Stuff from Abroad

I brought lots of 'stuff' home from our trip - here is the quilt related stuff. I showed most of it to Frances and Helen when they came to lunch on Saturday but I forgot to show them the Fons and Porter Half and Quarter Triangle Ruler. Which is a pity because I'm sure they can explain how to use it, its a mystery to me.

I love using the little purple Fiskars snips - they are very sharp and excellent for cutting out shapes that have been vlisofixed (wonder-undered).

And yes, I know the sewing maching fixit set is PINK and that I don't like it but there was no choice, it was pink or nothing, because we are women, right? so our tools HAVE to be pink...

Home and back to work

Well, we sort of left you in the middle of the wedding - it was so difficult to get internet access without our own computer. We won't go without one again. We didn't take the laptop because it is so heavy to carry around and so big to find somewhere safe to leave it - but most of the hotels had free broadband access for your own computer but charged heaps to use their computer. The didn't have card readers or available usb ports either which is what made it so difficult to upload photos. And in France and Germany the keyboards are different which made typing very slow - all of these added to our frustrations with keeping the blog going. However, we are home now - so some photos of the wedding: Terry the photographer; Terry and Caroline's Dad, Roger; Caroline and Bruno after the church service with bubbles blown by the children; Janice at the wedding; Janice, Caroline and Caroline's mum, Christine, shopping in Lyon.

Market and wedding

Saturday july twenty something

This is going to be a big day. Firstly we have to go to the market. We have to do this as the market is 800 years old. This means that the event is older than any of the buildings. The buildings are old. Getting me to report on the market is like getting Janice to report on a rugby match. You wont learn much. The result however was that we won. I scored a new hat and Janice must have bought something reqlly nice that I commented appropriately upon at the time - then forgot.

The wedding was a different matter altogether. First, at 3 pm, there was a service in the Town Hall. This was a busy place as there was a wedding before that of Caroline and Bruno and one after. Legal requirements met the whole party walked to the church (300 yards with a small girl carrying Caroline's train all the way. The service was very relaxed by NZ anglican church standards (it was an RC church)but none the less impressive. A choir which included Christine, Caroline,s mother, sang beautifully unaccompanied. It was perfect. A joy to hear.

The next step was the reception which was held in a huge, old hall set in beautiful grounds. This was a sort of afternoon tea for everyone. Very nice too. After a couple or three hours about 150 of us moved on to the dinner and dance. This was a 5 course meal interspursed with bouts of dancing and was really great but impossible to describe in the time I have - more when we return. We returned to the hotel sometime after 2am

Ok more later

td

Montbrisson

Thursday 26th july:
You will have heard news of the bad weather in England. We were fortunate to stay dry whilst looking at the trials at Wisley. Obviously we would not get wet at Heathrow as it is under cover. This was the only good thing about Heathrow. Arrival in Lyon was wonderful being hot and sunny and our bags arrived on the carousel promptly - and soaking wet; thoroughly drenched. There had been a downpour at Heathrow and while our baggage was waiting on the tarmac for the late arrival of our flight it had obviously been too wet for anyone to venture out and either cover it up or drive it to shelter. Fortunately the quilt whiwch is the wedding present for Caroline and Bruno, although soaked, didn't run and is now almost dry. LIkewise, most of the pages in the new books that we are carrying are not sticking together.
Caroline and her mother, Christine met us at the airport and drove us to their home, and our B&B iin Montbrisson.

Friday 27th july
A glorious day. Hot, clear blue skies and lots of shopping and sight-seeing. Caroline has lent us her car and as of Saturday morning it remains unscathed. Its actually very easy to drive on the wrong side of the road (typing with a french keyboard is not - jd) most of the time. The day ended with a bbq for both families involved in the wedding. We are being very well treated and thoroughly enjoying it.

Saturday 28th july
Wedding Day, but first we have to go to town and participate in Market Day. This has been held every Saturday for over 800 years. I hope the buns aren't stale.

still at heathrow

sorry that last post broke off so abruptly, my expensive internet connection ran out of time. here we are again, at the same connection but after breakfast. Now, were was i? of yes, Georg took us to his company and we spent a great morning walking his trial beds, seeing how the seed is accepted at 'inwards', cleaned, weighed, germ tested, packaged, stored, and sent out again. And we saw our seed at all possible stages as well.

Monday evening Georg treated us to a fantastic meal at a local Romatik Inn - 5 star meal and service.

Tuesday 24th: we spent most of the day mooching around Georg's village. It's very pretty and we took lots of photos but it was also raining a bit so we spent time in cafes and back at the b@b playing crib. We also bought Terry a couple of new shirts as we'd had a disaster in the laundry department. Someone authorised a load of washing to be washed including a black dress that SHOULD NOT have run dye but it did. Undies for the rest of the trip will be a fashionable shade of elephant...

That evening we flew out to Gatwick and on to Guildford to spend the night at a fully organic and eco friendly hotel. The walls weren't organic but the soap was a lovely vegetable soap bar instead of the liquid soap offered at all the other hotels. Dinner at a French Restaurant - fantastic food, fantastic service and utterly fantastic prices!

Wednesday: this was the focal point of the whole trip. We arrived at Wisley, the Royal Horticultural Society Trials and Showgrounds just before opening time and experienced the joy not normally the province of mere mortals. There was a long queue waiting to enter and we simply walked passed them all, our hosts whispered in the ear of a gate attendant and we were ushered through with grace and due reverence. I hate the word awesome but this was.

Inside the grounds we met Linda, Ali and Jim who together controlled all aspects of the plant trials, and I suspect much else, at Wisley. We received a guided tour of the delphinium trials under the guidance of David and shirley Basset from the Delphinium Society. T'was a good morning and our delphiniums seemed to be performing well compared to the 'others'. The trial runs for another year at the end of which some varieties may be awarded an AGM (Award of Garden Merit). The tour was followed by a lovely lunch in the Tower Room and we very much enjoyed the company of our guides and companions. The team at Wisley did us proud.

Lunch finished at about 2.30 and the rest of the afternoon was spent enjoying the grounds and the shop - guess who did what? (Sharp eyed readers may have recognised that I started this post and Terry took over part way though... he is dictating and I am typing.)

ok, off to France this afternoon.

Hamburg

Sunday 22nd July

We've been trying to upload images to the blog for the past couple of weeks but can't find a suitable internet cafe with facilites to do that. So, sorry but no pics.

Yesterday's trip from Frankfurt by train was interesting from a scenic point of view and also the human perspective - people guarding empty seats and either not giving them up or making excuses to keep them empty. Meanwhile we shared one seat, not wanting to create WW3. Navigating the underground train system in Hamburg has proved easy despite having no german. We have all day tickets for the city for just €5.10 each. Today we have to stand in the pouring rain for 15 minutes while the webcam near city hall takes our picture for robert and jennifer back home in nz. You might see us there at 10.00 pm nz time Sunday night. Janice will be wearing a bright green rain jacket. Terry' jacket is the colour of the pavement but he does have white socks and white legs.

Our hotel last night was in a famous district of Hamburg so we were told. We found out what it was famous for when we arrived and stayed off the streets to avoid being propositioned. This was mostly successful and occasionally irritating.

We are now into business mode again and will meet with Georg from Jelitto Seeds this evening. OK, gotta go, got an appointment with the webcam.

More Frankfurt

Well Terry was still not feeling right so we gave away all thoughts of seeing any german growing operations and just hung around Franfurt for another couple of days. We took the city tour on a wet wet Thursday and found out that the best shopping and the most scenic 'old' buildings were all within easy walk of our very well placed hotel. 'Old' because they were all rebuilt after being bombed in World War 2 - but rebuilt to old original style. On Friday we walked to Palmengarten - well worth the journey and the entrance fee. A beautiful garden with palms, hot houses, dahlias, roses, etc. Would benefit from a few delphiniums we thought.

We've finally figured out that if you want dessert after your meal at a german restaurant, you need to order it with the main. We ate at a fish restaurant last night (I had your favourite Frances, whole lemon sole, beautiful!) and then waited for ten minutes or so, and decided we'd like some dessert because Terry has a mission to taste all the creme brulees he can find. We waited another 30 or 40 minutes (well, we played 2.5 games of crib) and when we finally decided we were not going to get any service by waiting, we called the waiter over and asked if we could have some dessert. He said no, the restaurant was closing in 15 min. So odd! if he'd come to the table to ask if I wanted more wine I would probably have said yes.

The hotel in Frankfurt was well balanced, the not so good bed was balanced by the fabulous breakfast which is part of the deal. But we decided to move on to Hamburg today, Saturday 21st July in the hope that the bed at the next hotel will be better. We took the fast train

Dawson Creek continued

Thursday July 12th
It ain't half hot mum. About 34 deg today.

We do a little mooching around Dawson Creek in the morning. We see the sights, look at the Pioneer elevator (grain elevator and storage facility) and admire it for the grand old building that it is (I have a photo from our last visit) and return home for lunch. In the afternoon I attend to a few little bits of gardening for Anne while Janice rests and Anne supervises, gardens and perspires.

Friday July 13th
Dawson Creek spends most of its life under a white blanket of snow. This usually occurs in the winter, which is about seven months long. For the remaining five months mother nature contrives to make up for this enforced winter sloth and, before the snow is even gone, plants have broken the surface and some have even flowered. Other plants aren't far behind.
It helps of course, that there is no real dark time in summer and the sun stays our of bed for up to 19 hours at a stretch. Twilight adds another couple of hours of half-light at each end of the day too.
It follows that during the long, sunny days of June and July there is little time for temperatures to fall a great deal at "night". Put a few of these days together, couple it with a southerly breeze from the continental interior, and the temperature builds to a day like today. It's *%#^YGY*&^%!!! HOT!!!! All day and all night too.

That's why we all three decided to drive the two hours to Grande Prairie again, spend three hours there and return (2 hours). We were in air conditioning all the time.

This evening we are taken to dinner by Anita (Anne's best buddy and a really good friend of ours too) at the fanciest restaurant in town. Anita wanted to know "What do you want, good food ...or air conditioning?" We chose the good food. It was great - and we sat right in front of a fan the size of Lake Taupo, so we weren't too hot. We did however, on our way into town, learn that Thursday had been too hot for the Pioneer grain elevator. It burned down on Thursday afternoon and was smouldering when we drove past tonight.

Saturday July 14th
I learned a very good lesson yesterday. I have a photo of an elevator from our visit three years ago. That shot isn't there today - so this morning I drove to take a picture of a real nice red barn in the middle of a field of bright yellow flowering canola oil seed plants. Hopefully it won't burn down in the near future but if it does, I have the photo. I was speaking to Marilyn today. Her dad owned the red barn and she played in it as a young girl. She hopes it won't burn down too. No more ripples please!

Robert, who has been helping Jennifer while she reads our mail, texted to say we have more bills (greater value) than we have orders.
What should I say to that?

Lazy day.

Sunday July 15th
Gardening for a couple of hours.
Things are different here. They can be quite worrying too. Anne has a system for watering her plants around the house. She pumps water from a pond in the middle of her garden. To do this she runs an electric lead from a powerpoint on a tall garden light, to a submersible pump in the said pond. The lead ends by the pond where it is joined to the pump lead with a couple of ordinary plugs. The plugs and leads stay out in all weathers. Everyone does this. The electrical system in Canada is 110 volts. It still scares me to hell and back. So do the large, fresh, deep claw marks on the lawn, but don't worry. No-one else does. Perhaps whatever it was was chasing the deer that had eaten the tops out of Anne's sugar snap peas.

Went to Marilyn and Al's place for morning tea this morning. Marilyn has a really nice garden and an interesting fence. She is a real nice person. Should have asked Al about the claw marks. He is a real nice bloke. Al does a bit of hunting.

That's all for now.

Janice's Account

Well!! that was "Dawson Creek Ripple No 1" and a bit scary at the time but no harm done once he'd figured out reverse in the automatic car and got out of the road. He didn't say that right angles to the road was also tettering on the edge of a fair drop...

Shopping in Grand Praire is challenging. All the large stores are widely separated and you must drive a distance between each one. We were looking for clothes to wear to Caroline's wedding. I finally found a great, silky, many gored skirt - each panel a different fabric as befits a quilter. In orange, brown, red, sage, cream, khaki. I also got two silky singlets, one in red and one in khaki and a white jacket and white belt. I still need shoes and bag and jewellry. Terry didn't get anything that he wanted but intends to try again in Frankfurt.

Home to a lovely salmon dinner and some pinot gris. Anne has got three bottles of pinot gris in for us and the first one is gone.

Wednesday 11th July

Dawson Creek Ripple No 2: Anne has an espresso machine, well she HAD an expresso machine. Its different to any I've used before and it doesn't have an instruction manual, well, not that I've seen. I managed to explode it this morning - glass and coffee grounds spread over vast distances and as the house water tank was empty we were unable to clean it up with anything more than paper towels. So Anne says, well, I've never liked it, I'll be able to buy a new one now without feeling guilty!

Dawson Creek Ripple No 3: When Terry parked Anne's car last night in the garage he parked at a slightly different angle than Anne habitually parks. When Anne backed out this morning she turned the wheel as she normally does and backed straight into the side of the garage. We are still debating whose responsibility that one is - I think its probably one all and therefore we are all even - so need never mention any of these little ripples again - ok Robert?

Dawson Creek

Okay, the first mission is accomplished, and we landed at Fort St John to meet a happy smiling Anne. The weather at Fort St John was cool but we convinced Anne that we were dragging the warm weather up behind us and by late afternoon it was balmy again. the next really exicitng bit was driving south passed Taylor and up South Taylor Hill. I'd been monitoring conditions on south Taylor Hill for several months via webcam so knew there was no snow left,knew the camera was facing north and positioned on a high pole just south of a road sign and bingo there it was. We all waved. Back at her place we found Anne had reserved the bridal suite for us again with a new feather mattress. Anne cooked us a nice steak and we all blobbed out until bed time.

Monday 9th July: We worked hard at frittering away this day, visiting Dawson Creek for the inevitable shopping (camera cord for Terry's camera - jd) and saved ourselves for an evening bbq with Anita, Jack and familhy out in the country. Anita has a beautiful garden and Jack has lots of hay. The beautiful garden was being photographed by a famous US photographer who also photographed Anne's garden the following morning and is hoping to sell an article to the gardening magazines about two crazy women and their New Zealand connection. He also threatened to come to New Zealand for a delphinium story.

Tuesday 10th July: This day was put aside for a "serious shopping day". Anne has been letting me drive her car provided the road is straight and there is not much traffic. She is a very good passenger and didn't turn pale when I managed to get the car at right angles to the road directly in the path of a rather large black articulated truck and trailer. Drivers in Canada are very careful and courteous. I am grateful for this. I'm going to leave Janice to tell you about the shopping for a while and pick Anne up.

Hey, Jennifer!

What's all this encouraging Janice to do her patriotic duty by spending up large? She needs no encouragement at all. The other day she shopped for 7 straight hours and looked as fresh at the end as she had at the start. This is most daunting. Unfortunately I've pulled a calf muscle and am unable to keep up so there are absolutely no restraints. It's very difficult having to walk slowly when one is used to buzzing around and consequently my wallet is still full, except for the odd whisky or two. I'll have to complain to Peter at the Rutland too. The whiskys here are much larger - for the same price!

It's Anne Day today and we are hanging around waiting for taxi time. This email will double as a blog. That reminds me, thanks for the comment. No major ripples yet, except for the leg. I was walking up Iron Mountain with Stephen the other day, streaking ahead, taking photos, falling behind, streaking ahead... and that's about the time the muscle went - serve me right it will. Janice is having fun having to wait for me. Today will be something of a drag just waiting for the plane at half past one. We wake at 5 or so. Vancouver wakes at around 11 (not really). This is just a wonderful city to return to. There must be at least another 20 highrise condo buildings and hotels built since we were last here two years ago. It's a great place to walk around too (for those who can). The sights are tremendous as the fashion seems to be to try and make the cleavage meet the hemline while balancing on the sharpest, highest heels possible. Very interesting city Vancouver.

Terry's account:

Thursday July 5th

Woke up to silence - the fireworks have all gone. Breakfasted on cereal and fruit, fresh fruit that is - left over cherries, watermelon and strawberries.

These next two days are for visiting a couple of nurseries and resting. We, that's me, have to check out the local garden centres and maybe find one or two of our delphiniums and Janice has to do a little (Ha!) shopping. Well, Janice got started first and cruised the shops while I did the blog. After lunch we visit LaConnor. LaConnor is a tourist town, cum wee port. Most of the buildings are classy and those that aren't are expensive anyway. The real reason for the visit however, is to see the quilt museum. This is a grand affair, housed in an old mansion which has, of course, been restored after being ravaged by fire some time before we arrived (early 1900s I think). This is a "well worth the journey" visit and there are some magnificient quilts on display. Stephen says all the right things about Janice's quilts being even better than those displayed and I offer my usual grunts of praise and agreement.

Next to Christianson's Garden Centre. This is an upmarket garden centre that we'd visited three years ago. On that visit they had given us the name of Valleybrook Nurseries as being a great supplier. We subsequently visited Valleybrook and they have become a good customer. It was therefore great to see that Christianson's were displaying our delph, from Valleybrook, this time. We are finding that our delph are indeed becoming established in garden centres in the USA. I also found some "Double Innocence" in another store in town.

