The rain finally stopped and yesterday we were able to get outside. It was overcast and really windy but we walked the neighborhood road down to the Wilson Pond dam and then, in the afternoon, we walked a neighborhood trail. Laura's watch says we walked nearly 20,000 steps. In between those 2 walks I sat and worked on the baby blanket. I finished the orange section and started another dark blue section. I know it looks green but it's really a dark marine blue. Laura started sewing a veterans quilt kit that I cut for her. I also lost to Ian at scrabble and cribbage. Even though I lost at scrabble I was really proud of the highest scoring word: piques for 44 points. As you can see, we could not get out on the kayaks yesterday. This photo was taken near dinner time when the sun finally peeked out for a few minutes. We hope to get out on the water today after a morning hike. Chris was supposed to go on a guided river fishing trip but the water is too high from all the rain. He hopes to reschedule for next week.
Even though the weather isn't perfect, we are having a lovely time. We had nothing but rain yesterday so we didn't get to hike or kayak. Instead it was a good vacation day of reading and sewing and playing a little cribbage. I got 11 of 256 blocks done for my quilt. I think I'm going to like this quilt a lot. These blocks are made with all squares so that means that there's quite a bit of waste when you cut off the corners. Since I had to draw the center stitching like I figured I might as well draw another stitching line 1/2"away. I stitch both lines and now I'm getting a nice stack of these little HST blocks. Can't you see some placemats out of these? Each square is 1 3/4 inches so they will finish at 1 1/4. I know, I'm insane. Two years ago we started a tradition of bringing a hummingbird feeder with us on vacation. It's taken 3 days, but we had our first visitor today! She hung out all day and enjoyed the free food in the bad weather.
Today we expect rain and clouds again but we should be able to get out for a walk. Otherwise it's more reading and sewing or crochet. I'm fine with a day doing some of the things I love the most. When we are on vacation with our friends, Ian and I always have a cribbage competition. We play best 2 out of 3 each night and keep track of how many wins we have. After the first night it's Ian 1, Vicki 0. I'll get to yesterday's weather and activities in a minute but I thought I'd start with an update on my crochet projects. I brought 3 things to work on and the first is the baby blanket for my nephew and his wife. She picked the pattern and the colors and I love how it's coming together. I purchased way too much of this yarn so there might be a second blanket in a different pattern. If she doesn't want a second blanket it can always be donated. The second project is my purple hexagon sweater. I'm finally making real progress on this one. It won't be long before I can sew sleeve seam and add the cuffs. Lastly I brought my hat bag. I've been wanting to try a side to side hat pattern and, so far, I really like it. I made the first green one and was happy enough with it that I decided to use the rest of the green yarn and make another, larger, one. The first one is kid size. Both of these will be donated and were just practice for the 2 hats I want to make out of the loud lime/navy yarn. Those hats will be for my SIL's grandchildren. The hats are their school colors. I have other hat yarns just in case I run out of things to crochet.....but that's not likely! I did start some sewing but I forgot to take photos. Today it's going to be rainy so there will be lots of sewing. Forget about today's rain because yesterday morning was spectacular! We went out for some paddling for a couple of hours and got back about an hour before the clouds rolled in. Here's a picture of our cabin from the water. It's our third year staying here and we just love it.
