Pink House

What I haven't told you yet...

We're busy packing. We're going on an adventure that is a total stretch and challenge for me. I'm excited, but nervous and a bit fearful too. It is so much work to get ready for.

About 3 months ago our friends invited us to go on a 5-day river float trip with them (July 1 - 5). It is on the Smith River in central Montana near the Little Belt Mountains. This is a pristine, limited-access river in a remote part of the state. You can only go on it by permit, and permits from the state are extremely limited and drawn by lottery each year. Some people try year after year and never get to go. Montanans get crowded out by out-of-state fishermen. It's a premier trout-fishing river. Normally, I would not do this kind of thing. But this is just the kind of "adventure" and challenge that began appealing to me when I turned 50. I started thinking "If I'm ever going to do this kind of thing, I'd better do it now".

So we've been planning, preparing, and packing in earnest for the last month. Down to the last two days now. It's difficult to pack because you need: boating equipment, camping gear, fishing gear, clothing and toiletries, and food for 5 days. And all of this has to be packed tightly to fit inside your boat. Oh! And did I mention there are NO facilities along the way?  NO bathrooms at all...for five days. That's the hardest part for me. No refreshing showers or clean toilets. Ugh!

Anyway, lots of our friends and family were thinking that I'd back out of this. But guess what? I'm not! K decided that he wouldn't do it unless I went along, and he's really looking forward to it. So my challenge is to complete the float. Believe me, I've thought about the Survivor TV show a few times as I've prepared for this challenge. I will NOT be the first one voted off of the island! But my main coping strategy is to do what I need to do to take care of myself and lay low. My focus is to just cope in a quiet way. :) The whole trip has become a personal challenge to me and one that I've put on my Bucket List and will cross off in a week.

The other night we were at a social gathering and people were asking about it. It seems that it's the kind of trip that is every GUY'S ultimate dream trip, and every GAL'S worst nightmare! That was the consensus. I agree. It is definitely NOT my dream trip.

Of course, I'll be blogging when I return. I plan to take lots of photos (supposed to be breath-taking wilderness along the way) and will take notes in a small journal as well. So........watch here for more details of the adventure to come.

In the meantime, it's back to preparation and packing.

Hey, Kim (Mrs. Howell)! If I (Ginger) can do it, YOU can do it. We'll see. Maybe next year I'll challenge you.... We could get Mary Ann to come too. We'll just have to get the Skipper, the Professor, and Gilligan to come along and take care of stuff for us!

Quilt for Summer - Photo Shoot

I recently finished a quilt that I made mostly for fun, and to play to with colors, but its primary purpose was to be a summer quilt for the back patio. When you sit outside in the summer evenings and it starts to get chilly when you're reading or talking, it's nice to have a quilt to pull around you. And it might as well be a pretty one. Right?

I started this last fall and most of the fabrics were ones that I had in my stash closet, and I added a few new ones to brighten up the palette. My main colors were greens, oranges, and purples.

There was no pattern - I just made a center square or rectangle and then sewed strips of fabric around each block, in two or three borders. Kind of a modified log cabin design I suppose. I just wanted to make it simple and fun. I cut and pieced it while sewing with friends (lots of chatting) and it was really nice to not to have to follow a complicated pattern.....just mindless cut and sew.

When I had about 30 blocks, I laid them out in rows on the floor and played with placement a bit. Then I began sewing the blocks together in vertical blocks. When one block was wider than another, I would trim down the large block to fit the finished block next to it. I then had six long rows. I should have been disciplined enough to make additional blocks, to add another vertical row or blocks. But I was kind of tired of the project at this point and wanted to finish it. So it's longer than it is wide. But I told myself that it's okay for this kind of casual use quilt. No rights or wrongs. Sometimes that kind of sewing is a relief.

