Mary from Texas and me...from Jersey!
the hamster wheel that has been life for the past few weeks, and hopefully things will quiet down now! One of the highlights of my Lancaster trip was a visit to the Ephrata Cloister in Ephrata, PA. It is the home of one of the earliest religious communities in the country, established by German Settlers. The state of PA acquired the remains of the cloister in the 1940s and began a restoration of the remaining buildings.
The grounds were beautiful and I could understand the feeling of peace and the closeness to God that these settlers must have felt when on this land. It was breathtaking.
Back in Intercourse where I was staying, the People's Place Quilt Museum was featuring quilts from Fons and Porter. Seeing the contemporary quilts after seeing all the Amish quilts was almost jarring. The techniques were so different, but each type of quilting is beautiful in its own way.
It was a wonderfully relaxing trip which was good, because the time since I came home has been insanely busy. Between working and quilting for customers, we had a few events come up unexpectedly.
On Wednesday morning, my son participated in a forum discussing the Amethyst Initiative at Rowan University. Two students were chosen to discuss the pros and cons of the Initiative and Andrew was on the pro side, arguing that there should be a discussion on whether the drinking age should be lowered. I was incredibly proud of him as he was the only speaker with a dissenting view and the other speakers were rough on him. He was fully prepared with statistics supporting his view and all of the other speakers congratulated him on his strong argument and his willingness to be the lone supporter. He did a great job.
Another unplanned surprise came in the form of a desperate call (while we were at Andrew's forum) from Ellen saying she was horribly homesick and could she PLEASE come home for the weekend. So Thursday afternoon I was heading to the Philadelphia airport to pick her up. It was wonderful to have her home and she looked so much happier when I dropped her off at the airport this afternoon. And I had one more fun event this weekend...but that will be in my next post!
The museum is housed in an old bank building, so it was a beautiful place to display the quilts...
A few of my favorites...(and yes I did realize that my reflection is in most of the pictures. A photographer I am not!)
After spending some time in the museum, I drove to the Rockvale outlets. After coming out of them empty handed, I found a Starbucks so I could refuel, then headed to Intercourse and my hotel room above Village Quilts at Kitchen Kettle Village. This is a relatively new place...the room I stayed in has only been used for about a year. If you ever come to the Lancaster area, I'd highly recommend staying in one of the Kitchen Kettle Villages Lodgings. They are comfortable, beautifully appointed and reasonable. They also give you metal travel mugs, free breakfast at the Kling House restaurant, which was delicious, a little basket of crackers, jams and chocolate, coffee, tea...everything you need to enjoy your stay.
There are handmade quilts on every bed...
Did I mention how relaxing this trip was? More tomorrow...
The pyres you see in this photo are for WaterFire, which is a unique event in Providence. These pyres are up and down the canal and are lit at night, while music is playing. I've never seen anything quite like it! It draws huge crowds and since Saturday night was the last WaterFire of the season and was a breast cancer fundraiser, they expected about 100,000 people to attend. It was beautiful.
One of the highlights of the trip was meeting Ellen's boyfriend. He's a great guy and I really enjoyed spending time with him. He was game for anything...wandering around the art museum, walking miles through the city, keeping me company while Ellen and Grace ran to Old Navy for a sweatshirt. It was a pleasure to meet him.
On Sunday morning, Ellen met us at the hotel and we wandered down to The Cheesecake Factory for breakfast. It was another gorgeous day and we sat outside and enjoyed the weather and the company for a long time. But then it was time to head back to Jersey, so we dropped Ellen at her dorm and stopped long enough for one last picture...
It was a great weekend!
and I'll be making a piano key border from my scraps. I'll probably piece a back for it as well and it will become a donation quilt for my Caps and Laps group at church.
This winter he'll be as warm as an alpaca.
Sam was a pain in the neck most of the time...he had to relearn a lot of things that he had forgotten with his previous owners. Important things like how to go to the bathroom outside and how not to steal food. He did pretty well with the first, but not so great with the second. But, we loved him anyway and he became a part of the family.
Over the past few days, we'd seen a serious decline in his health. He had developed tremors, which were getting worse. He had a cancerous tumor on his face, which had broken through the skin and was getting larger. He developed a horrible cough and couldn't keep food down. So, once again the decision had to be made. He was in pain and suffering, so I took him this morning to be put to sleep.
Sam, thanks for being part of our lives for the past three years...we're going to miss you.
Thanks to my angel...I love it!
It's good to see that someone is stitching because I've done virtually nothing for the past two days. Have felt out of sorts and unproductive. I did load a quilt onto my machine, but haven't started the quilting. I have been knitting while sitting, so at least something has come of my laziness. Tomorrow will be a long day...I'm working at a Weight Watchers center an hour from here in the morning, then we're starting two new meetings in our state capital, one of which already has 57 members. From there I'll pick up my daughter for a doctor's appointment, then afterwards will be my guitar lesson. Maybe I needed to relax and rest up for tomorrow! :o)
I've also got two trips scheduled, both of which I'm very excited about. In a few weeks my youngest and I will be heading to Providence, RI to visit my older daughter at school. We'll leave on Saturday morning and come home on Sunday night. Then later that week I'll be running away from home. I've booked a room in Lancaster, PA for 2 nights and I'm going...all by myself! I've never been away alone before, I'm not sure I'll know how to behave!
And I did some more quilting for customers....
And a little more customer quilting....
I took a some time to watch the birds...
And I did a little stitching...totally screwing up the part where I was supposed to stitch panels for BOTH ends of the caddy. I hope my partner likes it anyway! :o)
Today I stepped away from the quilting machine and was off from my job with Weight Watchers, so I did some cleaning and decorated for Halloween. I hate Halloween and would much rather decorate for fall, but....I don't have any fall decorations! I inherited my mother-in-law's Halloween decorations when she moved to Arizona, so that's what I put out. Pictures over the weekend of those.
Inside the cabinet my grandfather built all sorts of cool spaces for sewing supplies..thread holders, little curved drawers that swing out to hold buttons and what not, pegs to hold scissors and even little racks to hold patterns, which he carved out in the shape of scissors! 
I decided it was time for an update. I'm going to be painting my laundry room cabinets black and decided to do a trial run on the sewing cabinet. Eventually it will have a little quilt on top of it along with a few odds and ends, but I have to make one first.
I even found great little knobs to complement the black...
Aside from work, laundry, cleaning and all the usual stuff, it included practicing the guitar (a lot!), some applique, a new phone and a little light reading. (The book is total fluff...definitely a beach read!)
This week will be interesting...we'll be packing Ellen and sending her off to college, Grace will be starting high school and I'll be starting a few new projects around the house once it's quiet again. As much as I love summer, it's good to be getting back to the regular routine this week. If it can ever be regular again with two away at college!
We had a wonderful time getting to know each other while we sat and stitched. It turned out that I knew several of the women there from guild and I had even quilted for one a few years ago. I stopped going to guild because I couldn't get there when my children were younger, but I've been invited back and will be going in September...I'm looking forward to it!
No strip poker was played because only 3 of us showed up with the strips we needed, so we chatted and stitched and ate...lots of delicious food was there! I was the first to show up and the last to leave because I was treated to a private quilt show...Sue does beautiful machine applique and piecing and has a number of finished quilts, as well as some quilt tops waiting to be finished. We asked her husband to take our picture before I headed home...
Thanks for a wonderful time and I'm looking forward to getting together again!
It reminds me a mosaic tile floor...just beautiful! I wish I had the patience to make a quilt like this!