In the afternoon we drove to Bangor to pick up our friends. They flew into Boston and rented a car to the Bangor airport. It was a short 2 hour drive through beautiful countryside to pick them up. Today, as I said earlier, is a rain day. So the exercise will be inside and using my normal daily app and then I'll head into town to see about getting my wheels realigned and, maybe, check out the local quilt shop and show Laura around. I expect that Chris and Ian might eventually end up at the local pub. Otherwise it's reading and sewing day and I can't complain about that! We left Virginia Thursday for the 2-day drive to Maine. We stopped over in Fishkill, NY the first night. We both drove because we need 2 cars here for the month. Last year I did that drive really sick and, honestly, I don't know how I did it. I must have just have wanted to prove that I could make it because, perfectly healthy, it's fatiguing. I had a good book (Homecoming by Kate Morton) so that helped a lot. I have a few observations about the current state of Interstate driving. - I81 is the primary trucker route in the East. It's all trucks! At one point, in Maryland or Pennsylvania, the truck right next to me blew a tire. That's never happened to me before and it was LOUD! I'm grateful that no one was behind the truck. I saw a lot of debris flying but it didn't look like anyone was hurt. But the truckers aren't the problem. They are the good drivers on the road. - If you drive with the attitude that the roads belong to the truckers and they allow you to drive with them, your drive will be much more pleasant. Respect anything that can squash you like a bug. - It seemed that the people who ran up on me at high speed to pass were all getting off at the next exit. It was really weird and happened a lot and was quite dangerous at times. Once a car passed me only to pass a WalMart truck and immediate cut in front of it to get off at an exit. Crazy. - The solo motorcyclists are crazy and have a death wish. The only motorcyclists that didn't drive dangerously was one Harley group out for a ride on a beautiful day. All the others wanted to die. - Massachusetts roads are in the worst shape of all the states we drove through. - Maine tolls are crazy but you get what you pay for. I95 is pristine. - Always stock up on booze in New Hampshire. Their prices are 30 - 50% less than every other state. - My car needs a wheel realignment and I'm going to work on that this week For my posts from Maine I'm going to alway start with my project updates and I'll have a photo or 2 or 3 at the end from the vacation. I know you come here for hobby content and not my vacation log but I like to keep the vacation notes because I often look back over them to remember what we did and when we did it. I wanted to immediately get started cutting out the blue quilt blocks so that I could get the cutting out of the way before Laura gets here today. Last night I finished cutting all that I could and set up the sewing machine. I'm a little short on light fabrics. I need lights to finish off the block sets at the top of the screen. Those are the stacks on the table. The stacks on the cutting mat are all block sets are are read to sew. Many of my "lights" are mediums but I think it will all work. I'll see how far I get with the sewing. If I'm getting through all the blocks I'll go buy some light blue batiks to finish the cutting. I had a very pretty pile of tiny scraps and I did throw them out. I'll admit that I considered postcard possibilities. All of the rest of the leftover fabrics (only a few) and the larger scraps are sorted and packed away. I'm maybe feeling some scrappy placemats in here. I've been doing a little crochet too and I'll share that update tomorrow or Wednesday. Our friends come in today and we'll go pick them up in Bangor so I may not post tomorrow. Here's the view from our cabin over Lower Wilson Pond outside Greenville, Maine. This is our third year here and we love it. This year is the first year we've actually had internet at the cabin. Previously I had to go to the library to get access to post. The internet is a treat! We haven't done any hiking or kayaking yet. Saturday was rainy and windy. Yesterday was beautiful but quite windy. We tried to go on a hike but someone (me) had the great idea to take a logging road to get to the trail and that was a big failure. By the time we got turned around and back to the cabin we decided to just do the 4 mile neighborhood walk and then sit in the sun and read in the afternoon. The weather should be good for kayaking and floating today. This is our launch point. Sometimes it's an adventure to get in and out of the water, but it's worth it. We head to Bangor airport (2 hours away) this afternoon to pick up our friends. When we are in Acadia we can get lobster every day if we want (and can afford it) but here we can only get it once a week. This year I got smart and ordered last week so I could have my first lobster dinner Saturday night.
It was delicious, as expected! Our annual family beach vacation is, sadly, over. We had (almost) all of the family there with some of my best friends and got some great news. I'm going to be a Great Aunt of a little girl to be born in November. It will be Mom's first Great-Grandchild and everyone is beyond excited! What wasn't exciting was the weather. We had one beautiful beach day and one nice pool day. Otherwise it was gray and windy. I did get a daily walk on the beach for a free dermabrasion and a session of grounding. I also got to binge watch the last season of Mrs. Maisel, ate some fresh Mahi that Chris and James caught, read some books and played games. On the way home Saturday we got in a fun visit to the Outer Banks Aquarium before heading home to unpack and do laundry. Beach week is always a great kick off to the summer. I wasn't really in a maker mood last week. I was feeling more social. But I did get 3 chemo hats made. These could be "regular" hats but I use a super soft polyester yarn and, for that reason, donate them to specifically be chemo hats. Most of the yarn is Hobby Lobby yarn that I got on clearance for $1 a skein. I work with whatever colors I can get. I started a 4th hat in the Divine Hat pattern. I ran out of the pale color and thought I had more at home. I didn't, so I'm finishing it off with the darker color. I hope it will look OK. I know that, at least, it will feel good on a sensitive scalp. Yesterday, after Chris and I ran some errands and laundry was finished, I loaded 2 veterans quilts to get myself back in the groove.