The quilt top sat for a bit in the studio until I decided to look for a backing that would serve as a subsitute "top" when quilting it on the long arm machine. I've seen our local quilt shop owner do this before and had always wanted to try it: to choose a fabric backing with some kind of pattern that could be traced in thread to create a quilting design for the top of the quilt. I looked for quite awhile to find a fabric that would be the right color and offer a pleasing quilting design as well. I finally settled on this cream-colored background with a pale orange flower design.

When I rented the long arm machine at the LQS, I then mounted the actual quilt top (the pieced blocks) on the frame as if it was the backing and added the batting as normal. Then the solid piece of fabric for the substitute "top" which I then "traced" along with the quilting machine, following the flower design on the backing to then make this floral quilting design on the real quilt top. I used a cream color thread (very difficult to see to though!) on the top of the machine, and a varigated green thread for the bobbin thread that would blend in with the quilt top and help blend together the various fabric colors. All went as planned.

When I first pulled the finished quilt off of the frame, I wasn't sure that I liked it - either the quilting design or the thread colors or the finished result. But there's something I've learned in 26 years of quilting - and that's to KEEP WORKING ON IT because it DOES GET BETTER. You have the quilt top, the back, the quilting, the thread color choice. But then...you still add the binding. And then you run it through the washer on gentle cycle and the quilt kind of puffs up and settles into itself and start to look like it all belongs together.

When I made the binding, and sewed it on, I started to see that the quilt was looking better. When the binding was on, there was still one more task to do - one more detail to finish: I added two trims for embellishment. A large green rick rack and a smaller green crocheted trim. These helped pull it all together and add a touch of whimsy too.

I finally took it outside in the sun to photograph. Serendipitously, it matched the colors in my flower pots this season. I must have had orange, purple, and green on the brain this year. These colors are cheerful and just make me happy.

At the last minute Rocco decided to join the photography project, settling himself in the middle of the quilt as I was trying to photograph it. He's that way. Thinking that its somehow all about him.

To Do list: Quilt Photo Shoot.

Check.

Sneak Preview!

I finally finished a summer quilt! More details to come!

University of Chicago Tour

I don't usually mention business stuff here on the blog, but as I look through my photos of the Chicago trip, I'm so struck by how beautiful the U of Chicago campus photos are. Really.

Does this remind you of Harry Potter movies?

I went down there to do a tour and info session while in Chicago and K came with me because he wasn't sure the area was safe (but turns out it was). We were both so struck by the pretty campus, beautiful, gothic, grays & greens.

This was in a stone floor that people walk over all the time.

Ivy too. So just for kicks, before I move on to something else, I just thought that I would share a few photos for my tour. Because they're too cool to keep to myself.

Ivy crawling everywhere

Another college counselor that is in my network had visited Chicago about two weeks before I did, and he had toured Northwestern, DePaul, and Chicago. But I had already toured Northwestern about 6 years ago, so this time I was headed only to U of Chicago. When I returned, we compared our impressions by email which was interesting.

Lots of detailed doorways, arches, and gates

When I tour campuses I try to keep an open mind, observe as much as I can, and listen for what is said and isn't said.

We were watched from the tops of several buildings.

I always meet interesting people when I do tours, and usually someone asks, "Where are you from?". And they can't believe it when I say "Montana". Like they're surprised we actually leave the state.

Grizzly Bar in Montana and a day along the Rosebud River

For Memorial Day weekend, we loaded up the Tahoe and drove K's parents up to Absorkee area for a day trip. It's nice to get out of town and to the mountains when the good weather finally hits.

They used to have a cabin up there along the Rosebud River and when our sons were young, we would take them up to the cabin for an overnight trip. Sometimes more little cousins would come and tent it in the backyard to the sounds of the nearby river. Good times. We walked in to the property and talked to the neighbor for a bit.

A little further up the road we stopped at the Grizzly Bar in Roscoe, Montana for some lunch. This restaurant is pretty famous around this area, known for beef, and is a particularly popular watering hole for the Harley Davidson crowd. The weekend that we were here, the Harleys were lined up side-by-side in the parking lot outside - it's a nice day ride from Billings for them. It's a very small-town Montana kind of place.

