Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Blogging Revisited

Well, I have had several people ask me to re-start the blog.  Now that I am more or less semi retired I have decided to share a little more about my quilting journey.

Let me start by saying that I am really tired of the long winters in Minnesota.  Steve doesn't mind the snow and the cold but last year was just so unpleasant that I really did not want to repeat the whole thing.  I started looking for a way to get us out of town for a significant block of time to break up the winter.  Cancun looked interesting, so did Costa Rica but both were just more of a stretch than what we wanted to do. 

We had talked with some acquaintances who recommended a month in Texas in the camper.  My problem was how to get from an appealing idea to out of the house and on the way to Texas!  Well a quilt retreat solved the problem for me. 

I have wanted to take a class from Karen Buckley for a long time.  She did a cruise in the Sea of Cortez in December that I thought about but decided that it would be more of a leap than what Steve would agree to.  So I kept looking and found 2 in Texas in February.  I preferred the idea of Galveston at the end of the month but really liked the classes in Dallas better the first week of February.  So I asked for the retreat as my birthday present back last June.  Since it was far enough out Steve agreed to the Dallas trip.  Now I had a reason for us to leave town for the month of February.

In October, 2014, we were the campground hosts at Tetteguchie State Park up on the shore of Lake Superior.  It was a great experience and one we will repeat for the month of July in 2015.  As part of our responsibilities we would walk the campground everyday and make sure that things were reasonably tidy in each site for the next campers coming in.  Steve would get chatty with folks and ask about their travels and equipment etc. 

One guy had a truck like ours and he was pulling a small fifth wheel.  We did find that our trailer was really tight when we were both in the camper at the same time.  And when you added Bonnie to the space there wasn't room to turn around.  Steve was so intrigued by the prospect of a larger camper and the stability of a fifth wheel that we just had to go look.  I asked him to leave the checkbook behind, which of course he did not.
 

Our new camper in Alpine Texas - what a beautiful place!

So now we have a fifth wheel (my business partner, Kristi, calls it our pull-a-home), I have a 4 day class in Dallas the first week of February and we have suggestions from several people on things to do and see in Texas.  Steve was ready with plans for places to go and ideas for our trial run with the new camper.

With a few starts and stops we left Minnesota a day later than planned, but between snow storms.  The drive to Dallas is really long when you do it in 2 days, but we made it.  Steve dropped me off at the hotel and he went off to a nearby campground with Bonnie for 4 days.  He had some first trip problems that he was able to address without my questioning why he was doing this or that.

I had 4 days of classes with Karen Buckley at The Kathy Dunigan Academy of Applique and it was really good.  I had a 1 day class on hand applique and 3 days on machine applique.  The hand work was a good reminder and I picked up a couple of tips that will be good going forward.  Here is a photo of her class sample for the hand work:



My block is in progress and I have a ways to go.  I have a great green zigzag fabric for the frame that looks kind of like a tile roof.  At the pace that I am working on it at night I might have it done before I get back to  Minnesota in March.

















The second block  is the machine applique.  This was a very interesting 3 day class that I completely enjoyed.  I have a couple of projects in mind for this technique.  I don't have a picture of my block at this point but I am very pleased with the way it is coming out.  It will be some time in March before I can touch this again since I did not bring my sewing machine on this trip

I will add some more comments over the next couple of weeks about this adventure in Texas.  So far I am really liking it.   We are currently in Alpine Texas at a great campground (the best we have seen on our 3 days of driving around) with good wifi so I can work 4-5 hours a day on the computer.  That leaves us the rest of the day to do different activities.  Last night we went to McDonald Observatory and had a great time - this was one of those lifetime memories because it was so different from what we have done in the past.


The view from our camper includes very few campers and a great view of the mountains!  The deer wandering around drive Bonnie a little bonkers but she is keeping us safe. Yup I like it.

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