This week I want to get the binding on the firefighter quilt and table runner and get started on the goldfinch quilt. Both need to be done before August 1. Depending on when you read this, there may still be time to enter all of the giveaways from last week. The winners will be announced Wednesday! Saturday I was totally focused on getting the quilt top done and I finished it right before lunch. My camera would do the magic reshaping thing this time. It kept wanting to crop to the inner black border. You'll have to just look at this skewed version. I don't know when I'll get around to quilting it. I need to dye a backing first but it will be done before August for sure. It will finish about 75 x 85. After lunch I went for a walk to the other side (sound side) of the island and found a lovely little park with a hiking trail. At one corner there was a pier that provided a beautiful view of the sound. You can even walk right off the pier into the water for a swim. On the way back I came across my first beach bunny..... After my walk I was about to pack up my sewing stuff but started thinking about what to do with the leftover bits. I really don't want to add these to my stash. Within an hour I had a table runner. I think there's just enough fabric left to make a hanging sleeve for the quilt. I have to go back to Hobby Lobby this week and get some more of the red fabric for binding for both projects. We packed up and headed home Sunday morning. I spotted this house on the way out. I bet some really nice people live here!
I have so much dyeing to do this week and will get to start a new crochet garment project. But the most important project is the bear that I'll be making from a vintage quilt. That has to be done by Thursday! The miracle isn't about finishing my quilt. The miracle is that I woke up early enough to see the sunrise! This NEVER happens. I'm not an early morning girl but yesterday something woke me and I'm glad it did. I spent most of my creative time yesterday working on the quilt and I made great progress. I only have 3 borders left to do and there's no reason I can't get them done today. There's a 2" black, 1" orange and 6" print. No block piecing required. I also learned that my new cell phone camera has a wonderful trick. I took this photo with the quilt on the floor and me standing above at an angle. The camera popped up a yellow rhomboid outlining the quilt so, just for fun, I clicked that to see what would happen. This happened! This little feature is going to save me a lot of editing time in the future! Today is our last day and my goal is to finish this quilt top and take a walk. Off and on, all week, I've been working on the baby quilt. It was all I had to work on last night and I'm close to the body of the blanket being done. Then I just have to do the border. FYI, this is an awful photo. The blanket is white. Here's a close up of the stitch pattern. Kim and I have also spent a lot of time looking for my next crochet garment project. I think I have it narrowed down to a couple of projects. I'll figure it out when I get home and can peruse the yarn options. The weather word for yesterday and today is WINDY which you can see from the surf. When I went for my walk I walked into the wind so that the walk back would be easier. I walked farther than I planned because I wanted to see the wind surfers that were way ahead of me. I haven't decided it I admire them or if I think they were crazy. Maybe both!
