Some more America stuff photo a day

August 19th; This was Dad's first day back and after shopping for food he said we just HAD to visit this ghost native american town with a fab art gallery.....well it was disappointing apart from this mural painted on the wall opposite!

20th August; a trip to the Rogue River Gorge and then a picnic downstream. There were two men trying to catch the huge fish that were leaping about in the stream. When they had left Jasper found this one floating in the river! Isn't it HUGE!!!!

21st August; a second trip to Lake of the Wood but it wasn't nearly so sunny today and we went to a different part where the children found this tadpole...it is about 10" long and will grow into a bull frog!

22nd August; it rained today so we decided to do more indoory things starting with a trip to the High Desert Museum and a Raptor display. This showed some of the raptors that live in this part of the country, many we have seen from Dad's lounge window! We haven't seen any of these though; this is a female Harris hawk.

23rd August; This is Crater Lake; If you ever visit Oregon this is one place you must visit. Photoes just can't do it justice but this is at over 7000 feet and is a volcano that once stood probably 14 000 or so high until it blew. Then it formed a crater in which a further explosion created the second crater (it looks like an island) which actually gave the place it's name. We drove all around the rim, about 30 miles.

24th August; It was my Dad's birthday today but instead of putting his feet up we went to a logging museum which showed us how the timber business developed in this area. This is one of the log cabins that the pioneers built to live in and this particular one was lived in until the 1950s before it was moved to the museum.

25th August; today we left Oregon and drove 5+ hours to Vacaville, about an hour outside San Francisco. We stayed in the same hotel as we did on the way up....

26th August; we thought we had better spend a day in San Francisco! We came in late and stayed late too to miss the traffic and just pottered around Downtown, eating clam chowder and climbing Coit Tower for a 360 view of the city. This view is from there and is the famous Lombard Street with the crooked, wiggly bit in the middle.

27th August; our last day in the USA and once more back into San Francisco but this time to catch our plane home. We drove in over the Bay Bridge this time; quite a scary experience!

28th August; Some of the goodies I brought back are hidden in this bag!

29th August; Ken was up before me and went to harvest all that had grown whilst we were away. Well obviously lots has been picked and eaten but ALL this was still here for us! So that's rhubarb, beans, courgettes, turnips, blueberries and some radishes which had gone woody so we couldn't eat them!

So that is all of our holiday and I guess the rest of my Photo a Day pics will be much less exciting now!

Photo a Day

Our adventure in America continues....

August 11th; Yes I managed to find a Quilt Show! We had to choose our favourite one; this was a close contender for me, I loved those scrappy spools.

August 12th; Went for a little walk. This is the view of the lake from just below the house.

August 13th; Went off to spend the day exploring in Bend and Sisters. Just look at all these cowboy boots!

August 14th; It has been very smoky here from forest fires in the region. This morning I went out onto the balcony to see if we could see the distant mountains yet...

August 15th; today we went to the Lake of the Woods. It is a fab lake where you can swim and although there were lots of people there it was still very quiet. We were just trying to ease our way in off a floating log......

August 16th; the one thing Katy has wanted to do since we got here is have a McDonalds....so today we did!

August 17th; we had another day at home today so after lunch Ken and I went for a stroll around the estate. This is Dad's house from the outside.

August 18th; another day shopping. Just look at this choice of jeans! There are rows and rows and rows of jeans like this to choose from.

Photo a Day

I can't quite believe how long it is since I showed you my Photo a Day! I am now blogging this from the other side of the ocean!!!!

August 1st; The final day of Pack Holiday and we had our little closing ceremony at a nearby park. Luckily the weather was MUCH nicer than a few days ago!

August 2nd; we went out for supper in Lewes and as we walked up to town we saw this rainbow on the hills.

August 3rd; for some reason, when Katy asked hime to, Jasper painted her toenails!! And I don't know why it's sideways

August 4th; our dinner today was a very colouful one with everything, except the salmon, fresh from our garden, courgettes, beans and bright pink potatoes.

August 5th; getting ready for our big trip. Today we picked up the dollars!

August 6th. Jess had decided she wanted to finish a satchel she has been making to take away with us so it was all hands on deck to get it done in time.

August 7th; one of our last jobs was to take the guinea pig off to Jess's boyfriend who is babysitting him whilst we are away. He IS in that hay, honestly!

August 8th; We made it to the USA! We stopped briefly after crossing the Golden Gate Bridge because we were shattered, having been up for about 23 hours by this time!

August 9th; we stopped for fuel at Weed on our way to Klamath Falls, Oregon. This is Mount Shasta, about 4000 feet high I think.

August 10th; having arrived safely at my Dad's house we were lucky enough to be here when the Rodeo was in town! This professional Rodeo is only here once a year and it was a great evening if a little scary! Loved these spectators! Unfortunately the action was too fast and it was too dark to get any decent action shots of the Rodeo itself so this will have to give you a flavour....

