Took a little trip

Time for a selfe in denver

Up Grandad bluff

 It finally rained here in the GNW! Hallelujah! And boy did we need it!

 Everything is greening up from the crunchy yellow and brown sear we had all this summer, though I'm sure the new complaint will be,

 "It's so gloomy out!" at today's sit-and-sew!

So what have I been up to this month? Quite a bit.

Camping

We took an extended car trip to Colorado and Wisconsin, to visit my side of the family, which was lovely! 

We filled our days with lollygagging and dawdling, talking and visiting and tons of sight seeing!

DDH over lacrosse

On the way home we stopped at rushmore on our way to Crazy Horse, 

which is IMHO a better, more worthwhile use of your time and money.

Crazy Horse

And seeing the hard work that is being done by an all volunteer group of dedicated people is inspiring!

Rushmore is the wort kind of Tourist trap, the kind you feel ripped off by. 

The obligatory rushmore

Again, My own never to be humble opinion

Though we took a nice selfie together!

Resting at Bears ears

Bears ears was also a lovely stop.

We walked around the entire base and took in the sights and the people who came to climb, sight-see and heritage walk.

On the way home we drove through the hot, in some places it was 106*! No matter how high we put the air in the car at that point you could still feel the hot trying to seep in!

Erstwhile travelling companion

It was so hot the poor car skellies hairdoo got seared!

We were gone for 3 weeks of Relaxing and then needed to go right back out again,

Off to Canada this time, for my best friends daughters wedding, that trip too was lovely! 

On the road again

Until we were coming home, into the teeth of  all the  icky brown smoke from surrounding wildfires.

 They had been raging on for months and are very hard to put out when there is no rain to help.

So we are home again and I have quilting to do, I have 3 community service kiddy quilts, 2 commissions and soo many projects to finish

but more on that later.

RSC Orange and an update

Haven't been up to much lately

We took a vacation to visit family for the first time since the plague.

A cross country road trip from Washington to Colorado to LaCrosse and wandered slowly back, through S.Dakta and Montana looking at stuff we usually would have blown past going home.

Gotta say, I'm loving the Hyundai Ionic hybrid we bought back in January of '19. It handled hills, and 106* heat in South Dakota & Montana, like a champ! Paying $340 in gas for the entire round trip

doesn't suck either!

Home is always good to get back to.

Augusts RSC color was orange I got a lot done before we left 

I wasn't able to post them before we left 

After we got back there is the inevitable post-trip tidying that needs to be done

But here we are finally back to a semblance of normal before 

Family stuff takes over between now and October

I got nothing done for September so 

maybe I'll get a double helping done but later

I need to get some chores done first.

I found pictures of this poor old thing when it was new

I really need to make a new one! 

That said this one has had 12 years of hard use.

It's crossed the continent more than once and gone international as well so  

It may be lumpy and worn

and not the best construction but

Boy! Has it held up!

Ellie the phant

I'm working on a crazy quilted stuffie

I have seen several of the teddy bears in person and 

they are just the loveliest things!

So you know I want one.

But a teddy bear? 

I don't know.........

I got a pattern, but there are SO many parts!

Then I saw the perfect one in a quilt store in Hilo

YES!

but they had no patterns left.

PooH!

Then I found this!

                                          yAy!

and here we are so far.

Hawaii Shop-Hop Pineapple quilt for 2019

So you all have seen some of these pictures before

These are just some of the fun I brought back from our trip to Hawaii's big island in February

If you can go to Hawaii, I recommend going in February,

The hotels are not full of tourists,

The weather is cooler than the summer but still beats the hell out of snow

And the Big Island Shop-hop goes on for the entire month!

For anyone familiar with Western Washington's annual Shop-hop. ( june 21-29)
It's the shops way of thanking customers for their patronage.

You go around to all the shops,
         that are left, (Grumble, grumble, fuss, fuss)
gather a free pattern or a kit if you spend x$ and you have a fun project to do.



Here are all the patterns from the 5 shops around the Island

Row #1 red

Kiluea Kreations in volcano village

BTW each kit had up to 5 full fat quarters to work with so this could all have been done any which way with fabric to spare





Row #2 the yellows

Fabric and Quilting Delights in the Kona hills

And as you can see I did mess  bit with their color way

There was more orange in this row












Row #3 the greens

Top Stitch in Honoka'a

Row #4 the blues

Quilt Passions in down town Kona

 Row 5# the Purples

Kiluea Kreations in Hilo













Here's the flimsy all done with top and background










The top all quilted up pretty,

No binding yet, I'm thinking a dark green










Here's my close up Mr. DeMille!

The Vaca

 So We went to Kona on the Big Island in Hawaii for a couple of weeks again this year, Yayas! 

Kona Bay

  It's awesome to go in the first place,

Kona sunset

 made even more so by my wonderful husband, who spoils me rotten!

Banyan tree

This year we planned it around not only BI's shop-hop,

which goes for the full month of February, if any one is interested.

A lovely walk along Ali'i st

But for Quilt passions (QP) Quilting on the beach event, where they sponsor 20 or so classes for a week at the King Kamehameha hotel.



