Summer Guests

Damon's Aunt Sandy and Uncle John came up for a visit this past week. While it was a soggy trip up, the nice weather kicked in and we went over to Burlington, VT for a day on the slow boat (i.e. the Port Kent Ferry). While several of us were shopping, John ended up being interviewed on the local news the video is posted at: http://www.wptz.com/video/16903984/index.html .

Another first time visitor for us this past weekend was a deer. Yes, there are deer all over the place it seems, but this is the first time in the 8 years at the house that I have seen a deer in our own yard. As you might expect the dogs went nuts and were barking like crazy, but as I had already shut the windows for the day they did not scare it off. It stayed in the yard for a few minutes and then headed toward the woods at the back of the property.

Vermont Quilt Festival - 2008

As usual the VQF was great. I took 3 classes, attended the Saturday night lecture and even won a door prize.

The first class I took was Susan Cleveland's 'Piping Hot Curves' which included learning how to make pipping and applying it to curved shapes and making block. The first photo is the book and a few of the blocks I made in class.

I also took Judy Mathieson's 'Twilight Star' class. The star is a 20-point sort-of paper pieced project. I say 'sort of' because it really isn't the traditional paper piecing method, but I found it easier and very accurate so I am sure I will use it again. The second photo is a copy of Judy's book and the part of the star I got done in class.

Finally, I also took Susan Cleveland's half day 'Bold Needle Threads' class, which was great because it was basically a time to play with different threads and stitches on your sewing machine, and I hadn't had a chance to play with all the cool stitches since I bought the machine last year.

Minding the Gap

The problem with blogs (or any type of journal or diary) is that if you have a busy life you have no time for blogging, and if you have time for blogging your life is not busy enough to have anything to write about. As you can tell from the date of this posting there is a considerable gap - this was due to a conference and a vacation back home for quality time with the family.

Among the exciting events was the annual trip to a Toledo Mud Hens baseball game - that is Aubrey with Muddy in the photo. There was also the traditional shutney (checking the spelling later). And as an extra bonus this year Damon's dad Tom (who is a licensed taser dealer) let Damon tase him as product research - the video is on YouTube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBCdELqIiDo