The Great Alaska Quilt Cruise - pt. 1

So, what do you do when you hear that Bonnie Hunter of Quiltville fame will be doing a Quilt Cruise to Alaska? You convince one of your best quilting buds to go along. So, that's exactly what Janet and I did for a week.

We left Seattle on a beautiful, sunny day.



Unfortunately the seas got pretty rough overnight and made for a dreadful time trying to do any quilting Sunday. Not to mention the very cramped conditions we had available for sewing - not ideal for quilting.

Early Monday we pulled into Ketchikan under cloudy skies. Fortunately the quilt shop was directly opposite our dock and yes, it was open at 7:00 a.m. and yes, we were there at that hour (QB's take note!) What a great way to start the day and our first stop in Alaska. We definitely helped the local economy.



Eventually we met up with our excursion and headed out to see the Saxman Indian village where we watched the kids do some native dances and saw the totem poles and learned all about how they were made.



There were some pretty talented kids and the button blankets were beautiful.

Next stop was Juneau. We crammed in whale watching and a quick trip to the Mendenhall Glacier. What a great morning. We saw 6 adult Humpback whales and 1 juvenile and then, along came 3 Orcas! We also managed to see both harbor & stellar seals and a couple bald eagles.










Stay tuned for part 2.....

Long Time....

It's been a long, hot summer filled with boxes and more boxes. When I last posted, way back in April we were counting down to our big move to central Washington. Well, the movers showed up right on schedule and with an efficiency I could only dream of possessing, had us packed and loaded into the moving van in two days.


Upon arrival at the new house they were none too pleased to see all the stairs they had to traverse to bring my fabric up to its new home in my lovely new studio, above somebody's ginormous garage. The guys decided they needed to start a new reality show, "Fabric Wars."

It has taken me most of the long, hot summer to get things unpacked and organized. There are still a few miscellaneous boxes left to sort through, but I'm getting there, ever so slowly.


In between all that I've been trying to get some plant life into our barren yard and make it look a little more inviting. Not an easy feat when the temps were over 90 for most of the summer. Now that fall is around the corner, we are looking at getting some trees planted. This black fabric was removed and we covered the yard in bark since its too steep to plant and tend grass. The rock from the terrace level is slowly being moved to the lowest part of the slope that is too steep for bark.






The Spotted One made the transition to the new house surprisingly well. Mr. Heat Lover actually discovered that the patio gets way too hot to sunbathe.....he also rediscovered his fear of thunderstorms. He's decided that any overcast after days of sunshine mean thunderstorms are on the way and he MUST climb onto my lap and pant and shake....


I've also thoroughly enjoyed the benefits of living smack dab in the center of fruit country. First we started with cherry season where I discovered sweet, dark cherries at a local farm stand, can you say yum....the better part of 20 lbs. were pitted and frozen. From cherries we moved on to apricots and now peaches and nectarines. I'm looking forward to apple season. My dehydrator has been humming along all summer.


A little quilting has been accomplished, but more just scattered sewing of rediscovered UFO's. I do believe I need to sit down and start tackling some of them.......

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