Catchup and a Square Circle Finish

A little catch up -

Physical therapy ended today. I began feeling better a few days ago - it is so nice to have less pain in my back.

About two weeks ago we had a weekend of travel. We had the pleasure and honor of seeing our youngest son, a State Trooper, promoted to Master Sergeant. The ceremony was at 1 PM on a Friday in Springfield, IL. We made it to Rockford (about 3 hours away) for a 6 PM hockey game that night. The hockey tournament extended over two more days so we just stayed in Rockford. Somewhere during that time I managed to pick up a virus which is now better and I can be heard again! I hate losing my voice.

I'm still having trouble posting on other blogs... I guess this is going to be ongoing so I'll just keep working on solutions. Using a different browser does work sometimes.

I do have one quilt finish. I bought the flannel in Michigan this fall and I wanted two quilts done before fall was over but didn't quite make it. This is the second quilt made with the leftovers from the first one that still needs the binding hand stitched.

Flannel Square Circles is about 51" by 62". 

I used a walking foot and stitched diagonal lines through each square circle. Then I free motion quilted some simple 4-loop flowers in each square circle. I think you can see that here

or here.

I used Dream Cotton Batting and Aurifil #2326 beige thread to quilt this. The back used up most of the fabric that I had left.

I am behind on lots of things but that's just the way it is sometimes. I am making a Christmas quilt for us. The top is done but it won't be finished for this year. Today, while cleaning upstairs, I folded the donation quilts - we need to make our Christmas trip to Children's Hospital - it might be a little late but I'm sure the quilts are still needed.

Maybe I'll have more to share soon. In the meantime, I hope you have a Merry Christmas!

Jungle Strips

I finished Jungle Strips at the retreat last weekend. 

The main fabric, a jungle print, is the center diagonal of each square. I'm not sure where/when I acquired the fabric but I love it.  I found fabric in my scrap bins to match the colors in the jungle fabric.

This 52" square quilt has Dream Cotton batting. I used #2784 navy, 50-weight Aurifil thread to quilt this. I stitched in the middle of each of the 1" sashing pieces. Then I crosshatched each of the string blocks. The border has diagonals stitched in various widths. You can see a corner here.

In the middle of each side, I changed the direction of the diagonals.

On the back of this donation quilt, I used fabric that was left over from Mack's Quilt. 

One day soon we'll head to University of Wisconsin Children's Hospital. It's time that some children enjoy the pile of the quilts I have upstairs.

Weekend Retreat

I went on retreat with 3 friends this past weekend. I didn't take many pictures - sorry. There was lots of sewing and crocheting going on.

I took my Cricut Maker along because one member in our group hopes to have one soon. We made these two shirts.

This morning I took some pictures of my projects. All were cut out and started before the retreat. They all need pressing but that seemed a waste of time today since I was just going to fold them up again.

The first one is made with strips left from this baby quilt. I sewed the left over strips like a jelly roll and then cut the pieces for this.

This quilt still needs borders. I used blue strings separated into lights and darks Every so often I added a bright colored string to the dark blocks.

A while back, I saw Bonnie Hunter's Tumalo Trail quilt. I thought it would make a good child's quilt with a some changes. Looking back at Bonnie's, mine looks quite different!

The turquoise and pink quilt:

The bright color quilt:

I also finished binding a quilt - I'll show you that soon.

I saw the doctor last week. She thinks the problem in my back is muscle instead of bone related. That pretty much means surgery won't be involved. Yay! I still have meds for the pain and I begin physical therapy next week. Anything that involves leaning forward is very painful. Sadly sewing involves some leaning forward. Today I'm not doing much; I'm just recovering from the weekend. Hopefully I'll be ready for short bouts of sewing by tomorrow.

In other news - I cannot post on other blogs again. I'll be working on that...

Frustrations!

