Lovely Wedding Weekend

We're back from the beach, where we enjoyed a delightful weekend with family and friends at Maribeth and John's wedding.  They were married at the yard of their home on the Intercoastal Waterway.  Our little granddaughter Charlotte did a great job as one of the flower girls!

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We also enjoyed a little beach time and an extra night with good friends Marcia and Gerry.  We had never been to their lovely new home in Wilmington.  Old friends are the best friends!

Old Friends

My best friend at Cary High School and my roommate at N.C. State- at least for a short time- was Barbara Patton of Cary. I got her a blind date with the roommate of a guy I was dating. They got married during our sophomore year. I got married (to a different guy!) at the end of junior year. We were in each other's weddings.

That was one of my more successful matchmaking attempts. Barbara and Doug came to Raleigh this weekend to celebrate their fortieth wedding anniversary. We met for dinner at The Angus Barn.

Happy Anniversary, Barbara and Doug!

A Happy Friday

I decided yesterday that Fridays would be days for my own pleasure and projects. Why not? The joy of being retired once again!

I started the day with a nice e-mail from a high school friend. I found out that her daughter lives only four miles from me. We are looking forward to getting together soon when she comes down here from Virginia Beach to visit her new grand baby.

Shopping was next. First, The Cotton Company. No, quilters, it is not a fabric shop! It is one of those shopping emporiums in an old cotton exchange warehouse building. It contains lots of vendor booths with numerous decorative items for home and garden, jewelry, toys, and so forth. What is unique is that there are artists' studios in one wing of the building, where they can also sell their creations. After browsing the galleries, I had a nice chat with artist Dick Larsen and toured his workspace. It featured animal portraits in oil paints, mostly dogs full of personality.

One of the vendor booths is a fair trade market with products from Peru and other countries. I picked up a birthday gift for my husband's sister that I hope she will like. I also found several other goodies while wandering through the vendor areas. And decided to buy myself an early birthday gift (my b-day is tomorrow) of a pretty beaded necklace with shell pendant. Very inexpensive but in colors I love.

Then, on to the local quilt shop, Quilts Like Crazy. Here I had a nice chance to catch up with my friend Nancy Pease, long-arm quilter extraordinaire and former shop owner. She still owns the knitting part of the store, which will be renamed Yarn Birds. I met the new QLK owner, Betsy Jobe, and her husband. I toted along the butterflies quilt I am finishing, and was pleased at the oohs and ahhs from several folks in the store who loved the quilt. I chose a chocolate brown Moda Marbles fabric for the binding. I also bought just half a yard each of a fabric called Samba in two bright, happy colorways. No plans for these yet, they just called my name.

When I got home and checked the mail, I got a wonderful surprise: my MQX photo DVD! I ordered this since I did not get to attend Machine Quilters Exposition in New Hampshire this year, but two of my quilts were juried in. Photographer Jeffrey Lomicka took a full photo and several detail photos of each quilt and garment. I was pleased with the pictures of my quilts, and drooled all over the keyboard at the images of the quilts that were on display at the show.

DH and I decided to go to an excellent cafeteria in downtown Wake Forest for supper. We almost always select their Brunswick stew, a yummy homemade chicken stew with vegetables and potatoes in a tomato base. This must have been my day to re-connect with old friends, for there was my friend Cathy G. from the Wake Forest Middle School. She was the media assistant during my last few years there. She came over and sat with us for a nice little visit.

After supper it started to rain. This is always a good thing here in drought-stricken North Carolina. It was a gentle but steady rain, so we headed out to the front porch rockers to enjoy the cool weather and a glass of wine. Eventually there was a fiery sunset against the dark storm clouds. Maggy was sitting there with us, very bored that she had to stay on the porch and watch it rain. We were enjoying the sunset and the hummingbird who was buzzing us, chatting on the phone with Charlie's sister, when suddenly two deer appeared as if by magic on the lawn right in front of us. I bet they were not ten feet away. Suddenly Maggy sprang to life and took off after them across the yard. She was back shortly having successfully chased them off.

Both Charlie and I got wind chimes while we were at the beach last week. Mine were an early birthday present from my in-laws. Charlie's were a Father's Day gift from Dave and Emily. We hung them both on the front porch. Charlie's are an amusing set of fake beer bottles that contain tea candles. They looked nice all lit up in the darkness.

Here is my funny flamingo. Well, that's enough posting for one day!

Sad Joy

If you have been reading my blog for awhile, you may remember that my husband's partner lost his wife Pam to cancer just before Christmas. (A Beautiful Goodbye) Spike called me a couple weeks ago to ask two favors. One was to find a use for Pam's library of quilt books. The other was to ask if I would finish some of Pam's unfinished quilts for him and their two daughters. Wow- I was overwhemed with joy that I could do something that might bring them comfort. And you know I love quilt books. He filled a cardboard carton with her books, and there were only about three that were duplicates of my own collection. I have been reading through these and deciding which to keep. Many of them were bookmarked for certain projects. :( Some I gave to members of my quilt bee, and the others will be donated either to the Capital Quilters Guild library or the public library.

One of the favorites that I kept is called At Piece With Time: A Woman's Journey Stitched in Cloth. This is a lovely book with watercolor illustrations, many charming and inspirational quotations, and a series of blocks that make up a sampler quilt. The author is Kristin C. Steiner and the illustrator is Diane c. Frankenberger. I had never heard of this book, but highly recommend it as beautiful eye candy and feel-good inspiration. I love the style of the artwork, and have been copying some of the sketches for drawing practice.

The UFO's include a partially finished lap quilt with a golf-themed fabric surrounded by mitered framing strips. It is long and skinny, so it either needs more blocks or borders. She also has made some lovely rose and green blocks, which I will use for something for the girls.

Not that I need more UFO's, but you know I will get these done!

And yesterday, I bought another book because I am trying to learn as many techniques as I can to transfer photographs to quilts. This one is called Photo Album Quilts, by Wendy Butler Berns. I think that I learned of this quilt artist from The Quilt Show. Can't wait to discover her techniques.

Frozen Beauty

We went up to our mountain place on Thursday night, arriving about an hour before an ice storm. When we got up on Friday morning, the world was a fairyland of ice-glazed trees. As the sun came up, it sounded like guns going off as pine trees snapped under the weight of the ice. One came down across our driveway, glancing off our tin roof. That sounded pretty loud! It bent the gutter a bit, but no damage. DSH was able to pull the tree off with a rope tied to our Gator. Then we went for a ride up the mountain on the Gator. Pretty!

Do not worry about this little duck frozen to our pond- it is a decoy!

On Saturday afternoon we took a trip to West Jefferson to visit some friends from college who also have a mountain home in Ashe County. It was so nice to sit with old friends and get caught up. We will probably see more of them in the mountains than we do at home, since our Wake County homes are at opposite ends of the county.We took another ride to the top of the mountain on Saturday night. There was no moon, and the stars were shining so brightly! I saw two shooting stars. I also spotted something I had never seen in the wild...a great horned owl! He was just sitting on a branch of a tree near the Christmas tree farms. He just sat there letting us admire him, blinking in the headlights of our Gators. Then he flew soundlessly over our heads.

Sunday morning, Charlie and I went for a long walk. We went up the road, then up the mountain and across the tree farms, back down and home. My legs got a good workout!

I got about half of the binding done on James' quilt. A great weekend!