Where I'm At

My Dad and brothers are radio controlled aircraft fans from way back. They’ve been building and flying them since what seems like forever. As the technology has changed they’ve kept up. Along came helicopters – they were in. New engines, new battery types, new aircraft types – they’ve got ‘em all. Nowdays they have the cutest little wee helicopters that they can fly indoors – they buzz like bees. So cute. And then. Then there is this.

Bigfork is a great little town, and every year they have a great Independence Day parade. We have our routine to make sure we get a seat right in the action. That involves walking up the big hill (which I swear gets longer and steeper every year) and across the highway and then into town. We have our favorite spot on the wall in front of the Bigfork Inn. From there we can look West and see the parade coming in from the highway and down the long hill. Looking East we look up the hill and toward the turn onto the main street. People start gathering at about 11:00, and by the time the parade begins at noon the street is crowded with a sea of people wearing red, white and blue. I’ve made a mosaic of pictures from the day – let’s see if I can make it work here:

How about that! It worked! The first row shows the street at 11:00, and at 11:15, and a group waiting on the balcony enjoying their drinks. The second row has all of us, waiting for the action to begin, the sheriffs on their bikes (back in the day it would have been horses, but welcome to the 21st century) and the street at noon with the parade underway. Last row shows the local pipe band strutting their stuff, Mom and I waiting for our boat ride home and finally our 4th of July fish taco dinner.

It was a perfect hot sunny day, which ended with a great display of fireworks. I have a snazzy new camera, and it takes movies. Here’s about a minute and a half of the fireworks:

You Tube link

Folks around here are really big on fireworks, though things are a little quieter than in some previous years. As it was the displays began at about 8:00, with the really big stuff getting going once it got dark, sometime after 10:00. By 11:00 most of the flashing and banging was over.

Wilf and I are in Bigfork, MT visiting my parents. We came in search of summer, and thought we’d found it. There has been some backsliding into spring, though, with rain and cool temperatures. Sorta like at home.

We’re settling into the lake routine – baseball games and barbeque dinners, shopping, walking by the river, reading. My brother Bill will arrive next week, at which point we’ll get the boat launched. Bill’s arrival will also help us get our quota of electronics closer to usual. My brother Mike and sister-in-law Christine won’t be joining us this year, so we won’t achieve our full gadget complement.

Why the fixation on gadgets? Well, for one thing, it leads to scenes like this:

Mom never met a PowerPoint presentation full of super cute animals that she didn’t love. Wilf is showing her the latest to arrive – looks like it was a good one.

Rumor has it that summer will return tomorrow – Wilf has the fishing gear all ready and says he’s heading out.He won’t be fishing in any of the local rivers, though. There was a record snow pack in the mountains above us this year – the cool spring has kept it all from coming down at once. The rivers are very high, though and totally blown out. On the way to town we cross the Flathead River – the water level is almost to the bottom of the docks along the banks and the water hardly appears to be moving – the lake it full up and the water is backed up into the river. Apparently the gates at the Kerr Dam at the south end  of the lake are all wide open, but there is still too much water everywhere. And lots more to come, given the way the mountains look. We thought we might take a trip up to the Big Mountain to take a ride up the chair lift. But from down here we can see that there is still snow on the upper runs, so perhaps not…

So – greetings from Montana, with hopes for a sunnier time to come soon!

Last night we watched the end of season episodes for two series we’ve been hooked on this spring – ‘The Killing’ and ‘Game of Thrones’. Be warned – lots of spoilers (and ranting) to follow, so if you haven’t seem them, and care, be warned.

Firstly – the Bad. The Killing. &%$#@! I mean really. *&$#@@! What a disappointment. Whoever was in charge really blew that one. The opening episode was riveting. The premise – that each episode was one day in the investigation of a young girl’s murder – proved to be a challenge for the writers to sustain. And throughout the series the implication was that at the end of the 13 weeks the murderer would be revealed. The acting throughout was superb, but the plot wandered all over, and last week when it appeared that the murder was revealed we were – ‘No way! That’s too easy. You can’t have it be him after all this’ And then came last night. What a nonsensical mishmash that turned out to be. And after telling us season that the murder would be solved – nope. And a major character is revealed to be working for sinister forces and oh it was just bad bad bad. I was distracted from my foot stamping and teeth gnashing by the fact that ‘Game of Thrones’ was on immediately after. But when I checked the Internet later I saw that I was no alone in my disappointment. My guys Tom and Lorenzo cover it all here, if you’re interested.

But then there was the Good. Have you been watching Game of Thrones? It was another series that had a fantastic opener and it has just got better. I’m not at all familiar with the books and have no preconceived notions about what is going to happen. Which has allowed me to be surprised as the plot twists and turns. Last night really delivered and I’m looking forward to the next season.

When the series opened it appeared to be about King Robert, his chief advisor Ned Stark and the deposed Targaryen siblings. But by the end of the first season several of the top billed and central characters have been killed off and it appears that the story will actually center on the next generation. King Robert, Ned Stark, and Khal Drogo are dead. Winter is coming, something baleful is stirring in the outlands and now there are dragons. Woohoo!

I was thinking of reading the books to find out what happens, but then again, maybe not. Lets see how season two goes. I don’t expect to be watching The Killing, after all.

My blog header says that ‘I like to make things. I like to travel. I like to talk about what I’m up to’ I haven’t really kept on the ‘I like to make things part’, so I thought I’d toss in some project reviews.

Last year I bought a copy of One Yard Wonders, a book with lots of cute patterns that I figured would help me use up some of my fabric collection. Of course, these things only work if you use them and the book languished on my work table.

Earlier this year Pink Chalk Fabrics, a really nice online quilting store, started working their way through One Yard Wonders – every week they do two projects, first showing the project picture from the book along with their fabric choices and later following up with a post showing the finished projects and their construction notes. I’ve been following along, reading the blog, thinking ‘I should do that’. When they got to the yoga mat carry bag I decided it was time. Here is their version.

And here is mine:

 

I used 1/2 yard of Kaffe Fasset stripe for the exterior and 1/2 yard Kona Cotton for the interior. As I was determined to sew this one from what was in my sewing room I didn’t buy webbing for the strap – I used a coordinating Kaffe Fasset stripe.

Rather than an elastic top I made a casing and put in a drawstring. The white cordlock doesn’t really match, but it was to hand. I’ll have to dig deeper in the stash to see if I have another colour.

See- I really do have a yoga mat in there!

I made a few changes to the pattern as written. I left off the pocket. The lighter weight fabric strap/handle is fine for light usage, but if I was carrying this bag around a lot I’d go for a sturdier handle and reinforce the attachment points for durability. As stated I used a drawstring rather than elastic for the top.

So – quick and easy. Now I just have to take the mat out of the bag and use it!

It’s not Brigadoon. But it is a rarely seen phenomenon, worthy of a photo, perhaps. Behold – the bottom of the laundry basket:

Nature, of course, abhors a vacuum, which meant that as soon as the picture was taken a disturbance was felt in the force. Laundry immediately appeared to fill the void…

And so it goes.

You only have to spend a little time trolling the Internet to find all sorts of  ‘X a day’ type activities, where X might be a photo a day, or a scrapbook page a day, or 750 words a day, or a self portrait a day or…. you get the idea. There are no end of them. I’ve set myself writing challenges – most recently using 750words.com to write the equivalent of 3 pages per day for a month. Its all good. Practice means improvement, after all.

The Internet and social networking has upped the ante on these challenges – suddenly there are communities and virtual teams and support and ideas all a few clicks away. Feel yourself losing enthusiasm? There’s always someone on the ‘team’ to cheer you on. Or you can just do your thing in silence.

Yesterday I was reading and came across 30Days of Creativity. As the site says:  

‘30 Days of Creativity is a social initiative encouraging people to create stuff (anything) every day for 30 days in June.
Your brain is like a muscle. When you exercise it, it gets stronger.’

I was intrigued, but then I thought what I always think about these things. ‘I’ll be away and so won’t be able to participate’ And then I thought ‘You know, maybe it is just time to let go of that thinking’.

The fact of things is that we travel a lot. In 2010 we have been away for at least one night of each month, excepting  May, and looking at the rest of the year so far only September has no travel plans (yet). Waiting for the perfect pristine block of time – it ain’t going to happen, and that is how it is. And I’m not complaining. I’m so lucky to be able to go to so many interesting places, and then return to my wonderful home.

In April I decided that I wanted to take a fitness class and signed up for a five week session of Zumba, knowing that I would be away for one class. Well, I loved it, can’t wait to do some more in July. And as is so often the case – life interfered and I got to three of the five sessions. Which is three more than I would have gotten to if I had said – ‘Oh well, I’ll be away, no point in  signing up’.

So – you know what? I’m in to create something everyday in June. Let’s see how it goes. I’ll post a weekly summary here of what I’ve done. And rather then just working away on my own I’m going to participate in the 30 Days site. Which means brushing up my Twitter and Flickr skills, among other things.

And…. here I go!

Oops – sorry about that. Didn’t mean to leave you looking at Wilf and his new Vegas friends for quite that long. Here – look at some rhododendrons instead:

 

That’s last year’s picture, of r.Sappho, taken on May 16. This year, on May 30, Sappho hasn’t cracked a bud yet – getting close, but we’re about two weeks behind in the whole flower department.

We enjoyed our time in Las Vegas, then moved on to San Diego – spent about a week mostly hanging around Mission Beach, riding bikes and walking. There was some fishing in San Diego, no catching though.

April was a busy month for me with quilting – I took a two workshops with Martha Cole, went to a quilting retreat with friends in Qualicum Beach and another retreat here in town. Those adventures merit their own blog post, which will follow.

It became clear that waiting for warm weather to get to the serious garden clean up was going to be a long wait. We’ve been out hacking and pulling and digging and hauling. Things are definitely looking better, but we have many wheelbarrows full to haul yet.

Last spring we decided to renovate the back yard and remove a bunch of lawn, especially the slopey bits. We went from this:

to this:

and now we’re at this:

Much better. On the east side of the yard similar lawn reduction occurred. What lawn that is left needs a little work, which means….

Sadly we have not been able to convince the dirt to come up to the back yard by itself, so we take turns hauling barrowfulls up from the driveway. The moss has pretty much been beat into submission, the rain has abated enough that it isn’t a mud hole – we’ll get there eventually!

but what happens on Fremont Street winds up on the Internet! Case in point…..

Making new friends….

And then there was dancing….

All in all, a happy bunch on a Saturday night….

When we were waiting for our flight to Vegas we noticed a person in the waiting area wearing a jacket covered in NASCAR emblems. Considering that Victoria is not a hotbed of NASCAR activity that was noteworthy. When there were half a dozen people so dressed by flight time – that was unusual. Until the flight crew welcomed everyone who was heading for Race Week. Yes – we are in Vegas during the yearly NASCAR event held at the Las Vegas raceway. They are expecting 150,000 people at the event over the weekend. Lot of good old boys around here, I’m just saying.

Last night we went to the Monte Carlo Casino – they have a nice pub there. Turns out some race drivers were there signing autographs. You should have seen the lineup! Crazy. Fortunately folks weren’t sticking around so we had no trouble getting a spot at the bar.

The other thing we did was visit good old boy central, also know as the Bass Pro Shop. And in honour of the NASCAR event there were, of course, cars in the store:

But not before you are faced with these guys:

Yep, wrestling ungulates at the front door.

Over in the fishing session:

Schools of tuna. And a shark.

and of course an indoor shooting range.

The whole store is stuck onto the side of the Silverton Casino, so one is never far from the slots!