Sunday was a beautiful fall day here in Maine. DH and I went for a hike in Newcastle/Damariscotta. We hiked on the Salt Bay heritage trail. Here is the description from the New England Trailhead website:
- The Salt Bay Heritage Trail is a 3 mile pedestrian trail that passes through the Damariscotta River Associations Salt Bay Preserve. The preserve contains many varied habitats including a woods pond, freshwater and tidal wetlands, mixed mature and new growth forest, and the Salt Bay shoreline. It also contains an important archeological site - Glidden Point's ancient indian shell heaps.
- The oyster shell heaps at Glidden Point are estimated to be 2,400 years old. They are the left over shells from Native American feasts over an estimated period of 1,500 years. There are listed in the National Register of Historic Places and are protected. It is unlawful to remove shells or disturb the heaps.
- Around the bay and over the bridge and into the woods...
We saw quite a few horseshoe crab shells. The bay is very shallow and either the horseshoe crabs like that or it may be that because it is shallow they are visible. Aren't horeshoe crabs prehistoric? This one was in two pieces with its long tail missing.
- Here I am among the moss hanging from the trees. The moss is very threadlike; what an organism! Lovely light green color.
We found a geocache under a boulder, quite by accident. It was filled with little trinkets. I wanted to take the little Strawberry Shortcake doll, but was good and left it in the ammo box. I wrote a message in the notebook. I've always wanted to do Letterboxing, which is a similar game without the GPS and uses homemade rubber stamps to log in.
The trail runs along the bay for a ways, then goes into the woods until you reach the sheep tunnel which goes right under Route 1! There was some water in the tunnel but there were stepping stones that helped keep the feet mostly dry.
The oyster midden is awesome. All the white in the photo above is crushed oyster shells left over from the days (starting around 450 BCE) when the Indians fished and ate oysters here. There are, of course, trees growing up from much of the mound, but along the shore you can see whole shells in the exposed area under the tree roots.
- Oysters, anyone?
- The trail down to the shore is all white oyster shells, too. I don't think there are any oysters left in the bay now, and there haven't been any for many, many years from what I gather.
So much for the traveloge! DH and I love going for hikes and being out in nature. I think that connection with the natural world is very important and it certainly washes away the stress of work and the news. Which is more real? To me, it is the natural world, but I have to live in the man-made world, too.
Lots of color inspiration on this hike: the pale green of the moss, the whites and grays of the shells, and the blue blue sky and red, yellow, and golden leaves.
Last weekend I got about half of Holiday Chorus machine quilted, but stopped because the thread kept fraying and breaking. Very frustrating, but I am beginning to wonder if it is my sewing technique not the machine. Will try again next weekend.
In the meantime, I have been sewing little five and one half inch blocks using the strip piecing method on a muslin foundation. Very easy and so satisfying!
I'm taking my iMac in for repairs today, so I will be out of touch for awhile. Two vertical lines have appeared on the monitor. Wish I could just wave my magic wand, but I seem to have misplaced it!
Presenting....Holiday Chorus! I sewed all the blocks together today and added the borders. This quilt is bigger than I expected. It is about 68 inches square. It will hang in my living room behind the sofa. I hope there is enough room!
There are six birds in the panel, so I left out the robin. The robin does not look like the robins around here, so I did not include it. This quilt has the tufted titmouse which is so sweet and a relative of the chickadee. My gmail name is chickadee24, so I had to keep her. Also, the black capped chickadee is the State of Maine bird. Cardinals and nuthatches frequently come to my birdfeeder, so those were easy choices. So, it really came down to the wren and the robin. Wren teaches us to sing and use our voices, so that seemed appropriate for this quilt.
Next I will need to buy backing fabric and quilt batt. Any suggestions for "quilt as desired"? I will be using my home sewing machine. I don't want to hand quilt it, but may handquilt the ring around the birds.
After the rain we had this past summer, I suppose we have enough. However, we may get a deluge this weekend which will keep me inside and I intend to make up for lost time (AKA working full time at my new job) by sewing all weekend. I have all the blocks for Holiday Chorus done so I will be putting the top together.
In the meantime, take a look at the knitting I have been doing this past month.
I have one more white pair done,too. These are called Newfoundland Mitts and you can find the pattern here. Easy to knit, this is a slip stitch pattern. I used variegated yarn with long repeats of color. There is no gusset for the thumb, making them really easy to knit! I belong to a Yahoo group called CIC (children in common) which does charity knitting. We are having a mitten blitz and sending the mittens to the Cheyenne River Reservation the last week in September in time for cold weather.
DH and I went to the Common Ground Fair last Sunday. What a great fair and what a great day we had. DH was very patient while I looked at every skein of yarn(and there were plenty), had him pat some cashmere yarn, and he even chatted with some quilt ladies from the Scrap Baggers in the Folk Life tent. Good thing the fair was last week; it would be a washout this weekend.
I realize this entry is a bit thin on quilting, but I have one more thing to add. Last Monday night I went to a Back Road quilt meeting. It was their second meeting this fall, but my first. Almost all my Tacoma friends were there, so that was fun. The ladies from Cotton Weeds had a beautiful table and trunk show. I signed up for a Hawaiian applique workshop with Sarah Ann Smith for later next month. Sarah gave a talk at one of our area meetings a couple of years ago and I was amazed at the quantity and quality of her quilts. I also sat at the "former librarian" table with Bonnie and Tina. We were convulsed with laughter when Nena, one of our co-leaders, told us about trying to get some quilting and baking done while her husband wanted her to go run an errand with him. To end the evening one of the members showed some crazy quilts and demonstrated several embroidery stitches. All in all a wonderful program with some very fine women.
Have a great weekend, dear readers!
Did you forget Holiday Chorus? Or did you think I had? Well, I sort of did. I forgot that this BOM was on a credit card that was breached, so the number was canceled, therefore Cotton Weeds could not mail my August installment. We got that straightened out and I received two months at once last week. Lucky me!
Now that my DD is off at university I set up my Jem Gold in her room, which is downstairs and very handy! I shut the door so the cats don't play with the pincushion. They don't like that too much as they love to lounge on her bed all day.
I used my little Jem last week because I sent my Pfaff out to the repair shop. Thread kept fraying and breaking. I think something must be rubbing against the thread inside the machine, but nothing like that was found. It seems to sew fine now, but you know how these intermittent problems can be. Right when you are in the middle of a project, BAM!, it does not work. Take it to the shop, all is well. I will see how it works this weekend. I plan to give it a workout.
I am having some trouble with this block. Four of these diagonal blocks are put together to make the whole block. The block should measure 10 1/2 inches and most of mine are 10 and 1/4. I've been sewing scant 1/4 seams and coming closer to the right size.
Can you see the little half square triangle blocks? I made those from the waste that is cut off when making the diagonal pieces. I have lots of these little tiny squares now. Don't know if I will ever use them, but it is the sort of thing I just like to have tucked in a drawer. I have lots of little odds and ends like that. They don't have to be useful, they just look useful and are adorable for being so small. I like miniature things, don't you?
We found a geocache under a boulder, quite by accident. It was filled with little trinkets. I wanted to take the little Strawberry Shortcake doll, but was good and left it in the ammo box. I wrote a message in the notebook. I've always wanted to do Letterboxing, which is a similar game without the GPS and uses homemade rubber stamps to log in.
The trail runs along the bay for a ways, then goes into the woods until you reach the sheep tunnel which goes right under Route 1! There was some water in the tunnel but there were stepping stones that helped keep the feet mostly dry.
