Quilt As You Go, Simply Done

Simply Done

Marguerita’s Blog

A few baby days

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I made the mistake of being tired and worn out just before spending a weekend with Audrey. At one and three quarters, she has about twenty thousand times the energy that I do! Lucky baby 🙂

We had fun in the front yard watching people and their kids and dogs walk past the house on their way to the festivities on Third and Fourth Avenues downtown. Here’s Audrey reading the instruction book for Sarah’s videocam. Can you see the baby foot in the second picture? That’s her taking a nap while I work on the computer. Why didn’t I sleep then too?

Adams Street, Seward, Alaska

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Here are a few photos from today. We took our two vehicles out of the driveway to accommodate visitors to the festivities and at one point we had 4 vehicles in front of the house and 5 in the driveway.

The street, as usual for the Fourth of July, was packed. The men’s race is the biggest draw and it starts at 3pm so the crescendo builds up until then. Look at the difference in photos from a few days ago in the post below.

If you click on the close up of the mountain you might just barely make out some of the runners on the right of the lower snow patch. The runners had to ascend through the clouds this year and although it might be harder to see, it’s cool and refreshing in this grueling race.

F/V Melissa B

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The Melissa B has been in the driveway for renovations. She gets a lot of looks from passers by! She was originally owned by Perry Buchanan and he taught his sons, Steve & Tom to fish on her. She’s seen a lot of modifications over the years.

Eventually Steve bought a boat, the F/V Marathon, and Perry commissioned a new boat, the F/V Dolly B, and Tom bought the boat and renamed her to his daughters’ name – Melissa. Tom fished the boat for many years, and taught his son Thomas and daughter Melissa to fish on her.

In 1998 Perry retired from fishing, Tom bought the Dolly B, and his son owns the Melissa B. Here they are working on her today.

4th of July Weekend in Seward, Alaska

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Sarah and Audrey are coming to see me on Thursday, and Audrey will stay with me for a few days. Seward is known for it’s 4th of July celebrations, the most famous of which is the Mt. Marathon Race. This internationally known race begins 2 blocks from our house, which is downtown. The race trail goes to the top of Mt. Marathon and down some snow slews and ends back at it’s starting point. It’s a rough trail race. If you look closely, you can see the trail to the peak in this photo.

Seward is a small town of about 3,500 people. No traffic lights. One main street. Several thousand people will be here for the 4th – even more if there is a cruise ship in port. Fourth Avenue is blocked off completely for about a mile, as is most of Adams Street – the street we live on (seen here). Usually we stock up on groceries in advance and just don’t plan on leaving the house because it’s almost impossible to do so with the traffic that converges on downtown.

Audrey and I will have a front row seat for the festivities – it should be a blast! Here’s a list of the events – if you are coming here please note that the fireworks are on Thursday night not Friday night.

I have not had time to do any more sewing on the Funky Fuzzy Quilt, but I will post as soon as I am able to get back to the project 🙂

WordPress

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I’ve been playing with ones and zeros again. While in Portland I was desperate to go to Powells Bookstore, for both the experience and for a book on HTML. I found a book that I liked but I’ve only read 1 chapter. Why? Because I have discovered WordPress.

WP intimidated me when I first started blogging – so I went with simple and easy (and I like Google a lot) but WordPress has enticed me. I was frustrated at first, not understanding the differences between WP.com and WP.org and WPmu (WordPress multiple user) so I did what I always do, went looking for a book. I like to read Amazon.com reviews on books and I found that the book WordPress for Dummies (I have never liked the “for dummies” titles just on basic principle – I’m not a dummy) but this book had much better reviews than all others, so I bought it. It lives up to it’s reviews.

I’ve practiced blogging in WP, and importing my blogs from blogger to WP and I am coming to like it more and more. And now, at the end of the book, is a section about using WP as a web platform – hallelujah!! I hate my web software with a passion (Front Page and Web Expressions) and I can’t wait to try WordPress for my website. I’ll keep you posted 🙂

Seams Like Home Quilt Shop

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My friends Kathy Harte and Judy Wedemeyer (quilt artists and soon-to-be bloggers 🙂 came by Seams Like Home Quilt Shoppe to say hi to Sarah and I and Judy send us this photo. We had a great time there! The shoppe is h-u-g-e at 10,000 sf. and the classroom is the best I’ve ever seen. I wanted to move in.

Here are Sarah and I showing off quilts and answering questions and generally having a lot of fun chatting with quilters.

Saturday, June 21 in Anchorage, Alaska

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Sarah and I will be at Seams Like Home Quilt Shoppe in the new location at the University Center Mall from noon to 3pm on Saturday. Please stop in and say “hi” and I’ll be bringing the bits of my Fuzzy Funky Crazy Shortcut Quilt too – I have a few squares “quilted” and you can check them out.

Maret, the owner of Seams Like Home Quilt Shoppe, is a great gal and she used to be Sarah’s teacher in elementary school – how cool is that? She told us that she found a photo of Sarah curled up inside the bookcase in her classroom, reading a book. I can’t wait to see it.

I’ve been busy working on Tom’s property and I’ll post about it Sunday – with photos. I keep forgetting to take my camera when I head out there to work. Happy Solstice All!

Funky Fuzzy Shortcut Quilt

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This baby is my favorite – by far! I wanted to couch down some yarn instead of quilting my squares, and I dug through my stash and found this chunky funky fuzzy yarn – -isn’t it delicious?
I’ve been using a narrow zigzag stitch to couch it down and it’s going slower than I thought it would but that’s just because of the little fuzzy bubbles in the yarn and the fact that I get to sew for only a few hours a week. We are still doing maintenance and work on the boat and putting up fish for winter. If you are following along and want to make the quilt – – I’ll post the whole story on our website when I get the quilt finished. I am using the sizing from the book for “Easy to Go Crazy” and the cutting design from “Think Pink”. I am making a few adjustments as I go so be sure to check back for the final post about this quilt. 🙂