Ever since my computer automatically updated to Mac OS Mojave, I have had MAJOR problems with blogger. There have been other problems too but I think I have most of those resolved. Why would an update change Photoshop's accessibility and not allow me to work on a photo???

I have finally been able to release my blog from the admin email that I never assigned. The problem is that once I released it, I removed that email. Along with it went the blogs I follow. I have recreated the list - I think I have found all of the blogs again. And I've had to return to that email to be able to do anything but I can't get back what I deleted??? 

I can now comment on some blogs including my own but sometimes I can't???. I am finding that I can comment mostly on blogs without embedded comments.  I just found that comments are no longer coming in by email - that happened once a while back. I think I remember how to fix that.

I've changed my comments to be in a popup window - I prefer them embedded but I seem to have a better chance of being able to post if they are in a popup window - who knows why???! I'm sorry you have to go through that reCaptcha stuff when posting - I know I hate it but it is what it is.

I'm not sure where the template is for my blog - it seems to be missing. That means that there are all kinds of things I can't change.

This has been going on for over a week - it's quite annoying. Please understand if I don't comment or reply to your comments. There are only so many hours a day that I'm willing to devote to this ... I want to quilt!

And time goes by...

The days have been passing by but I haven't accomplished much. Between the cold and my back I spend a lot of time resting and I think it's working - my cold is much better. The back improvement is slow but there is improvement. 

I celebrated my 70th birthday! How can I be that old??! On my birthday we took a little road trip to some orchards in Wisconsin. We brought home apples to eat, to dry, to make applesauce, to make pie, and to freeze. It's taking a while but everything is getting done. 

I love apple chips dried with a little cinnamon and sugar.

I made applesauce with Cortland, Jonathon, McIntosh, and Cameo apples. I used the Instant Pot and cooked the cored apples with 1/2 cup water. When they were done, I put them though a food mill which takes care of the skins. I think the Jonathon skins are responsible for us having pink applesauce this year.

I bought a mini pie pan from Pampered Chef and finally got around to making some little apple pies one day. They are cute and good! Four are in the freezer. It's a little hard for me to roll pie dough right now so I decided to freeze some of the apples for pies in the future.

One evening we went to a small cemetery that is high on a hill. The sunset and moonrise were just minutes apart and the photographer decided he was going so I tagged along. There were no clouds but there was lots of dust in the air so there was still a little color in the sky. The farmers around here are combining soybeans and it creates lots of dust.

sunset

moonrise

I was on the west side of the cemetery looking at Ray on the other side photographing the moon.

I've been playing with the flannel that I bought on our Michigan trip. I cut the pieces for a Take Five quilt. That top is pretty much together. Now I'm trying to put together a quilt with the leftovers. This is on the design wall.

I tried to edit pictures in Photoshop the other day and it wouldn't work. It's an older version and I just updated my MacBook Pro to Mojave - ugh! It took a few hours but I finally got that figured out. Then I decided to tackle my problem with posting on blogs. That took most of another day; I'm happy that I can post again but not happy that I can't fix the real problem. Don't you just love computer problems??!

Hopefully I'll be spending more time sewing in the next few days.

Home Again

Friday dawned cloudy and cold. We packed the car. Before we left, Ray asked for the cold medicine - oh, oh, I shared my cold. He said he didn't feel too bad so we headed south with our original plan.

We decided to check out the Rural Arts Roadtrip east of Lake Winnebago in Wisconsin. Lots of people seemed to be on the road trip. 

We stopped at three of the 10 places. We enjoyed the things we saw, the many artists that we met, and the places we visited but it really was cold out - about 38 degrees with wind. Many of the exhibitors were in outbuildings or tents. The third stop was super crowded so we decided it was time to move on. 

Ray wanted to check out the Horicon Marsh. We stopped at the Visitor Center and got some information. Today was not the day for us to be out hiking - did I mention it was cold? And we both have colds.

We decided to head home and even saw the sun on the way. We arrived just before 6pm and unpacked. Now it's time to just relax and get warm!

