Poke-O-Moonshine - The Blue Trail

I finally made it to the summit of Poke-O-Moonshine. The attempt in May got me as far as the cabin ruins. This time we took the new blue trail. Details about this alternate trail are here: http://www.adk.org/Hikes/Poke-O-Moonshine.aspx
The new trial is longer but less steep and rocky. It joins up with the original red trail at the cabin ruins.

The first picture is of Damon near the top of the fire tower located at the summit. The second picture is of the fire-tower itself. And finally is a shot of me (way down at the bottom of the photo) on the summit taken by Damon from his spot up in the fire-tower.

We started on the trail at 8:15am. We made it to the top around 10:00am, and made it back down to the trail-head by 10:55am. So we made the round-trip in under 3 hours.

The day was cloudy and we had a very light sprinkle of rain for about 5 minutes early on, but it was dry the rest of the time and in the upper 60s.

Still Working on the Scrap Pile

As I mentioned earlier this summer I am working on reducing my pile of scrap fabric. My vague notion was to reduce it by half. But of course I did not measure it or weigh it, so deciding when I reach half is based on the 'I guess that is about half' system.

Pictured here are the blocks I have been making for my second scrap quilt of the summer. I still need to sew them together. They are scraps from making my nieces' and nephew's quilts (see blog post dated Saturday, July 3, 2010). The blocks are 6 1/2 inches unfinished.

Once this quilt is finished - including quilting and binding I think I will have made enough of a dent in the scrap pile. I can go back to working on several other projects that have been waiting for attention. I do have plans on working on more crumb blocks at this fall's quilt retreat though so the scrap pile doesn't start growing too much.

Of the 2 scrap quilts from this summer, one will be donated to the Quilt Guild's Community Outreach program and the other will be given to the Guild for its 'Latte Lotto' raffle at the quilt show next year.

Silver Lake Mountain Hike

Damon and I both took today off as a vacation day. I talked him into joining me to hike Silver Lake Mountain. It is about a 20 minute drive from home - but with the bridge out due to construction on Silver Lake Road the detour took us a little bit longer.

Silver Lake Mountain is considered one of the 'easy' Adirondack mountains to hike. It took us a total of an hour and a half to get to the summit, sit for about 10 minutes and then make it back back down to the trail head.

The weather today was great for the hike. We started the hike at 9:30am and the temperature was still in the 60s. It was sunny but there were some really nice cool breezes most of the way up.

The white speck in the first picture is Damon. No, that is not the summit - just a nice stopping spot on the way up. The best views are at the summit. This second photo is from the vantage point from where Damon is standing in the first photo. The views are toward the south, so plenty of Adirondack mountains and lakes to see.

As it was a weekday the trail was not crowded. We saw one hiker on our way up (they were heading down) and about six folks were at the summit when we got up there.

The final photo is of me on the trail on the way down. As you can see, like many Adirondack trails the path is full of rocks and roots. When hiking you really need to watch your step.

Garden Update

The heat wave we had in July really seems to have agreed with the garden. All the plants are really taking off - tomatoes, cucumbers, pumpkins, raspberries, blueberries and all the herbs.

This is also the earliest I can recall the tomatoes starting to ripen. Usually they are not ready until mid August. I went out today and picked the first cherry tomato and as you can see in the photo the first of the full-sized tomatoes will be ready in a couple of days.

I will have to remember to put bacon on the grocery list next week in anticipation of making BLTs with fresh tomatoes from the garden.

Still Reducing Scraps

Well, I am still working on getting my scrap pile reduced but I have moved, at least temporarily, from crumb blocks on to other projects. I had some bigger scraps and some partially pieced blocks left over from my nieces and nephew's quilts. Since they are bigger pieces I figured making a crib-sized quilt out of them would help reduce the scrap pile a little quicker. This quilt will be donated for the quilt guild's community service project.

As you can see the top is done. Next week's goal is to piece a back for it and get it basted and ready for quilting. As this is only crib-sized I should be able to machine quilt it on my home machine.

From Scraps to Crumbs

When the sewing room reverted back to a guest bedroom a couple of weeks ago pretty much all the sewing stuff was packed away. As a strategy I have decided only to pull out my scrap bags/boxes and I am trying to make a dent in them by making crumb blocks. The goal is to reduce the scrap pile by about half before I let myself start pulling out other projects or starting new ones.

Here are the 12 blocks I made this week. I would have likely made more but the heat wave this week made the sewing room upstairs (with no air conditioner) pretty intolerable. I couldn't imagine sitting up there in the heat with the iron on as well.

Where did June go? - New Stuff - Part 2

Along with the family arriving in June for a visit we had a few other additions in June.

The big item is the new gazebo. When we bought the house 10 years ago one of the first things my dad said was that we should get a gazebo and place out by the brook. So here we are 10 years later and we finally have one. Officially this is my birthday present with several family members and Damon contributing, but I paid a big chunk of it too. The biggest benefit of this is that it is fully screened in. I can go out and enjoy the warm summer weather without all the pesky biting, swarming bugs! I still would like to do some landscaping around it, but I think that will have to wait till next year.

A few days after the gazebo arrived our ridding mower died so we had to go out and get a new mower. The new mower has a wider deck and is faster so getting the mowing done should take less time. Of course since the mower is wider than our last one, all the spacing between the raised beds in the garden is a bit to small. The mower will fit between the rows but not between the individual beds, so this means more time and areas that will need trimming.

I attended the Vermont Quilt Festival (VQF) in June. While I am on a fabric no-buy challenge (and I was good and did not by any fabric) I did buy a few books, a pattern, a stencil, and some pearl cotton. So as you can tell, June was an expensive month. The rest of the year will be devoted to building the savings back up.