This evening we are treated to the company of Barb's mum, Willa and Willa's grandaughter Stephanie, also, Skip and Jean, Stephen and Barb's good friends. It was a great evening and Barb, who had worked 10 hours that day also cooked a wonderful meal. I should tell you that Barb's artichoke and parmesan dip is worth killing for.

Friday July 6th
The essentials today are visiting Skagit gardens and shopping. Guess who did which? Janice managed 7 hours, 13 minutes and twenty three seconds of shopping the Outlet Stores. I managed an hour or so at Skagit Gardens and picked up a catalogue illustrating our delph. Cool! The rest of the day was spent relaxing and helping Stephen watering newly planted trees that had been expressing some displeasure at being left in the hot sun for a few days shortly after being transplanted. We sorted that and they were duly appreciative. The evening was spent at a chinese restaurant with S and B and their old neighbour, Jean. There was great trauma at dinner - twice. Firstly I ordered a double whisky. Now, in NZ, one orders a double whiskey because the half full thimble sized single wouldn't whet the whistle of an adolescent, dwarf mouse. Not so, aparently in the USA. The double I received came in a tumbler three quarters the size of the Empire State Building - and was three quarters full!!!!! Ok I thought, I'll take it slowly... The next trauma was the chilli found in the vegetable and rice dish. This was no ordinary chilli. This one was raised in the back streets of Mexico and fed double whiskys and horseradish, grown for 29 years and dried. It was the hottest chilli I've tasted by a factor of about 3000 and I swallowed the whole lot before I could stop. I'm not looking forward to the sequel.

Ok. I'm a slow typist and we're on Internet Cafe time so on to today.

Saturday July 7th
Spent the morning in the garden with Stephen and then Stephen completed his "best friend in the whole USA" deal by driving Janice and I to Vancouver. The border crossing was a little more exciting than usual for him as he had two foreigners for company and had to jump through the same hoops we did but apart from that the journey was eventless.
The whole week with Stephen and the few days with both Stephen and Bard have been fantastic and represent a considerable debt to be repaid. We are hopeful that they will bring Skip and Jean over to NZ and allow us the priveledge of returning this hospitality. You guys were simply fantastic! Thanks a million for getting our trip off to a wonderful start. See you soon. Please. You only need the air fare.

Onward to Vancouver

Another picture for Aimee - this one is taken on Stephen and Barb's stone wall that was mentioned in a previous post. You can see Stephen's truck in the background. This was taken just as we were saying goodbye to Barb, and leaving for the trip to Vancouver.

Mount Vernon

(Janice here - I've sent terry on an errand so i can have some time on MY blog): Well, it was hard to get much time to blog over the last couple of days... I spent a good deal of the time shopping, well, someone has to do it and terry and stephen had nurseries to visit so it was up to me. I spent Thursday morning at Mt Vernon shopping centre where there is a food co-op that sells a lot of health foods and I was able to get some good rice based snacks and some sulphur free wine. That afternoon Stephen took Terry and I to the La Conner Quilt Museum. What an interesting place, an old house with three floors of quilts, the lower one was antique quilts and the upper two were exhibits by two modern quilters. That night Skip, Jean, Willa and Stephanie came to dinner and we had a lovely evening - great conversation and great food.

And on Friday, while the boys gardened and slept, I did the local Outlet Mall - had a fabulous day buying shoes (sketcher sandals), quilt material and clothes (two shirts, one reebok hoodie, 2 pr jammies, undies). The boys called in at lunchtime, bought me lunch and left again as i hadn't finished. when I had finished they picked me up and took me to Joanns ( the local equivalent of spotlight) and they just happened tohave quilt tools on sale at half price - another big spend (purple fiskars snips and purple fiskars rotary cutter)! I have a picture of the fabric i've bought so far this trip - caution, drool alert! That night we all went with Stephen and Barb's friend Jean to a chinese restaurant for dinner where Terry was served with a full five fingers of scotch whiskey! he made no attempt to drink it all. We think that when he said no ice they were so used to filling the glass with ice in it they just went ahead and filled the glass without ice!

the first picture of the two of us is for Aimee who was worried that grumps was lonely when she saw a photo of him on his own. It was taken on Monday evening in Cottage Grove when we were looking around this lovely old town with Alice but this is the first chance we've had to upload pictures since then. The second 'quilty' picture next to my fabric stash is of the quilt shop in Sisters.

A Thousand Miles

Monday 2nd July

We have a lot to do today but hey, why hurry? Waking up to a view of large barges making their way up the Colombia river (second largest in the USA) and a house empty of our hosts Mike and Mary, we eat, pack and set off for Blooming Nursery, about an hour south west of Portland.

The weather is warm and sunny and the cherries ($1.95 lb) and nectarines sweet and juicy. The instructions for finding the nursery are on the pda which is dammed hard to read in the bright light but we make it to Blooming after having to ask the locals directions - fewer than 10 times. Blooming is a reasonable sized nursery employing 70 staff - in the slow season. This grows to almost 100 when things get busy. Nohemi, the really cheerful production manager is delighted to see us and we embark on a tour of the place. We don't actually see all of the 47 acres but what we do see is impressive. Blooming is a perennial plant nursery and has a vast area of weedless, beautifully laid out stock plant beds that just happened to be flowering. It looked magnificient!
I speak with the propagation manager about .... stuff..... and admire the greenhouses which are definitely SOTA. All houses have concrete floors and some have flood watering systems that deliver heated water and nutrients to plants in pots and trays - without having to water from above. Everything is automated.
I seem to remember getting stuck in present tense Micky Spillane type writing last time we went away - must be something to do with travel. I digress.
We meet with the owner, Grace and leave with the impression that these people love our delphiniums and are keen to promote them more. They're already a good customer and the visit was very good for building on this blah di blah di blah, ra, ra. Blooming is a very good operation.

Ok, can't hang around. Off we go, south down the Willamatte valley to the tiny town of Cottage Grove - about a four hour drive. Lunch is nice, the cherries still sweet and juicy and the weather getting hotter. We arrive at Territorial Seeds at 4:30 pm and meet Josh, the manager there. Immediately there is a bonus - we find some seed sieves that we can't get in NZ. Territorial want to add our delph to their catalogue, that's ok by me.

The real purpose of venturing this far south is to visit Alice Doyle of Log House Plants. She organised the meeting with Territorial and greeted us with a hug. Alice, a lifelong hippie, is a great plants person and runs a nursery that sells throughout the pacific north west. She is a great marketer too and really knows how to move her plants. Alice greeted us like a long lost friend and her hospitality was fantastic. If you're reading this Alice, thanks, you did us proud!

That night we stayed at a resort hotel specialising, of course, in gardens, and arranged for us, of course, by Alice.

Tuesday 3rd July

I'll keep this one short. Ha! Mmm, these cherries are nice but sure make the keyboard sticky.

Breakfast and a meeting with Cindy, the head gardener. Cindy is responsible for developing the resort garden into a place that will attract droves of garden fanatics for conferences and starry-eyed, well-heeled couples for weddings. Needless to say, this garden needs our delphiniums. So may the other dozen or so hotels in the chain. Cindy does a great job. Her budget is....unlimited. I'd like one of those!
Stephen and I enjoy a two hour tour of the garden with Cindy in the sun. Janice checks the email in the shade.
Off to Loghouse Plants at 11 am and another tour. As I said, the reception at Loghouse was terrific. Alice's niece, Anna, married to Marcos (the Greek) is a sculptor. Before showing us her current work in progress she prepares a most delicious Greek lunch. This is seriously nice. We then went over to her studio to see her work. This is seriously good. Very good. It's unfinished. I'm allowed a photograph. I'm lucky, as usual. Anna trained at the top classic sculpting school in Italy. Is a very good a sculptor, no?
Tour of Loghouse Plants. 2,100 plant varieties. 26 greenhouses. Hot day.
Alice tells us we must visit Iron Mountain and Sisters on the way back. Iron mountain has alpine meadows. Sisters has quilts. We say goodbye at 4:30 pm.

The drive to Iron Mountain takes a couple of hours or so and we decide to go straight to Sisters, on the east side of the Cascade mountain range. We drive the long way as the mountain pass is closed. Night in Motel.

Wednesday July 4th (something significant with that date, can't remember what)
Stephen and I set off for Iron Mountain to see plants. Janice stays in town to see quilts. The alpine meadows are breathtaking and we see fields of wild delphiniums with masses of other stuff too. We take lots of photographs and spend nothing. We return to Sisters at 11 am. Janice says the quilts are great, the town teriffic, takes a few photographs and spends ...something. We set off for Mt Vernon and Stephen's wife Barb. The cherries are sweet and juicy and it's now 91DegF. I drive. We survive. Eight hours later we arrive.
Another great welcome from Barb in a lovely new house with a garden created by the two of them and a low wall of rocks hauled from miles away after being carted across a stream the width of the Whanganui river. We have steak, a wonderful artichoke dip, long peppers and the cherries were sweet and juicy. Stephen has driven us over 1000 miles in three days and been just great. Barb has welcomed and fed us fantastic. This is wonderful hospitality. And then, the knockout blow! The whole town put on a huge display of fireworks for us, about 3 hours worth. I thought this a bit over the top not realising how many folk Stephen had told about our visit. What a wonderful welcome.