They have been doing them for about 10 years and If you can there is another quilting on the beach in june, I highly recommend going.

My filthy lucker from QP

 + the packet for quilting on the beach

The fabric Oh the fabric! Every shop has some of the most wonderful balli prints I have ever seen in every color imaginable!







I went a little nutz,

to be fair I had encouragement!





Hubs was egging me on, go ahead we can mail it all home!

RxR in progress for 2015 picked up at QP

whee!

The first pattern that I finished was th shop-hop row by row from 2015 QP has a back log of them for the years between.
Not that I'm trying to tempt you or anything!

Shop-Hop pattern for the 5 BI shops!

when it all arrived at home the first pattern I started was the whale Row by row

Whales

More patterns from other shops

So much fun and so quick!

the whales came in the package already to iron on

so as soon as you sewed up the background you slapped them on and voila!


Then there was the finishing of my own shops Row by row

Pineapple pattern #1

and the completion of the first shop-hop kit.

as it's the corner 

there are only 3 parts to it

this one went together quickly also

all my row x rows compleate

I can see Ima be busy for the foreseeable future!




There are also the charity quilts I didn't finish before we left

Husband who spoils me rotten!

and all the life stuff you need do when you get home.

Vaca may be over but I have a lot of lovely reminders to keep me going back as I sew!

A tale of woe

Juncos drinking from runoff

From a balmy 65* Hawaiian night to slippy snowing streets at 28*, nahugngh.
Off the plane, I was wearing what I left home in, socks, ballet shoes, clam digger jeans, a tank, a t-shirt, 2 sweaters and a scarf, mind when we left, it was 55* and raining.
You know normal Seattle weather.

What we came home to

Seatac IS NOT heated, we were on the red eye, (11pm to 7am, I am NOT doing that again) so we got  next to no sleep, and to complete my personal misery, I got my period. (Fme)
Apparently I was being punished for something I did earlier, I don't know what that could be but something I've done pissed off Karma.

Driveway after new snow

To top off the hilarity our ride was 1.5 hours late to pick us up at the airport, they overslept! -.- 
We came home to snow, lots of snow, 2 whole storms worth, which was fun getting through as no, they don't use salt on the roads, they use sand (because environment!). 

Seattle really doesn't have the equipment to deal with this white stuff and as they get a snow storm like this maybe once every 3-5 years it's understandable. 

Mostly it rains. When we do get snow, it rains and melts away by the next day, no worries.

After the new snow

It doesn't linger or get colder, get mashed down into grey slush at the side of the road and freeze into a sheet of ice like its doing now. 


That's for you flat lander, midwest folks.

From the neighbors yard

  went to check something in the garage and tried to open the car door, it was locked so had to trudge back to the house (omg) find the keys, trudge back, woop the car open, no.

 Battery is dead. 

Not your click, click I'm unhappy dead either, dead, dead nothin' dead.

well heck (and other words best left floating in the friged air)

Neighbors tree from our yard

Even if we could have gotten out of our garage, the day we got home, we'd at that point gotten 9" of snow. 

We couldn't have even gotten out of the driveway as there is this Enormous hedge that runs about 30' alonside it and It decided to fall over as well.
There is also a little dip and a rise at the end

where they have over-paved the road so many times, its about a foot higher than the driveway.
If there is even a hint of ice and you stop for cross traffic, you're stuck.

sacrificial tree

The next day, as Adam was taking snaps of all the picturesque scenery in the backyard after yet another snow storm that gave us almost 20" of snow, 
there was a loud pop, rip and a bang of the tree next door 
taking out one of our trees across from it, the power lines to the garage and two of our neighbors behind us. *sigh*

 Then joy of joys, another of our trees decided to give up its burden of snow and ice build up, fell over and was only stopped from falling into the driveway by yet another tree, which will now have to be sacrificed this spring.

 On the bright side the overly engineered birdbath survived! 

driveway and the Hungry hedge

We spent all day yesterday chainsawing the danger tree so it wouldn't cause any further damage and destruction.
Today we woke up to a sloppy wet mess of melting everything. 

 If were lucky it will all melt before the next storm comes in and turns us into a ice rink, then dumps snow on top, just to make it more fun.


 On the plus side the sun is out and the willow tree is sparkling at me from all the prismatic ice chips in its branches, very pretty.

There is a family of at least 25 Juncos in the backyard. Where they came from and what they are after is beyond me but I've never seen so many at once.
So many in fact, they are chasing off the stellars jays and the squirrels, so lots of noise as they all duke it out.

Not ready to give up yet!

So as we can't get out of our garage to shop I have appealed to a very kind neighbor with 4 wheel drive who has very nicely volunteered to take us to the cosco to stock up next time they go, blessings be upon them!
Last night I was able to bum a ride from DD#2's boyfriend, who's mom has a jeep. Who got me to the grocery and back, for fresh veg and eggs so we we're not living off meat with a side of meat.
other than that everything good!

If you are wondering why we shut down for 7"of snow imagine San Fransisco, all those lovely big rolling hills, now imagine it with snow. Yes, we have LA worthy hills! 
Fun for driving sideways on ice, so mostly we stay home.  
No point in giving emergency services more to do.