Progress - Celebrate!

There is an upcoming birthday party that is going to be held in my home.  The cleaning and organizing is continuing, but as I said before, the WIPs/UFOs are haunting me.  I have one quilt that is especially made for celebrations, so I decided to try to finish it in time for the party.  It has been languishing long enough.  The top was made, and it languished because of some problems I had in executing the center.  Then I had a hard time figuring out what applique I wanted to add to it. I just knew that I wanted applique for the wide border.

I was hoping for applique that would work year around - for all the birthday celebrations and graduations and holidays, etc. whenever they occurred. I thought balloons would be nice, but they require pretty specific shapes, and I wasn't sure they would look like balloons when I was done with them. And balloons might be boring.

I finally realized that the flower theme that was in my mind the first time I saw the quilt was the theme I really wanted. No matter how much I tried to think of something else, this quilt needed flowers. So what if it feels more like summer than the rest of the year. I had already cut out the flower and leaf shapes so it was just a matter of pressing them down, and then moving on to quilting.  The photo was taken before pressing - some of the shapes have been rearranged.

After all, if I bring out this same quilt for every celebration, some of my family members would never see another quilt besides this one, and this one wouldn't seem so special to them.

And those flowers on the quilt go really well with my garden this year. This is the first year I have really bought annuals, and I think I need to invest in them in future years as well.

Focus

I have run out of vacation topics, but I have tried my best to keep up the tourist pace. I have been working on several things.

First of all, I have caught up with the blocks of the month I have been working on. I was several months behind. The quilt shop put these blocks in a star setting, which I liked, but I chose not to buy the fabric on a monthly basis. I added a star around one block, and it reminds me of the Shakespeare in the Park block. I think I am going to continue with the straight setting, but the SITP is awfully tempting.


Next, the weather has been cooling, and my nesting instinct has kicked in. I have been cleaning and organizing various neglected parts of my house, especially my sewing storage / bedroom. It is very difficult to not to get distracted by the WIPs / UFOs. I am going to try very hard to stay the course and finish the cleanup first. Then I can get to those WIPs and UFOs. I recently looked at my 2010 finishes, which seemed rather meager at the time and it looks like I am going to really have to finish some things for my 2011 finishes to at least match the 2010 finishes.

Then, I bought the newest version of Family Tree Maker. I have been using one that is at least a decade old. It comes with a 30 day trial of ancestry.com. I have been trying to gather as much information as I can get during my trial. This time, I want to stay focused on the direct ancestors of the people I am searching, instead of getting sidetracked by other interesting family members. I decided to keep adding the information to my old FTM file, because I want to take full advantage of my 30 days, and I can learn the completely revamped system another time.

The Wilds

We took our Japanese guest to one other place besides Amish country, and that is the Wilds in southeast Ohio. When I tried to explain to her that she would see animals from a bus, she asked if it was like a safari. Well yes, it is exactly like a safari, and I'm not sure why I didn't think to use that word in the first place. I told her you could open the windows and take pictures. She said that there is a safari close to her home in Tokyo. They put meat on the bus, so the animals get really close to the bus. She wouldn't dare open the window.

The Wilds

It turns out that we didn't get a choice on opening or closing the windows, because our vehicle did not have windows! There are different kinds of trips you can take - you could take a bus, but we chose this one. We went with the extended family, which made it even more fun.  There was a shade above us and the breeze while we were driving kept us cool.  It is unfortunate that it was really hot the whole time Takako was visiting with us, but this day was a little bit cooler than the rest and was much more comfortable.  When she left, she took the heat with her. Hopefully, she dropped some of it off along the ocean instead of taking it all home.

We managed to get really up close and personal with some of the animals. We all got lots of beautiful pictures of a large variety of animals.

It had been a while since we had gone, and this was really nice. We chose to save the zip line and the horse back riding for another trip.

Zeus on Quilts

My dog is still new enough to me that we still follow the "no pet on quilts" rule, but when I saw the Pets on Quilts show, I didn't want him to feel left out.  Mostly I didn't want to feel left out.  So I put him on some quilts, and he posed nicely for me, and got off the quilt as soon as he was done posing.

But after this photo shoot, I think I need to do two things.

Teach him some new poses.

And think about changing his name to Vanna.

We're too late to actually enter the contest, but I did it for the pictures and not for the prizes anyway.

Amish Country

Berlin, Ohio

Takako, the tour guide we were hosting for the student exchange program, had been to Amish country during one of her previous visits, but she had not had a chance to do much there. I suggested we go again, and this time, go on one of the tours so we could learn a bit about the area. The tours are expensive, but they drive around the area, and stop at two artisans along the way, and we thought we would get a lot out of it.

Unfortunately, she had been invited to a party that she wanted to attend, so we were going to have to limit our trip so she could go to the party in the evening. We woke up early, much to my daughter's dismay, and left for a two hour trip to Berlin, Ohio. Most of Ohio is flat, so a lot of the journey was just fine. Then we got to the hilly side, and it was quite interesting to drive on. The speed limit is 55 on the hilly roads, which is a little scary especially going around curves and up and down hills where you can't see where you are going, and then all of a sudden, there is a curve that you are supposed to slow down to 25 to navigate. And there is the danger of coming up to a buggy and having to slow down suddenly for that. I got an even better appreciation for the bus drivers in Italy after that trip.