Wednesday 5th July

Write a blog without spell check or pictures.

Portland

Ok, Janice has done the images so I'm on the text.

Saturday June 30th

Left wet Wanganui after a great send off from R and J

The flight from Auckland to San Francisco was fantastic. From the moment we took off to the moment we landed we didn't touch the ground at all, the seats were comfortable, the food was good and we both managed several hours sleep. We made up lost time so we made our connection. The big surprise however, was still to come. San Francisco customs officials were smiling, helpful and happy and the transfer through customs to the flight to Portland took about 20 minutes all up, including walk time. We actually felt welcomed into the USA.

Stephen Murphy drove a couple of hunders miles south to pick us up and deliver us to his sister and brother-in-law's place not far from the airport on the banks of the Colombia river. We ate, talked and went to bed.

Sunday July 1

Up around 8 and spent the morning touring the lower reaches of the Colombia river looking for wild delphiniums. Didn't see any, but did find several lovely waterfalls. I got some great photos of these and even remembered to load the memory card into the camera first. What a clear mind. I must travel more often. In the afternoon Stephen took us to see Ft Vancouver (in Washington state just over the river from Portland, Oregon) where he used to do volunteer gardening work. There was a blacksmith and a baker demonstrating old skills and a really chatty, well informed guide showed us around what was the head man's house. Ft Vancouver was owned by the Hudson Bay Company and used as a trading post/store preparitory to shipping beaver furs back to the "old country". Sadly, all buildings are reconstructions as the originals were burned down in a fire some time before we arrived - but they looked and felt the part. We even found a couple of long drops, but refrained! If you look at the photos you will see three fold away beds from the 1840s - nothing new in the world eh!

Then to the most exciting bit........shopping! We bought a few electronic bits and pieces ( I got a 1gig CF camera card for $25 and Janice a 1 gig SD card even cheaper. Then to Powell's book store in Portland. This is the "must visit" and well worth the journey. Second hand books are sold alongside new ones and it's set out by subject matter, rather like a library. We used a few dollars here too.

Our hosts, Mike and Mary Marquande, have been wonderful and Stephen, our chaufer and guide, his usual bouyant self. We're having fun.

Monday July 2nd

Rose at 5:30. I went for a jog and Janice did some resting for me. Today we go visiting nurseries and drive down past Eugene to Cottage Grove to meet more growers and a seed company. More later.

Cheers

Terry

Only two more sleeps!

We'll soon be leaving on our five week trip to places warmer than here! First stop Portland, Oregon. Due to the wonders of the International Dateline, we leave Wanganui at 1.00 pm on Saturday, travel for 26 hours and arrive in Portland at 5.30 pm the same day. And I'm so close to getting the Elemental Challenge quilt finished. Its been a bit of a race.

Look here: the long shot shows you the quilt, all quilted. It just needs to be trimmed, bound and have the label put on. Then I need to make a travelling bag for it and post it. The labels are printed (one for the quilt, one for the bag), the entry form is completed and the cheque written. If nothing important crops up for me to do tomorrow (apart from my planned tasks) then I should get it finished. Fingers crossed for me please!

The second two photos are close ups of the quilting, the lower part is quilted in strata lines and the upper quarter with leaves. Heavier, slightly arched lines were quilted across the quilt first and the close quilting is kept in between those lines.

You can't see it on the photo but the quilt is quite wavy at the edges. If you have any ideas on how to alleviate that as I put the binding on I'd love to hear them. I'm thinking of cutting the binding to match the length through the centre length and width of the quilt and pinning the sides to fit the binding. I don't like the finish at the corners when the binding is done like that instead of being turned around the corners though. Has anyone mitred binding at their corners? Do you think that would work?

If you want to follow our travels they will be recorded here by one or other of us, on this blog, whenever we can get access to a computer. I'll try to get time to post a pic of the finished quilt tomorrow but I might not manage it. I'm still hoping to get the sewing room vacuumed before I leave... Helen and Frances are coming on Sunday to play there!

