Getting behind

OK, I have really gotten behind on the blog.  I guess we are just having way too much fun here.

A few family members and friends are beginning to arrive in the Long Beach area and even more are on the way just after the 4th of July holiday.

Juanita's sister and brother-in-law visited from their home in Hoodsport, WA.  Joining them at our rolling home, Juanita's Australian sister-in-law and her brother fit us in during a short visit to the Pacific Northwest.

We met up with travel friends Bill and Diane for a shopping excursion and quilt shop tour of Astoria, OR yesterday, finding a good burrito shop to cover our lunch time appetites.  Bill and Diane will be in the Long Beach area for a couple of weeks, and we are looking forward to hanging out with them a bit.

Old travel buddies John and Ann showed up in Long Beach a couple of days ago.  We had a great conversation and excellent lunch with them today at the Lost Roo in Long Beach.  More RV friends will join in the festivities just after the holiday weekend and we have extended our visit to Long Beach to meet up with Steven and Linda on the day of their arrival.

We took the two Beagles out for a good sniff and hunt excursion to nearby Cape Disappointment State Park last Saturday and enjoyed the walk out to the North Head Lighthouse...one of two old lighthouses in the park.  Since my aerial photo equipment is not allowed in Washington State Parks, I made a video of our walk with my GoPro Hero 4 Silver camera.

I have also taken my trusty Nikon out for some local photo sessions.  A beautiful bald eagle has been hanging out at the beach near the park and made a decent flyby on one of my treks along the beach.

A golden sunrise through the grass covered dunes was well worth the early hour walk with the camera.

Who knows when this old piece of driftwood arrived.....

I have also put my latest addition to the Pierce family aerial photography fleet into the air over twenty times and have taken a few photos in and around the RV park.  Now that I have broken in a couple of batteries for the new flying machine, I plan on flying beyond the local area and making more videos of interesting subjects.  

I also took a couple of photos with my Nikon looking across the Columbia River from the Chinook County Park just south of here.

After a month or more of cool overcast weather conditions, the sun has finally arrived and the temperature today has managed to reach a balmy 68 degrees...the highest temperature we have seen during our visit.  If the forecast can be believed, we can expect more of the same before our departure on July 7.  We can only hope.

Juanita has been very busy with needle and thread and will follow my comments with details and photos shortly...........

Ok...Hi, Juanita here to add to and finish up this blog.  Since we've been here I have started and completed two small quilts.  The first one up was for my Mom's next door neighbor who was recently blessed with the birth of a beautiful baby girl.  I made this from a Layer Cake. (Sorry, that's a quilting term.) For those who are not quilters, a Layer Cake is a package of coordinated fabrics pre-cut into 10 inch squares, and they usually come 40 squares to a pack.  I took 20 of these squares and cut them into 2.5 inch strips, re-assembled a mix of these strips into sets for four.  Then I cut these units into more strips and reassembled them again.  Now I had 20 - 8 inch squares, each square consisting of 16 - 2 inch squares.  Sounds silly when I write it out this way, but thats just what we crazy quilters do. Cutting fabric into little pieces and finding new ways to sew them all back together. 

At this point, I made a trip to the local quilt store, much to their delight, to purchase sashing, binding, backing fabric and a piece of flannel to use in place of regular batting. The use of the flannel made it very easy to quilt because, unlike batting, the flannel will not bunch up or get all weird inside the quilt. This helped speed up the process because very minimal quilting was necessary.  So I got it all put together and here are a couple of images of the baby quilt.

That polka dot binding fabric (you see there on the edge) is also the backing fabric.  I love polka dots.

So, my mother was happy with this and the new parents liked it as well.  

Just a quick note about quilt #2.  It is a quilt I am entering in the Port Orford 4th of July quilt show challenge so I can't show it off yet.  After the Fourth, I will post some photos. Its a fun little quilt, very bright, and I hope its the "star" of the show, but who knows.

I've been thinking lately it would be nice to have a small, simple machine to use as a portable when I go to classes, or just to take with me to the Rec Room at the park now and then.  So my bigger machine can stay in its special place on my sewing table at home.  I recently discovered a good size thrift store in town and as I was browsing around one day I came across this.

This little beauty is now mine.  Of course I will be removing the machine from the cabinet. Then once I get back down to Port Orford I have a friend who I hope will be able to get it in prime running condition once again. I'll just give you one more photo so you can see the scroll work.

Isn't she pretty!!  I can't wait to get her working again. 

So now you know what I do to entertain myself while Gordon is playing with his flying machines and cameras.

We will post again soon, I hope.