We found a public fishing access up by Fishtail, Montana and sat in a grassy area beside the river for awhile. We'd brought lawn chairs, coffee in a thermos and cookies, and I had my Kindle. Unfortunately, the guys had forgotten to bring my father-in-law's fishing pole and he was eager to throw in a line. But it was a refreshing place to spend a couple of hours.

Memorial Day at Absorkee, Montana cemetery with view of the Beartooth Mountains in the distance.

 

When in Chicago...

When in Chicago, you just have to have Deep Dish Pizza at least once, right? Check.

And you have to walk along the Magnificent Mile to shop, past the Water Tower park, right? Check.

And you really should take a city tour that will point out the historic buildings along the river canal, right? Check.

And it's fun to stay in a historic hotel that's right across the street from Grant Park, cultural venues (like the Art Institute and Field Museum), and easy access to walk or take public transportation. Check.

This was our third or fourth trip to Chicago, and though it was very short, it was still very satisfying. The weather was perfect. I got to walk all the way up and down Michigan Avenue and stop where I wanted to. I sat and people-watched while I drank a good coffee. I toured a beautiful college campus (U of Chicago). We walked through Hyde Park neighborhood and ate lunch where the college kids do. We heard a great Irish band in a little pub. We hung out with a group of friends, catching up on their lives. We went to an over-priced and over-hyped old-school steak house with a group. I walked through the new section of Grant Park - Millenium Park, and saw the cool sculptures and fountains. I went on a city tour in a trolley with a group of gals. And we even saw Blue Man Group in their original venue. A great trip!

Do You Sew?

My gosh! Posie Gets Cozy asked a simple question on her blog a couple of days ago and has been drowning in responses! Over 1000 so far and still growing! It seems that the 20-somethings have discovered the joys of sewing again. How wonderful that something so basic has been handed down from grandmothers and mothers.

I've sewn for about 40 years now, and find it to be the best kind of therapy. But just when I think that perhaps the art of sewing is going by the wayside, there comes a new storm of sewing enthusiasm taking up a new generation with it. Some of the new young sewers/entrepreneurs are putting out interesting sewing books and designing fabric too. See:

Heather Bailey

Anna Marie Horner

Angry Chicken (author's blog of Bend The Rules Sewing)

It's raining outside right now and rain always makes me feel like...sewing!

 

Sepia - A Great Dinner in Chicago

When we were in Chicago for a meeting last week, we flew in one day early and had a day to ourselves to troop around the city and go out to a nice dinner. The next day the others were flying in and everything would be group activities, so it was nice to have one day to ourselves. 

Before going, I researched restaurants where K and I could go on Wednesday night. Our usual suspect is a fairly new restaurant, New American cuisine using fresh seasonal ingredient, and that I've read about in one of my food magazines. I then check out the restaurant's website to see if the menu seem appealing, and read several customer review sites to see if others found it favorable (using Urban Spoon, Yelp, Chowhound, Google Maps Reviews). This time we found two that weren't too far from our hotel (Blackstone Marriott by Grant Park) that sounded really interesting, The Publican and Sepia. We settled on Sepia.

Sepia occupies a beautiful space in the Near West area of downtown Chicago. They also refer to the neighborhood as the Fulton River area and the Warehouse area. Sepia, in fact, occupies an old warehouse space that used to be a printing shop. Hence, the name comes from the sepia tones of old photography. They have displayed several of the artifacts from the historic printing days. They have also left the exposed brick walls, but then upscaled the space with contemporary furniture and lighting. It has a luxurious modern feel in a rugged space. The bar area is in the front of the building when you enter, but the hostess takes you back to the main part of the dining area which is really expansive and elegant. I loved the decor.

The service was wonderful as well. Attentive and not hurried. The menu is small, but interesting and changes seasonally. The waitress told us that they had just changed to their early summer menu that week. The wine list was extensive and interesting too, featuring international regions. I had read in Food & Wine magazine that the chef has won awards. The restaurant was known for its creative use of pork products (they work with a small farmer for pork) and homemade pastas. Their menu states "Our seasonal menus are rooted in tradition, melding rustic sensibility with contemporary flair. We favor local artisan growers using sustainable practices."