The tour starts at the flea market. We had a chance to look around the flea market before the tour. We wound up being the only people on the tour. We told her we wanted to see what the inside of an Amish house looks like. She said she had several trips, and one would take us to a quilt shop that requires you to go through the Amish house. The lady had hand sewn and hand quilted all of the quilts t. And they were quite reasonable prices for all that hand work. I didn't buy anything though. The tour was interesting - she told us a lot about what the Amish are like, and we were able to get our questions answered. In case you were wondering, no, the Amish in Ohio do not deliberately put mistakes in their quilts, but she thinks that Amish in other states might. The other "artisan" stop was a grocery store that was frequented by the Amish. We bought lots of spices, which were much cheaper there than at home.

After the tour, we spent more time looking at the booths at the flea market. We were going to go to a restaurant, but we were hungry, and decided that eating at the food place at the flea market would be just fine. There was live music, so it was an enjoyable time.

Then we went to another shop that also had lots of booths of hand made and other unique things. There were some purses made out of jeans - but Takako and my daughter were saying that the stylish jeans made purses that were too small, and the bigger purses had mom jeans. I thought to myself that I could make a purse like that pretty easily, but when I got home, I realized I would have the same problem. Stylish jeans are too small, and the bigger jeans are mom jeans. I bought a couple of wooden plaques.

It would have been nice to have been able to spend some more time there, but we had to get going. Of course, it started thunderstorming and pouring down rain. Going around those curves when you couldn't even see the street is even more interesting than when you can. I could only hope that the car in front of me knew the road, which they did seem to. We took a different way home than the way there, and once it stopped raining, it was nice to be able to see different parts of Ohio.

And just like in Italy, we left enough things unseen that we want to go back again another time.

Welcome Home

On my last post, we had returned from our trip to Italy.  The way our schedule worked out, the very next day, we would have to return to the airport to pick up our Japanese guest who was going to be staying with us for three weeks.  Since this was expected, I had been cleaning and generally getting things ready for her visit.  Since I am allergic to dust, I was starting to get severe allergies from cleaning behind cabinets, under the bed, and going to places in my house I don't normally visit, and moving things around. I did not want to have allergy problems on the plane, and worry all the other passengers about some awful airborne disease, not to mention being more uncomfortable than normal on a plane.  My ears already hurt on planes.


My decision was to clean up as much of the clutter and arrange things as I wanted, and clean and wipe counters, sinks, etc., but to avoid the dusty things, like sweeping and dusting and lawn mowing until we came back.  This meant that I would have to get over any jet lag quickly.  I had a little over 24 hours to do this, so I was not worried.

My family was worried, however, so during my absence, they all converged to my house and took care of those things which I had not.  It was very sweet, and a little demeaning that they thought I would welcome a guest in the dusty house. And you know they were talking about me while they were cleaning. I'm sure it was all good.


I have already provided a summary about our experience with our Japanese guest.  We went to two places that I want to talk about in separate posts, and then I will be back to providing current events stuff.

Italy - Sorrento and home

Sorrento Marina

I have been telling you about our week long adventures in Italy, which are nearing the end.  We have one last full day, and have to leave early in the morning for the plane.

I didn't create an itinerary for this day.  I had saved the day to do whatever we felt we missed, or found out about after the fact.  We could have gone to see the other small towns that were destroyed by the volcano.  We could have tried the Phlegraean Fields again. We could have gone south to visit Paestum (more ruins) and the resort town of Positano.  But the laziness serenity of Amalfi was still in our system, and we opted to have a slow day in Sorrento. We were planning to do souvenir shopping, but a lot of that had been done in Amalfi, and since we walked by the souvenir shops everyday, we pretty much knew what we wanted anyway, so the shopping was done relatively quickly. We went back to the hotel to nap, and then went out to dinner. It was a nice relaxing day.

Sorrento cloister

Nightlife in Sorrento consists of dressing up and walking up and down the main street, to see and be seen. We were generally dressed in our rumpled tourist clothes, walking back to the hotel.

Sorrento "statues"

These pictures were taken on various days.

Sorrento gelatto shop

The next morning we headed to the airport.  There is a shuttle that can take us to the airport, but it leaves at 6:30 which is cutting it close for our 8:50 o'clock departure, if we try to get to the airport two hours before, and it takes an hour to get there.  And I would think it would take longer to load than unload, since tickets would have to be bought, etc.  No one is willing to tell us if the airport requires us to get there two hours early for international flights.  We hired a private shuttle to take us.  It had been cheaper to stay an extra night than the leave the day before, but the shuttle ate all the savings.  But it was good that we had one full day with which to do as we pleased.

Sale!

So we left at 6:00 with the shuttle, but he drove very fast, and we wound up at the airport very early. We had coffee and pastries at a lounge in the airport, then the steps of going home was pretty much the same as the process of getting here, except that it was reversed, and took a little bit longer.

Ciao Italy!