This and that......

Once again I've been missing in action - we had Sam's cousin Trish and her friend Ruth visiting from Virginia on their cross country adventure. On Friday we took them to Crater Lake (national park) with a stop at a quilt shop along the way.

This is a picture of the Rogue River Gorge which is in Union Creek on the way to Crater Lake. It's the only one I took which is unfortunate because the scenery is beautiful but then I can go up there anytime to see it.

Here is Crater Lake - look how blue that water is and yes, that's snow in the foreground. The entire drive around the lake isn't open yet due to snow - perhaps early July. It is the deepest lake in the US at 1949 feet and one of the most clear lakes in the world. It's volcanic caldera was formed 7700 years ago after the eruption of Mount Mazama. The elevation at the water is 6,178 ft, it's over 7000 ft where we were standing.

Here's a Clark's Nutcracker sitting on a tree in front of the lake - many thanks to birder friend Yvonne for identifying it for me, she used to work at the park so is very familiar with the birds there.

And what's a trip to Crater Lake, or anywhere out Rt 62 without a stop at Becky's Café for pie.

I'm going to be starting a long term project - a hexxie (hexagon) afghan quilt. And I'm going to use all fabrics in my stash - what a novel idea. I have tons of beachy fabrics. I'm using the same coral seahorse fabric for all the flower centers and I have 9 different fabrics in sea glass greens for the petals. The white background is a white on white design with all things beach related, can't see it in the photo. Originally I planned on doing two rows of flower petals but that would have meant I had to buy more fabric and my goal is to not buy anything other than more white quilting thread for this project - I even have a package of free batting won at the quilt show in May. Yesterday evening I decided to hand sew one section to see how it went before I start cutting out fabric and making up little kits for each section. This will be am on the go project for when riding in the car or waiting rooms, etc.

Here's the backside so one can see the paper pieces used to create the hexagons. As a piece gets surrounded I take out the pieces of cardstock as they can be reused. I saw a trick of punching a hole in the paper to make it easy to put a needle under to pull it out. Hand sewing this was very fun yesterday evening.

The weekend started Friday morning by heading up to Salem with my friend Kathy for the annual ANWG meeting (Association of Northwest Weavers Guilds), Kathy is our guild rep. Meeting was Saturday, business in the morning, couple of interesting speakers in the afternoon. I was memorized by Jeanne Carver of the Imperial Stock Ranch in Central Oregon - truly inspiring story about keeping the ranch traditions alive and substainable. Check out their site. They do give tours by appointment, if I'm over in the area I will definitely plan on one.

After the meeting we took a side trip to Sisters for the rest of Saturday and Sunday before heading home last night. We checked out a fellow weaver's Louet Megado Loom - yes, I'm still comptemplating a  compu-dobby loom and since I've seen this one it has moved up to the top of the list over the AVL. I just need to figure out how to fit it in the studio, it's got a bigger footprint. With the what little time we had in Sisters we visited the Stitchin Post Quilt Shop, numerous galleries and the Sisters Summer Faire that had some nice craft booths. And of course, on the way home a stop in Bend at Trader Joe's and then pie at Becky's Cafe in Union Creek, a spot not to be missed if in the Crater Lake or Diamond Lake area.

Now to play catch up around here - busy week with spinning get-together, a guild board meeting, preparing for a presentation here at my studio for a local PEO group and a drop spindle class at Middleford Yarn in Medford......if anyone signed up!