Well, duh!

I've spent my spare moments over the last four days, hand sewing the labels and sleeves on the two quilts I'll be taking way with us for gifts, the one for Caroline and the Orange Explosion. I've been thinking, no, I won't post yet, I'll wait until I've got photos of the labels and of the finished quilts, then I'll post. Well, guess what? I've finished the quilts, I've sewn on the labels and sleeves AND I've wrapped the quilts in little cotton bags and tied them up with big bows and I'm blowed if I'm unwrapping them to get photos! So, here is the photo of the finished quilts and here is the poem Terry wrote for the label on the Orange Explosion. If you like it and want to use it on your quilt label you are welcome.

Use this quilt any way you want

Right way up - or back to front

It’s got a sleeve for hanging on the wall

Just like a picture, and it won’t fall.

You can throw it in the car as a picnic rug

Or wrap it round each other in a loving hug

Squeeze it, scrunch it, throw it around

Or just leave it lying on the ground.

Use it on a table, give it to the cat

Wrap it round your head like a very tall hat!

But it’s too big for a hankie, I suppose

So please don’t use it to blow your nose.

It’s been a pleasure to make so take it please

You can use it to warm your winter knees

And if you tire of having it stay

Make someone else happy and give it away!

What am I going to wear??

Deciding what to pack for the trip is always fraught. It gives me sleepless nights! (I know, I know, you wish you had my problems!) I don't like to take too much because I know I'll buy more while I'm away, but I want to be prepared for a range of temperatures and situations (business, travel, sightseeing, eating out). I want all my shirts (3 sleeveless, 2 short sleeved), cardigans (1 casual, 1 evening) and jackets (1 dressy, 1 rain) to go with all my trousers (1 cargo, 1 light denim, 1 dressy) and skirts (1 light)... and this time its complicated by the fact that I've lost nearly 20 kg since the end of last year and I don't have many summer clothes that fit me. I need to pack summer clothes because we are travelling to the northern hemisphere but its winter here and its winter clothes I've been buying over the last couple of months as I came down a couple of dress sizes. I've had some clothes given me by my daughter and I'll take some of them. One pale pink t-shirt she gave me had long, flared sleeves and I decided today to cut them short and make it into a summer shirt. Here is the end result. I've cut the sleeves off, and hemmed them so the cut edge hangs lower than the hem. I also added some decoration by ironing interfacing to a piece of patterned silky material. I cut the motifs from the fabric and stuck them on the shirt with vliesofix. I then free-motion stitched over the motifs. I imagine the edges of the motifs will fray once its washed but I stitched very close to the edge so that should be ok. The black "stitching" on the pink shirt is actually drawn on with a fine pigma pen.

A Gentle Saturday

T'was a gentle Saturday because I wasn't feeling 100%. Just a bit of a cold but there was no need to push myself so I didn't. Helen came to use the SwiftQuilter so I took the opportunity to borrow some of her energy and spent the day in the sewing room with her. Instead of lolling around feeling grotty I actually achieved something useful and completed the 2 blocks and appliqué prep for the Cotton-on Quilter's raffle quilt. Two 5" blocks, 5 leaves and 2 flower parts took me all day, t'was a gentle day...

The first pic shows Helen's quilt on the frame ready to quilt - and looking at the pic now I realise the backing is on the roller upside down but it seemed to work ok. And the second shows Helen working on a birds nest - the result of forgetting to put the presser foot down before starting to sew - she only did it once in a whole day's quilting but I got a pic of it! In the background you can see my elemental challenge quilt. I have sewn the strips together in pairs but that's as far as its got at the moment. I may get something done on it today.

The next two pics show my other project that is taking most of my time. In three weeks we will be leaving for a five week trip. Half work, half play. The first week will be spent in the USA visiting nurseries and hopefully selling seed. The second week will be in Canada visiting friends. The third week in Germany on business again and the fourth week we will be in France. We have been invited to a wedding there! 7 years ago a young French student came to work in our nursery for 6 weeks as part of her degree programme. She wrote a report of her time here and in the report was a drawing of our nursery. I hope she hasn't found my blog yet because the photos show the quilt I am making for her wedding present using her plan of our nursery as my pattern. I designed the border to complement the plan and I've made it a suitable wall hanging or coffee table size. In the first pic you can see her original drawing, my enlargement of it and the quilt. I haven't quilted the border area or the top right quarter of the plan, the rest is pretty much complete.