As Jean and I walked around the Brown Trout Festival area, I noticed this tailgating party of “Good Ol’ Boys” And had to get a photo of their team shirts.
Uff Da Fishing Team! Oh, my – you are NOT in North Carolina Anymore!
My inner Minnesotan was smiling.
I was thinking of “Grumpy Old Men” movies and throwing myself right in to small town festival life.
How fun this was to feel a PART of things while I was in Alpena, Michigan.
Uff Da, indeed!
While we were fishing for JUST the right scraps to go together in our Wonky Wishes blocks, there is another kind of fishing going down in Alpena, Michigan – and this is SERIOUS stuff, folks!
From what I understand, the Brown Trout Festival is in its 44th year, and I got to wear the commemorative tee shirt! Thanks, Jean!
Gosh, I love this – small town festivals and all that goes with it from music and dancing under the big tent, to people watching, the anticipation of the fishing that starts TODAY -
While all of this is going on in town around us, there was NOTHING fishy about our quilty fun held in the big meeting room at the Holiday Inn Express in Alpena.
My early morning flight to Detroit -
The sky was just a mix of magic and clouds.
There is something special about greeting the day just before dawn, and watching the sky reveal itself to the day.
And I was excited – going somewhere I’d never been before, to a town I’d never heard of and really wasn’t sure of its exact location.
I’ve been many places in Michigan before, but in a state that is a peninsula, with water all around, it’s easy to get a bit confused.
So I asked my friend Tim – just where IS Alpena.
Asking a Michigander where something is, always resorts in a flurry of hand signals. Up comes the hand, and the other hand points to where on the hand this place is.
I’ve never seen any other state do it. Maybe someday I’ll have the Michigan hand-jive down too!
Tim said “It’s close to the tip of the index finger!”
And I found this photo:
Facebook marketplace is proving to be dangerous – in a very good way!
It’s even easier than Craigslist, less dodgy, and allows you to peek at the profile of the person whose items are up for sale.
And it’s right at my fingertips.
TWIN BEDS has been my search item for the past few months, and on Monday, I found an ad that I’d been hoping to find -
Not just one, but TWO vintage white metal beds – HOORAY for room number FIVE!
The only problem? They were in Lenoir, NC – which is not far from Wilkesboro, NC, but quite a haul from where I am in Wallburg.
Still. What was the chance that I was going to find two beds in one location, just what I needed at an absolutely fabulous price?
I started up a conversation with the seller, and a plan was hatched.
I would meet with her realtor at the home of her parent's empty-and-up-for-sale house at 6pm last night after my last 4pm post office run.
What I didn't count on was that it would rain and storm from the time I hit Wilkesboro!
Of COURSE it would rain. That's just the way things are.
There is a reason I usually choose to use cornerstones with sashing in a quilt.
The cornerstones are a way to keep everything aligned from row to row – a check point of where things need to meet, nest, and match up keeping the rows above and the rows below in line with each other.
But with some designs – as in the attic window setting I’m using for my Diamond Tile blocks – sashing without cornerstones must happen.
And for the effect to be right – intersections need to be just right.
This is my little trick for making sure that the process is mostly painless, if not exactly pin-less.
Sometimes you just gotta say “It is what it is!” and let it be what it is.
Such was the case yesterday – because things happen.
When the Quilter’s Date Keepers and Quilty Pencil Sets were arriving, I took inventory of what I had in the shipping supplies department, and quickly placed a reorder for my usual Amazon Prime bubble mailers. They are usually here in two days, the shipping is free with prime, and we’d be good to go – they would arrive after our 4th of July holiday.
Only problem was – ONE out of the 8 cases arrived, and following tracking numbers showed that the other 7 got waylaid along their route somehow, and did not arrive yesterday.
It was one of those days where I was also racing the clock – would the remaining cases arrive by the time I ran out of the ones I already had on hand?
This is a bed with a story.
It has lived many places during my lifetime, and many more before that.
It belonged, as half of a pair, to my Grannie’s parents – their bedroom set back when folks slept separately in twin beds.
I’ve often wondered about this scenario, pre-Victorian times and forward to the Dick Van Dyke show reruns we watched as kids.
Why were people in TV shows in 2 beds? I think it was all the way until the Brady Bunch came round before I realized that Carol and what's-his-name (*edited to add: MIKE! it was MIKE! It just came to me) were in the same bed together. Scandalous, just scandalous!
Let’s face it – after spending 10 hours at the dining room table, it is time to say “Enough is enough for today!” and do something else.
If for nothing more than to get my eyes off of the computer screen and give them a break. And standing while doing it is even better after sitting all day.
My rule is “Done By Dinner.” As far as order fulfillment goes, though I will admit to working past 10pm on Friday just to play catch up. We are getting there!
Last evening however – this begged to be loaded into the machine.
And that was all I was intending to do – just load it.
Yeah right.
Just run one row of quilting stitches across the top to see how I like it.
And then…
This little beauty arrived home from Quiltmaker Magazine just in time for 4th of July - -
But I didn’t get it photographed until YESTERDAY with all that was going on over the holiday.
And now that I look at it, I think I’ve got it over the rail side ways – those neutral squares are supposed to go up and down top to bottom. But, oh well!
This is Right Way Round, and will be featured in a quickly up-coming issue so stay tuned!
Remember those WRONG WAY blocks I made that ended up in my nephew Henry Joseph’s quilt? (can it really be a year ago I gifted that quilt to my sister in law, Anna?)
