actually met the guy about a half mile down the trail where they were building a new bridge over the stream. The Preserve is an absolute treasure thanks to the generosity of David Rockefeller.  My favorite sight on the walk was the Cobble Bridge that, I think, was built in 1917. It's stunning and one of the carriage trails for walking, horseback riding and cycling goes over the bridge. The whole walk reminded us of The Hobbit and it made for a great day.  Yesterday we were ready for a challenging hike and we really picked a good one! We started at Jordan Pond, one of the more popular places in the park. You really have to be there before 9 ( or after 2) to have a hope of getting a parking space. We try to get to our hikes between 7:30 and 8:30 to avoid the crowds and to get the best parking. We were too late to park at the Bubbles for the path that we really wanted to take but Plan B was perfectly fine. We hiked up Spring Trail to Penobscot Mountain. Spring Trail is very steep for the first half and I had to turn on my inner monkey to climb with all of my limbs. The trail up most of the mountain isn't too steep, probably more mountain goat pace over bald granite. The payoff is 360 degrees of spectacular views. This is just one view looking over Little Long Pond. It was on the right side of that pond where we hiked the day before. That's the ocean beyond.  After Penobscot we hiked down the mountain a little and then back up to hit a second peak at Sargent Mountain. It's the second highest peak at 1373'. More amazing views awaited us there. I think that Sargent Mountain is a much more fun hike than Cadillac, the highest and more popular destination. The yellow arrow points to an approximate location of our base camp. Hiking down Sargent proved to be even more challenging because there were several areas with some streams running over the path. If it's mud that's not much of a problem but water on granite is a bit slippery. I slithered down bits of this path! I can attest that REI makes the strongest and most durable hiking pants ever.  Yesterday was the day I discovered that the tread on my boots is a little worn! I slipped 3 times and got this nice bruise on my wrist. I thought I was going to be able to ride this for a lot of pity points for a few days but no deal. It's pretty much cleared up today. It never did hurt, but it looked impressive for a few hours!
Weather forecasting here is hilariously wrong every day. It's a Maine feature. Today was supposed to be overcast with low wind. It was going to be a good day for kayaking. Instead we've had fog, rain and wind and it's turned into a quite nice sewing and reading day. One of our friends left yesterday and we have another arriving tomorrow so Chris, Ian and I have a couple of quiet evenings. Things will be much more energetic tomorrow after Dave arrives. Ian is already planning our hike for tomorrow. No steep climbs after all of today's rain. Just a good long walk.  Sunday and Monday were absolutely beautiful here. Chris and Win wen fishing Sunday so Ian and I tackled Saint Sauveur and Acadia Mountains. Both of these are relative short at about 680 feet but the hikes are quite steep. We attempted this the first year we came but cut our hike short after the scramble on Acadia. This time I was able to do both. The views are incredible on both of these hikes and we discovered that going counter-clockwise was better than going clockwise. This photo is from the top of Acadia looking over Somes Sound and the ocean beyond.  Today (Wednesday) is quite misty and overcast. It rained pretty heavy last night so there will be no hiking. We are hoping for some kayaking time this afternoon/evening but we are headed into Bar Harbor for lunch. Actually I'm leaving the boys at a pub and will walk around the shops for a while.  On previous trips we have noticed a lot of hummingbirds around so this year we brought along a feeder. We've been very entertained by the bird fights over the feeder. Eventually they get tired enough that they will all come in to feed together.  I can watch the lake and the feeder while I'm sewing and listening to my book. This morning I got the sawtooth spikes added to the center of my star. Next up is more color planning and cutting the next sections to sew. So far I'm loving the quilt and really enjoying sewing it.
The star doesn't get sewn together until the very end so these will be put away until all of the blocks are done. Onward to the next section! We packed up and transferred ourselves to Mount Desert Island yesterday and the weather is absolutely perfect so far!  We had time to kill before we could check in so we headed to Schoodic Point, one of our favorite places. It's beautiful out on this wide expanse of granite and basalt. We ate lunch here and a very large gull adeptly stole part of my lunch right from my hand.  It was low tide while we were there so the waves crashing on the rocks wasn't as grand as we've seen at high tide but it was still a fun afternoon. We got to the house and unpacked and had dinner and we only had energy to continue my and Ian's cribbage challenge. So far I am up 5 - 2 but I don't expect that to last. We are 1 - 1 in the backgammon challenge.  This morning we decided to do a warm up hike to Elliot Mountain and Asticou Gardens. It's a very easy trail and it's very well maintained. It's not every day that you see granite retaining walls for a hiking trail!  Elliot Mountain doesn't have a view to speak of but coming down the trail you get a good view of Northeast Harbor. I'm pretty sure these same 2 big yachts were here last year.  You gardeners would absolutely love Asticou Gardens. This is just a very small bit of it.  After breakfast I started getting the sewing center set up. This afternoon another of Chris' friends arrives so, with the 3 boys occupied, I will have some time to myself this week. I have a great view from this little corner.  On the other side of the room there's another drop leaf table that's perfect for the cutting station.  While in Greenville I finished the center blocks for my quilt and I am over-the-moon happy so far.  We had a day and a half of rain so I made good progress and have gotten part of the sawtooth border done too. That's what I'll be working on here this afternoon.