To start, K ordered the Potato and Ramp Leaf Soup with Confit of Pork. A tasty green soup with a sprinkling of smoked bacon on top! I ordered the English Pea and Marscapone Agnolotti with Peas Shoots and Thyme. I asked the waitress if this was good, and she enthusiastically  replied that it was one of her favorites. It was a type of homemade ravioli stuffed with a light pea puree, topped with a broth and a micro salad. Tasty and interesting!

For the main courses, I selected the Monkfish wrapped in Serrano ham in a stew of Clams, Judion Beans, and Piperade. It was really well-prepared and very delicious! K ordered the Gunthorp Farms Pork Porterhouse with Bourbon, Cherries, and Grits. This is one of their most popular dishes and he loved it. I snuck a few bites of the grits with the cherry broth.....yum!

For dessert we shared a Sweet Cherry Pie with Crumble Topping, Spiced Chocolate Ice Cream, and Vanilla Sour Cream Sauce. Tasty and light! We both enjoyed the food and the lovely ambiance. We really enjoyed our visit to Sepia - our kind of place!

Why I love my Kindle

As I mentioned before, for my birthday my family surprised me with a brand new Kindle. A pretty good birthday gift.

Kindle is a mini-computer (kind of) that holds digital BOOKS that you download, either by wireless from the Amazon website (Amazon is the one who makes and sells the Kindle) or by downloading it on the Amazing "Manage Your Kindle" website and then transferring it to your Kindle via a cable. For readers its a nice little treat, but a pricey one. However, the books, since they're not actually PRINTED are about 1/3 the normal price - so about $9.99 per book, and some are less. As you can see, its a good gig for Amazon, saves some trees by not having to print the book, and it's a pretty good deal for the reader too.

I first saw the Kindle on the Oprah show about a year ago. I was kind of fascinated by it and thought I wanted it, but thought it too pricey to buy for myself. So I waited. Then I heard that they came out with the Kindle II, which featured several improvements over the original. This time I was more interested because they added some features that I was interested in (an audio voice to READ the book to you). But still...I thought it was too indulgent to buy it for myself. But my older son bought one and all of his friends too, and he thought it was great. He thought that I would really like it because I do read quite a bit and I am a bit high-tech for my age. And so he talked the rest of our family into going together to get it for my birthday. What a nice surprise! THANKS guys!

While I like the feel of an actual book, and I love cover artwork, and I love to go to the bookstore and browse the stacks......there are some nice conveniences to the Kindle that I've found I like. I'm using it almost every day now for a month. (It's also quite a conversation starter - a LOT of people ask me about it when I read it on the plane, in the airport, or in the coffee shop).

Here are my FAVORITE features of the Kindle over a regular book:

1. The built-in dictionary is SO EASY to use!The first book I read on it had a fairly advanced vocabulary. You know those words that you come across when reading, and you think, "Hhmm. There's that word again. Seen it before. Don't really know what it means, but I can guess in context." and so you just go on reading? I mean no one actually stops reading, puts down the book, and looks it up in the dictionary, do they? It would take too long and interrupt the flow of the story. But, on the Kindle this is so easy. I have been looking up about one word per page and can do so in a few seconds. You use move a tiny cursor wand with your thumb to where the word on the page is, pause about a 1/2 second and the definition pops up. You read it, and then push "back" button with your thumb and the pop-up dictionary disappears. I would like to think that my vocabulary has improved significantly in a month from looking up the meaning of so many words (but I wouldn't want to take a test to prove it). My only suggestion here to the Amazon Kindle people is to add another button in the dictionary to have a voice correctly PRONOUNCE the word. I would really like that as I always struggle to figure out the pronunciation of unfamiliar words. Then I think I may feel comfortable actually using the word in speech. 
2. You can change the size of the TEXT!   This is a really handy feature that I use all the time. You just set your preferences to the size of type that feels most comfortable to you ( I think I went up only one size) and for me that was to be able to read it without my reading glasses! Perfect for us middle-agers! Here again, the screen is a little dark and you do need to be in daylight or sit by a lamp to read. I like to read in bed or laying on the couch (where the screen is facing away from the light) and it would be nice to have the screen illuminated just a bit to see it in the dark.
3. It saves your place in the book! This is really nice when you just pick it up and turn it on (takes about 2 seconds) and its already at the page you where left it. Kind of like a paper bookmark I suppose. :)  If you want to switch books (I usually read one fiction and one non-fiction at the same period of time) then you just touch the "menu" button and will list your books and you click on the one you want.  This bookmark feature is nice, but I find it a bit problematic when you reading and want to flip back a few pages to check a chart (in non-fiction) or remind yourself who a certain character is (fiction). I haven't figured out this one yet.
4. Portable!This is perhaps one of the best things. It's so light and slim. I can slide it into my purse or briefcase and you don't even know it's there. I remember hauling around the "World Without End" Ken Follet tomb I read last year and it was like lugging a suitcase around...heavy and cumbersome. Also, for those of us who have trouble deciding which book to take on a trip, and usually pack two or three just to be "safe", this is a godsend. On this last trip to Chicago, I bravely put my Kindle in my purse and got on the plane. I felt reassured that I had several books loaded on it that I wanted to read and wouldn't run out of reading material on the 4 day trip (ha!). I did buy a big city newspaper in the airport hub, but that's my treat to myself anyway. But I didn't buy a single magazine in that tempting Hudson News store because I reminded myself that I already was carrying 8 books around in my Kindle.
5. You can press a little button and highlight sections and then click in the menu to read through a listing of all the highlighted sections. Cool, just like underlining in your book. It would be nice to be able to hook up a little cord and PRINT that out on your computer! Could you work on that, Kindle people?
6. The Kindle is FLAT and lays flat. Even with the covers that they sell (highly recommended) you can simply fold it back and set the Kindle on something, a table, your pillow, the exercise bike at the gym, and it stay OPEN. If you tried this with a real book, it would flap shut of course. So this is really cool with the Kindle.
7. Privacy! You know how when you're reading a book in a public place and people look at the cover to see what you're reading? I don't like that. Not that I'm reading anything naughty. But I just like my privacy. Maybe I don't want everyone on the plane to know I'm reading a health book on menopause. I like the Kindle for this too, because it looks kind of "smart" but you could seriously be reading a kid's joke book and someone would think you're reading a legal brief. I just like that no one can "judge a book (or you) by its cover"!

There are still more features that I haven't tried yet and haven't figured out. Still learning.

Additional suggestions for Kindle R & D:

• Please make the speaking voice more "friendly" and human! There are so many people (including low-vision people) or people who like to knit and would like to plug their earphones into that Kindle and LISTEN to their book. I would love this feature. Because maybe one day I'd listen to my book and one day I'd read it...you know, a change up.
• Please make it easier to scroll BACK to find retrieved info, and then return in only ONE PUSH back to where you were. This is a problem for me right now.
• Please add a feature that shows the REAL cover of the book - like a little icon maybe? In color please? Perhaps this is on the new Kindle D that just came out (but that's way too expensive!)
• Please give us a PRINTED COPY OF THE USER'S GUIDE!!! I HATE that I have to open up a digital version of it and try to find how to do something. I just want to thumb through a little booklet and find the answer......

And just to proof how really portable the Kindle is...I even took it golfing! Real story is that I sprained my ankle and wasn't sure I'd be able to do the entire 18 holes. So I popped the Kindle in my bag for insurance, then when I got tired I just propped up my ankle and read the Kindle why the husband finished his round. I was content to wait, and no pages flapping in the wind....perfect!

Home Again

Back from Chicago tonight. More on that later....

Have to complete my final project for class in just two days.