We're leaving tomorrow so I'll have a final update Monday. It's been a great week. We've both relaxed a lot and have had a great week finishing procrastination projects. I was so close to finishing the sweater that I just had to power through and get it done yesterday. I'm really happy with the way it turned out. It fits well and I know I will use it a lot next fall and winter. It's too late to use it now because this is a very warm sweater. Here are a few notes: Pattern is a YouTube tutorial from LaDria LaVey. The hexi cardi is very popular right now and there are dozens of version on YouTube and other sources but I thought hers was a little more stylish than some of the others. The yarn is Jeans from Lion Brand. It's a 4 weight acrylic and very soft. It's a little splitty and this dark mottled colorway is a little hard to see stitches. I tried a couple of other patterns with this yarn first but got frustrated trying to see stitches. A granny style cardi was a perfect solution. I used a J-6mm hook. I made a number of adjustments as I went along to alter for size and sleeve length. With this pattern, changes are easy to do on the fly. The front edge has bobbles and I used my trim stitches to draw the front edge up a little. Again, it was easy to adjust on the fly. Now I can go home this weekend and look through my little stash of garment yarn and pick something new to make. While here, I have the baby quilt to get back to. But that's not all! I also made some good progress on the firefighter quilt. The pinwheel borders are together. I need to do some measuring and make some coping borders so that these will fit. It was late enough last night when I finished these that I thought it was a little late to be doing math. This will be my project for today. But it wasn't all inside work. I didn't take as long a walk yesterday but we did get out for a walk on the beach once and went out other times just to feel the sand. It was warmer, about 70 but the wind has really kicked up. For exercise, it was yoga day. Today it's supposed to be about 72 with pretty high winds. I am planning for a long walk in between quilt sewing sessions.
It was a great day! Yesterday we had a high of 69 but not so much sun. It still made for a more pleasant walk. I headed east this time toward the pier. It was about an hour to the piece and back. There were lots of shore birds and gulls out today. I love watching the fast moving shore birds on the surf. I was a little surprised that my camera caught this one as well as it did because it was really booking. If this guy looks annoyed it's because he should be. There were 3 young women on the beach who thought it would be a good idea to offer one of the gulls a chip. Of course about 15 of them flew in, scared the women and they screamed and chased the gulls away. This one landed right in front of me without a snack. He was indignant. It was a great sewing and crochet day as well. I got all of the pinwheel blocks made so today I will cut the background pieces for the pinwheel border. After the pinwheels there will be a narrow black border and a narrow orange border before the last border of the fabric at the top. It's coming together nicely I think. The hexagon sweater is making great progress! I got the back seam done and wove in a couple dozen ends and I've started the bottom hem. I am going to really love this sweater and look forward to wearing it in the fall. I know I'm a little lates to wear it this season.
I would say that I'm confident that I can finish both of these before I leave Sunday but I don't want to jinx myself. So I'll just say that it's possible to finish both of these before Sunday. Depending on whether you are following Kim's weather app or mine, the high yesterday was either 59 or 63. It was a beautiful day and I got in a long walk to the West end of the island and from here I could see over to Hammocks Beach State Park, which, I think, is only accessible by kayak or boat. I probably looked ridiculous on the beach because I decided that a 2 hours walk was the perfect opportunity to test out my new hiking boots. But at the beach no one really cares. The boots performed great with no rubbed spots on my feet or ankles. I'll need a few more test runs before we go to Maine in August. Most everyone was bundled up pretty good on the beach but there was one family in shorts and swimsuits. I'd bet money that they were Canadians. I cheered them on. I thought I'd share a couple of photos of our set up here. This is the place where we are staying. On Emerald Isle, about half the houses are duplexes and ours is one. We are in the unit on the West side, closest to the camera. The couple on the other side is from Massachusetts. It's a very comfortable house with great natural light. Being West facing I expect that this unit is pretty hot in July and August. We picked this house because it had such a nice sewing table! Yesterday Kim finished the red jacket that you see hanging on the back of one of the chairs and she undid the ribbing and a few rows on her white sweater, to shorten it. The raveled yarn made a pretty wool waterfall. She helped me fit my hexagon sweater Monday so I finished off the body yesterday morning and will seam the back and start the ribbing today. It's very possible that I can finish this sweater before we leave. That would be really nice. I've decided that this is my before breakfast project. After breakfast I got back to the quilt and made the 4 corner pinwheels. Here you can see the firefighter themed fabric that will be the background for the pinwheel border. The 14 small pinwheels are cut out and I've start sewing them together. I should be able to finish those blocks today. On my walk yesterday I decided to "shop" for the house I would want and I picked this one. I love all the big windows and I can't imagine what it would cost. Certainly more than we could afford! But a girl can dream.
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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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April 2024
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