Skip to main content

Quilts....American style

Back at camp on Friday night we found we had two new neighbours a couple of (crazy) Canadian women, Caitlyn and Karen who were on a road trip sleeping in an amazing fashion in the back of their very large car.   Karen had a knee complaint and found it easiest to sleep in a chair and to make the holiday work they had put the chair in the back of the car leaving just enough room for Caitlyn to make a snug little bed on the floor behind her.  They had lots of cushions and I was a tad jealous.  They had been desperate for somewhere to sleep having had to resort to a graveyard car park the night before and the camp host asked if we minded if they shared our parking space.  Obviously, we didn’t mind and we ended up having a very pleasant evening learning about S’mores – toasted marshmallow and chocolate sandwich type things, lamenting the complete ban on campfires or we could have tried them and swopping travel tales and stories.   Caitlyn had been to Ireland and really liked it in spite of the lack of cream for her coffee!!   Its one of the things I really like about travel is meeting all the different people passing through and sharing stories


On the Saturday we went to the Eureka annual Quilt show.  It was excellent and there might have been 600 plus quilts on show.  Hung all over the walls of the historic village buildings and then up and down the entire length of the main street.  They were very varied but  typically American in style – a mixture of hand and machine quilted and some with applique and embroidery.  It was a riot of fabric and colour and very wonderful.  

The whole town had a festive air going on and there were a lot of fabric stalls and places to look at and buy patterns for every kind of quilt you could think of!! I was very tempted by some pre-cut squares in fab patterns but knew I was just being carried away by the moment and eventually resisted but I did buy a second hand book from the 1970s about the Mountain Artisans who were a cooperative who were very successful in making quilting fashionable at the time.  A good souvenir to have from a fabulous show.    

It was another very hot day so we came back to camp and I had a swim in the lake to cool down and remove some of the dust debris, Dr Fred hopped around the car giving it a wet swish to try and disguise the fact we had been off road… before chilling out and going to a bear talk held at the campsite.



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Alesund

Our final destination stop was Alesund. This is a very pretty town in southern Norway built on a peninsula. All the houses are painted pretty colours and a lot of the architecture is all very Art Nouveau based. This is because the town itself was completely burnt to the ground In 1904 by a fire for which they never found the original cause. The whole town had to be rebuilt and this became a huge National Effort and a lot of prominent and up and coming architects flocked to the town to stick there 20 pence in. Consequently the town is very heavily Art Nouveau which was very fashionable at the time. There is this wonderful Museum just off the harbour which is a very beautiful Art Nouveau house. It has amazing panelling, doors, wallpaper, and it's all furnished with beautiful art Nouveau Furniture. It also house a collection of of enameled Art Nouveau Trinkets,boxes, spoons, jewellery, very very beautiful.   There is an interesting collection of old books and paintings a...
1 comment
Read more

Isle of Bute

 Another Landmark Trust tick - this time Ascog House on the Isle of Bute - stunning as always... a very comfortable warm accommodation for the usual 8 suspects. This time we had a wee tower house for Dr Fred and myself - a lovely bedroom up the stairs with a big window and a bathroom al to ourselves - having said that all the other bedrooms in the big house were large and serviced by two bathrooms so there was no hardship for any visitors!   The grounds of the house were very extensive with ponds and secret passages - hidden paths and we even spotted a deer late afternoon - there were lots of old features - ornate staircases and a lovely hidden door which I did a quick sketch of. Bute provided quite a lot of entertainment as well - the weather was kind and we did a a muddy wander down the south of the Island taking in St Blanes Monastery and Kilcannon Bay.  The views were spectacular and it was fabulous to be out in the fresh (and it was fresh on the tops) air and we...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Blue Dot

Excellent evening spent at the first Blue Dot festival held at Jodrell Bank.  Clever use of the radio telescope as back drop for the main stage... there were some major teething issues which hopefully will addressed if this event happens again - mainly access and parking.. it was a nightmare approach to the festival and fortunately as we were only doing one night we decided to ditch the car and chose to walk the last mile and half into the site... what a relief as if we had queued we would most certainly missed Public Service Broadcasting which was one of the reasons we were going.. anyway we caught them and then enjoyed fantastic set by Underworld - danced much of the night away in the rain - my trusty solfest poncho almost kept me dry.. it was a splendid evening and the telescope looked brilliant when lit up when it got dark. There was a rather fab "installation" called a luminarium, lack of site information - another hiccup meant we were really lucky to catch it just ...
Post a Comment
Read more