Friendship Quilt

We are having a bit of a change around at school where I work. One teacher is leaving and the teacher I have worked with since I started there is going up to Year Three. I am staying in Year Two with a new teacher so as we are no longer going to be working together. I felt it called for a special present.
Typically I left it very late to make a quilt but I decided to make up my own design from blocks in a patten book. I chose to alternate this friendship star with a basic 9 patch.

I drew the plan up in my notebook and then cut up all the 3 1/2 " squares. Now I know that I should have cut them a bit larger for the star blocks but hey, it's a learning curve.

Then I laid them all out "in a pleasing manner". I love this bit! And these are so far removed from colours I would normally use but I loved how fresh they look.

In the end I needed to "ease" the slightly smaller star squares to make them fit and decided to add a small border. I added the small half size colour blocks in the border just to make the white sashes fit without joins! Isn't always the way that you need a strip about 2" longer than the fabric you have?

Closer view of the squares which shows the self patterned white fabric a bit better. I also quilted it in blue, a bit scary over the white but ok on the backing!

I backed and bound it with this dark blue.

And even though it was the same fabric I always find it easier to cut the binding separately and attach.
I just about managed it in time but there were a few hairy late night end sewing in sessions!!
And best of all, she LOVED it!

Uni Day in Leicester

At the risk of offending anyone, I was very much of the opinion that Leicester, to put it bluntly, was a bit of a dump. Not sure why, but we set off on this Uni visit day with fairly low expectations.

First of all we went a very different route up to St Pancras which took us over Blackfriars bridge. I thought this was a great view of London with Tower Bridge in the distance and the Shard on the right and the sunlight twinkling on the Thames.

Then we arrived at St Pancras....I love this station, so pretty.

Then arrived at Leicester Uni. I was amazed just how green and lovely it was. We were shown around the Chemistry dept and were very impressed. Then continuing our theme of "Uni Freebies", we decided to accept a strawberry ice cream, made with liquid nitrogen! Pretty cool huh?

Then we went for a walk around Leicester to get a feel of the city; loved this lamp post.

This is the pedestrian route to the city from the Uni, really delightful walk past some great green spaces and lovely old buildings.

This was part of a convent...

...and this was where they found Richard III. That man is standing in the actual trench they took the coffin out of. We were lucky enough to wander past...today is the very last day before they fill it all in and build on the top.
So all in all Leicester  was pretty cool! We really enjoyed our day there and it certainly outlived our expectations. So why am I predjudiced? What am I missing? Or am I listening to the wrong people?

Photo a day

July 22nd; Although we have finished Forest School we had decided to have a last Woodland Wonder Day. We had planned to have a fire and toast marshmallows but as the weather has been so dry we felt it was too dangerous. I loved the sunlight on this log which has been our camp for the  sessions.

July 23rd; Well this wasn't scheduled to be a clearing up day but when I arrived at school we had no water on the premises due to a burst pipe in the village. So the school had to close and we were able to get the stripping down done a day early. Left us with a horrible flat feeling though....

July 24th; We have been having just the most glorious weather for a couple of weeks now. I'm no cloud expert but when I was young I had  Ladybird book all about the weather and it talked about clouds that looked like fish scales......well that is definately what we had today!

July 25th; despite us shutting school a day early several children came up to drop off presents yesterday. I was so tired when I got home that I saved opening them until this morning. I had lots of lovely things but I just thought this chocolate was fab!!

July 26th; No rest for the wicked! Today was another Uni Open Day...Leicester this time. We set off not expecting much; but I will tell you all about that another day. We went a completely different train route to any I have ever travelled and it took us over Blackfriars Bridge where I was able to snap this real Lonon view through the train window. That is Tower Bridge in the distance and The Shard on the right....

July 27th; Needed to clean my whole house so I began with the kitchen. Ooooo it takes aaaages doesn't it? I only managed a bit but look at my lovely shiny "cupboard under the sink". It is usually full of all sorts of everything but I threw it all away except the important bits!

July 28th: Chris came over for Sunday dinner. Apparently he wants to learn how to knit so Jess was teaching him. He was very patient and I think he managed 2 rows!

July 29th; Brownie Pack Holiday in Eastbourne. The first day of a mad, Pirate themed holiday with 24 8-10 yr old girls. This was our 10th holiday together with the same adult team made up of three of us, our three (now) adult daughters and the other Brownie Guider. It has become a social event for us all each year too as well as hard work!

July 30th; Yes it is July, during our heatwave!!!! Today's plan was to catch the open top bus to Beachy Head, then to Birling Gap to explore the beach and then to the Sheep Centre topped off with fish and chips on the beach!! Well it lashed it down ALL day so we stopped very briefly here at Beachy Head to admire the view (!) and then to the Sheep Centre. We had our tea back at the hut as we dried off! Can you belive it.....the only wet day for ages and we chose to go out!

July 31st; an evening relaxing once the Brownies were in bed. These are our daughters, Katie (in glasses), Jess and then my Jess on the right! Yes that's right, they have a Katie and a Jess and I have a Jess and  Katy too! Luckily my Katy doesn't go and anyway we always have holiday names. So these guys were (l-r) Smee, Pan and Hook!