A Good Day in Door County

By the time I went to bed Tuesday night, I realized that I had a cold. Ugh! I spent a very rainy Wednesday napping and watching movies. Ray said he didn't mind since the rain just kept coming.

Today, Thursday, we woke to cooler temperatures (mid 40s), heavy winds, and clouds but no rain! And I feel much better. We decided to tour the peninsula. We headed north through many small towns. 

The fall colors were gorgeous! And there were bits of blue sky!

We shopped a little - it was very cold to be out walking. We spent some time in Peninsula State Park.  The sun made an appearance every so often! 

The waves were really crashing in.

 The Eagle Bluff Lighthouse in Peninsula State Park.

These berries/cherries, which I'm sure are not pie cherries, made me want to make cherry pie. When I was in high school, I was a Cherry Pie Queen and I ALWAYS used Door County frozen cherries to make my pies.

Still in Peninsula State Park, we stopped at Nicolet Beach.

We drove on...

At Eagle Panorama, you can easily tell where the sun was shining.

We left the State Park and had lunch - burgers at Wilson's Ice Cream Parlor. We passed on the ice cream (it's really cold out) but we did have Wilson's 1906 Home-Brewed Draft Root Beer. We don't drink pop anymore except for a root beer every so often. This was a great treat.

 Back on the road...

We stopped at The Clearing Folk School near Ellison Bay. During the week, you can only visit the Visitor's Center; visitors are not allowed to tour the grounds except in docent lead tours on the weekends. Even though we couldn't see much, it made me want to go there for a class even more. It is such a beautiful area. 

Inside the Visitor's Center, there is now an area that show more of the architecture of the other campus buildings. I loved this door and doorway to the outside.

When we got to the end of the peninsula, we backtracked for a while. We stopped at the Seaquist Orchard Stand and bought two cider donuts and two pumpkin donuts. They were really good! We also bought some Door County Cherries; a pie is in the future. 

Then we drove across the peninsula to go to Cana Island Lighthouse. It's a few mile drive and when you finally get there, you walk across a causeway to get to the lighthouse.  When we got there, we found that heavy winds were causing the water to cross the causeway in high waves which meant no one was going across.

We just continued on toward 'home'.

When we got back on the main road, highway 42, the traffic had really picked up. There is a festival in Sister Bay this weekend that seems to be beginning tonight. 

We leave here tomorrow. Our plans are still in the making. What happens next really depends on the weather. So..., we'll just see what tomorrow brings.

Travel Day

This morning when we said goodbye to the UP, it was cloudy but just sprinkling. We loved the scenery, the food, and the nice people that we met.

On our way south, we made one last stop at the Trenary Home Bakery. We decided we needed a little more Trenary Toast. We decided that we had to skip the cinnamon rolls today but it was HARD!

Back on the road, we crossed a bridge over the Rapid River near Rapid River, Michigan, and Ray loved the scenery. We turned and went down a street a little ways and there was another bridge crossing the river. Here are my shots:

When we were ready to turn around, we drove a little bit and saw Rapid River Falls Park. So we checked it out.

Lunch was in Oconto, Wisconsin, at The Dockside. I forgot to take a picture of my Shrimp Po' Boy. It was delicious. Ray had BBQ pork with slaw. I think this was the best restaurant service we've had in a restaurant on this trip!

We saw color on the way - I think the leaves are pretty much at their peak color in the UP but not quite there a number of miles south in Wisconsin.

We saw the SUN and blue sky on the way (but only for a few minutes). 

Oh yes, we saw rain on the way too. 

We are now in Egg Harbor, Wisconsin, which is in Door County. We managed a short walk after we moved into our rental. We are very close to the harbor.

We got back to our apartment as the first raindrop hit followed by a downpour. 

Tonight we are just taking it easy - watching a little Netflix and listening to the heavy rain.