It’s time to make a quilt. I need a fabric “fix” 🙂 I found these in my stash, from a project I never even started (how perfect is that! Now they are ready for this project!) That’s my philosophy and I’m sticking to it. Doesn’t that black and white check make you dizzy? I love it!
Marguerita’s Blog
Commercial Fishing and the Cabana Family
This season has been a difficult one so far and every day I dread more bad news. Last night Tom called and said that they were coming in because the skiff (with it’s brand new thousands of $$ outboard) had been swamped. In salt water. It was less than 36 hours old, and all the breakdowns that lead up to it’s unexpected purchase…well I won’t bore you with the depressing details.
In the middle of these miserable events, my heart was gladdened by the people who are our biggest competitors on the water – the Cabana family. Fishing is very competitive. I’ve been side by side with their boats, fighting for the fish, trying to out catch them and they try and beat us. That’s the nature of this work. But the second that they saw Tom’s skiff underwater they cut throttle, disconnected lines and came racing over to help. That is the Alaskan way and their family is one I admire.
Newborn Sea Lions
I have my tv station on a channel that broadcasts live from the Chiswell Islands, just south of Resurrection Bay in Seward, Alaska. I am watching the sea lion population as they climb out of the water, up onto huge rock outcroppings, to give birth. The rocks are covered with sea lions, the massive males and their harems of females and their pups, some just hours old. You can watch too, on streaming video.
The color is bad on the video, almost black & white on my screen. The sea lions are earthy brown and the pups are black. This is a photo of my tv 🙂 I wanted to see what it would look like.
Crazy Shortcut Quilt Book Publicity
Oh happy news! While at Quilt Market in Portland
Sarah and I did a demo in our publishers’ booth (Krause Publications) for about an hour or so. When I had checked in earlier I had noticed that a quilt from our book (Sweet Sixteen Quilt) was on the cover of the new Krause Catalog. I was thrilled and walked around showing everyone! Hehehehe.
Anyway, I must have made quite an impression on one of my favorite folks at Krause (Laura Miller in Marketing) because today I received another catalog in the mail from Laura. Here’s what her note said
“M – thought you would really enjoy this catalog too. It’s last summer’s consumer quilt catalog….it’s your quilt too.”
She is just too sweet for words! The cover of the catalog (on the left) has Sarah’s Moda quilt “Bright Idea” on it and the back cover of the catalog has our book and my ugly hands!
Mending the Seine
Here’s Tom and crew David and James, mending the jitney seine on Sunday afternoon. We loaded the seine onto the jitney first thing this morning (no pics, I was too busy keeping the seine straight and free from snags) and then mended the
net after that. (When we got to a bigger hole I dropped my part of the web and grabbed my camera for a few shots.) We use the powerblock on the big boat (the big boat is the F/V Dolly B) to lift the seine high enough to see holes, and then Tom mends as we go through the net. Then we put the seine back onto the jitney and checked her over for tomorrow’s opener. The jitney is tied up to the big boat, just on the other side.
On the far side of the harbor is the cruise ship dock, with a ship in for the day. Seward usually only gets one cruise ship at a time, but there are rare days when there are two of them tied up, side by side, and they just dwarf the entire harbor.
This year I’ll be working a desk job while the guys and boats are out fishing. I’m pretty sure I am going to miss being in on the action. It’s very hard work, but it’s wonderful to work outside, on the water. On the other hand, they are stuck on the boat while I have my sewing machine set up in the living room – happily sewing and quilting and watching PBS specials on TV.
Seine
The net is called the “seine” on a boat that is a seiner. Here is the jitney’s seine, in the back of Tom’s truck. After working on the skiff outboard all morning, launching the jitney, filling her tanks, standing up the mast and then dealing with my broken down car, he and I loaded the seine from the warehouse (where it is stored for the winter) to his truck. I am so tired that I can’t believe that I can type, and I didn’t do a quarter of the work he did! Tomorrow we will load the seine onto the jitney and mend it. I’ll try and get a photo for you.
The pretty house in the background is a B & B on our street, and that’s the bay that Tom will be fishing in come Monday morning at 6am. Please wish him luck for a good fishing season.
Crazy Shortcake Quilt finds a Home
While at Spring Quilt Market Sarah and I bumped into Maret from Seams Like Home Quilt Shoppe in Anchorage several times! I love going all the way to Portland, Oregon to meet up with the Alaskans – lol!
We showed her the Shortcake Quilt and offered to let it go live in her newly relocated Shoppe and she took us up on it. I haven’t seen it there yet, I stole this pic from Sarah’s Blog 🙂
We will both be at Seams Like Home on June 21 for a book signing and hugging day. We end up seeing lots of quilters and giving and getting lots of hugs. How nice is that!
Fabrics from Spring Quilt Market
I let Sarah do my fabric shopping for me and here’s what she chose:
a beautiful collection of soft earthy colors called “Victoria” by Benartex
and a nice set of complementary fabrics by Andover (the lighter fabrics) and Quilt Gate (the darker maroon colored fabrics). It is absolute heaven to have a “fabric advisor” that I can trust! Now I just need to decide which quilts to make and who gets them….fun!
NQR stands for Not Quilting Related
I’ve been a busy gal since coming back from Portland Quilt Market! The boats still need work & maintenance and that is first priority in our lives. So, it’s been the usual routine of scrubbing the fish hold, mending nets, launching skiffs and stocking the big boat with groceries and supplies.
The jitney is in the driveway (what a sight!) so that we can repair hydraulic lines, the ram for the power block and the hatch covers.
And then there is my pal Vanta’s new bookstore! When I haven’t been working on boats I’ve been at Vanta’s store, helping with inventory and painting the interior and exterior of the business. She’s going to call it Cover To Cover (isn’t that cute?) and she hopes to be open for business in the next few weeks in downtown Seward, Alaska.
All this is in addition to my “day job” – the one that pays the travel bills and fabric expenses – lol! I hope your spring & early summer are just as much fun or more 🙂
Green
My favorite color is green. I found a green batting at Spring Quilt Market, it’s green because it’s made from recycled soda pop bottles! Sarah bought a case of it and I’m going to get a batt from her to use. Sarah spent a significant amount of time at Market looking for organics and other eco-friendly products. I recently welcomed my towns adoption of recycling plastic (should have been doing so 20 years ago like some states) with open arms full of plastics I’ve been washing and saving for a year (what a mess!)
Last night we watched the movie “Who Killed the Electric Car”. What a shock. I drive a 13 yr old vehicle and Toms is 12 yrs old. I have over 200,000 miles on my car and I’m not buying another vehicle until I can buy an electric car. By all information available and confirmed, I should be able to buy it today. Check out the movie at Netflix or Amazon or the movie’s own website or ev1.org or even Wiki.….please….watch this movie. I’d love to hear what you think of it.