I didn't take update photos of the crochet project because I was mostly sewing this week. I'll bring out the crochet projects over the next couple of days. This afternoon will be devoted to floating in the lake and make a little kayaking this evening. Hey everybody! Long time, no see. We are into week 2 of our vacation and it’s been “restful” to say the least. On the way up I started getting sick. By the time we got to the stay-over hotel on the 2-day drive, I had a full-blown coughing cold. Not covid, we tested twice. Just an old fashioned horrible cold. I haven’t had one of these in about 10 years. It’s been a long time since I’ve coughed this much and this hard. It was Olympic level coughing. Fortunately, for me, it pretty much rained the first 4 days here. Chris was able to get out for a long walk on the first full day (last Saturday) and that was it. We were rained in until Thursday. For me, it was fine. All I wanted to do was sleep anyway and I had a pretty view. Chris got the cold by Tuesday. Then our friend came in from England Thursday. Fortunately, I was well on the mend by then and I took the disinfectant wipes to every surface in the house and car before picking him up and so far, he’s good. He has his own bathroom in this house and we have been using lots of separation and care to keep him germ free. Chris is feeling much better and I’m almost 100%.  View from Mount Kineo Yesterday I was up for a 3.5-mile easy hike in Lily Bay State Park, a lovely little state park. Today Ian and I tackled Mount Kineo. It’s 3.4 miles and the first half is very steep up the edge of the mountain. The exertion was good for clearing out the remnants of the cold. When we got back, we found that Chris had taken a long walk himself so I believe that we are now ready to get back into full vacation mode. We did get to have our first (of many) lobster dinners last night and it was wonderful and such a treat!  I think we have a couple of days of hiking left and then we expect more rain Thursday. You can see from the car that we are 8 miles on dirt roads to get to our cabin! We aren’t disappointed or mad about the weather or our colds. This is the roulette that you play every day of life. We’ve enjoyed having some beautiful scenery to help with our recovery and we both have weathered the colds well. This is just life and I tried to make the most of it with my stash of crochet projects.  For most of the time I’ve only had energy for crochet and have worked on 3 projects in rotation. I’ve made really good progress on all of them. This is Tim’s blanket and it’s almost half done. I’m glad I bought a lot of colorways of this yarn because I don’t think I’ll get tired of making these blankets. I think they are beautiful and the yarn makes a very soft and squishy blanket.  This is the progress on my cardigan. I’m loving this too! I’m really pleased with my second garment. I think it’s going to fit fine but won’t know for sure until it’s finished but I think it’s pretty no matter who it fits. The pattern is written so well. I'm delighted. I'll share the pattern details in a later post.  Since I finished the baby blanket at home, I brought along yarn to start a wheelchair blanket and this is it. Chris says it’s a Civil War blanket but if my niece happens to see it she will think it’s a Longwood College blanket. I’ll post the pattern link when it’s done but I can tell you that it’s a pattern from Christa at The Secret Yarnery on Youtube and is one of her baby blanket patterns. I like it a lot and her tutorials are excellent. She’s coming out with a new one tomorrow that I will want to start when I get home.  A couple of days ago I finally felt good enough to get out the Judy Neimeyer pattern and start my quilt. These patterns take a lot of brain power to do the planning and set up. I do think that her patterns are the best written patterns around and they are priced appropriately considering the complexity of design, cost of printing the foundation sheets and the thoroughness of the instructions. Here’s where I am on piecing the blocks to make the center of the quilt. Progress will move along a little faster now that I’ve gotten started.
I’m not sure if I’ll post again before we get to Acadia this weekend. We have to drive into town to the local library for wifi access. I’m definitely not reading blogs until this weekend and then I’ll catch up. |
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I'm Vicki Welsh and I've been making things as long as I can remember. I used to be a garment maker but transitioned to quilts about 20 years ago. Currently I'm into fabric dyeing, quilting, Zentangle, fabric postcards, fused glass and mosaic. I document my adventures here. Categories
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