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For a year now, I have been patiently waiting to see another Marbled Godwit like I did last fall. Because the lighting conditions were so poor last year (you have to face into the sun almost any time of day as it seems to face south and therefore the winter sun) that my pictures were only good enough to identify the bird. I finally saw them again last Friday!! The biggest treat is that there was a flock rather than just one straggler!! They were far enough out that I couldn't recognize them until I got back home and put the pictures up on the computer. I had been watching all the Oystercatchers and thought it was a group of those from a distance but since I had never seen Oystercathers group like that, took lots of pictures!! Look at those bills!!
Here they are joined by a wandering Oystercatcher (you can see how shallow the water is) and I believe a Willet.
Just one more closeup shot of a Marbled Godwit! Who knows when I will see one again.
Probably the best Oystercatcher picture from down here. As I said, you always have to face into the sun and they stay far far away!
This is a Dunlin which is another small shorebird but distinguished by his long bill and the brown shading on the front of his chest. These past few days are the first time I have seen them down here and there has been a small flock.
A group of the Dunlins feeding. You can see the underside a little better here.
There has also been a small flock of Semi-palmated Plovers feeding with the Dunlins. They are also a small shorebird who blends in very effectively with his surroundings (as do the Dunlins). I think I have seen all of these birds before but just didn't notice them (thinking they were Sanderlings which are so common down here)
A front shot of the Semi-palmated Plover. All of the distance shots have been done with my little Canon point and shoot which has the 35X optical zoom. I used the optical and digital zooms to get these shots. These birds are nowhere near me, barely identifiable as birds without the computer!
The stars of my blog today are my youngest nephew John and his beautiful new bride, Megan. It is the first time that my sister and I have had most of the cousins together in probably 15 years! My youngest flew out from Seattle, met her sister in Charlotte and we met them down in Charleston where the wedding was held at the Pavilion at the Pepper Plantation. It was a deliriously happy time for all of us, lots and lots of laughing, children and family on both sides!
This is my sister, her husband and her one of her grandsons, Sebastian.
This is a photo of five of the six cousins (my sister's and my kids) all grown up. They are Laura, my sister Gail, John, Pam, Suzanne, me and LJ.
Here is a picture of the six cousins taken when they were just a bit younger!!! They are Rick at the top (the oldest of my sister's kids), then left to right in the top row, LJ, Pam, Laura and then John and Suzanne in the bottom row. Would you have been able to match the adult pictures with the children?
We took some time on Sunday to revisit Charleston at Suzanne's request. This is Suzanne and my dear husband in front of one of the fountains in the Waterfront Park.
My two girls hamming it up!!
Just a couple of random pictures taken around Charleston. I do think it is one of the most beautiful cities we have thanks to all the renovation that has been done!
Flowers still everywhere!
This is a collage of my Little Blue Heron that I saw the other day. I had these pics on my small point and shoot and really liked them. These I include in the category of "old friends".
Another of my very favorites -- the Oystercatcher. There were a lot of them down in the Ft. Fisher basin at low tide on Thanksgiving. There were a few people down there but not as many as most weekends and holidays.
He was doing a lot of grooming while I watched. Eventually they all got chased away by someone walking along the beach.
I think this is a juvenile Herring Gull as he was so big and very noisy and not hanging out with the other gulls.
This is an awful picture but the bird was very far away, moving fast and I just took the picture as fast as I could as it looked so different to me. Turns out is a Clapper Rail which is common enough but one I have never seen before. They tend to hang out in the reeds so you can't see them! The tail bob is the giveaway but I needed help in identifying this one as I was looking in the sandpipers!
Another common bird but one which I haven't seen before -- a Dunlin. I guess I had not realized they were so small. There were Semi-palmated plovers, Willets and Sanderlings as well but again, these looked different, even though they were just a speck in the camera lens. I couldn't get close.
There were lots of birds off shore down by Ft. Fisher and I will have to walk down there tomorrow. I saw my favorite sea bird -- the Northern Gannett which has arrived back for the winter.
It was a nice Thanksgiving treat to see so many birds!
I still can't get these ladies to hold up their quilts for more than a few seconds. I really like the colors in this one which is a very simple pattern but done in solid substitutes, the colors really pop. There were a lot of quilts turned in during this meeting for the neo-natal unit at the local hospital. The coordinator had asked for extra effort in creating some of these quilts which have to be at least 40 x 40 inches. Little did she know that almost everyone who got up would have one or two to contribute to her. She left with two chairs filled high. I wish I had my scraps down here but maybe some will manifest themselves by the end of the winter!
I liked this black and white and yellow log cabin. I plan on making a quilt at some point with that palette.
Our program this month was on organizing your quilting space and there were so very clever ideas, a couple of which I will try (using one of the swinging drapery rods to hold fabric to cover up the fabric on your shelves so they don't get bleached out by the light).
This group is very active in making Quilts of Valor as well and I liked this one especially. I have given all my red, white and blue prints away but probably still have some solids hanging around!
This lady had become a big fan of purses such as myself. This one allows you to change the bottom of the bag with the season. May have to look into that!
Well, I now have both sleeves and both fronts done. I would be further along if I hadn't sewn most of the strips in the wrong order on the first front I did. I am not a big fan of ripping out stitches -- especially lots of them. I haven't trimmed the sides yet, nor done the darts the pattern calls for. You will definitely see me coming. I am not sure I will wear this one in public except in quilt venues!! I have to find some fabric for lining. I am partial to silk so will have to find some locally or go online. One of the quilt shops locally used to have silk so maybe there will be some left!
Well, a Little Blue Heron is no great rarity but it is the first time I have seen one at Carolina Beach Lake. Usually I see the Great Blues and very often the Tri-Colored Heron. He posed nicely for me as he gathered food.
There were quite a few Grebes as well but they run for the reeds anytime they see me coming and hide until I leave so no good pictures. The ones I took, however, have some strange coloring so may have to evaluate again.
My normal wintertime ducks have not arrived (Scaups, Red Heads, Scoters, Shovelers and Mergansers), so will have to do with this picture of a Starling. I do think they are really pretty in the winter as there is a lot of iridescence in their coloring.
My primary deed for the day was getting the two sleeves of the jacket finished. You will notice that I covered up one of the blacks as well on the one on the right. I will applique a piece of the lighter purple shade so that it looks more balanced on the left hand one. It is not obvious if you don't use a really strong gradation However, then the problem....
This is what one side of the front (or back) looked like when I set it up on the design wall having arranged it according to the pattern directions (a black and white picture that showed the gradations). It looked a bit peculiar to me as the zig zags seemed to go nowhere, unlike the sleeves where they meet in the middle. I realized that the pattern directions were basically wrong. Thank goodness for design walls and looking at things before jumping to the piecing.
This is what it should look like to match both the picture of the garment on the pattern envelope and also to match the sleeve. It makes the v-pattern in the center. The other way would have been interesting but would not have matched the completed sleeves.
Well, I wrote to the pattern designer and she sent me back a very nice note saying that she would never again hurry a pattern to publication before having someone test it out. She had been in a hurry to go to printing as she was coming to my home guild in Rochester coincidentally! Luckily my note caught her just as she was going to have it reprinted so she is busily updating the pattern as this blog goes to publication! (She is sending me two free patterns as well!!) Nice!!
Always anxious to see how things are going to look, I took the first strips sets and cut them into 3 inch squares and used the pattern to place them for one of the sleeves. I definitely won't fade into the background!
I did notice that the center looked a little peculiar and then noticed a footnote on the pattern that said to take four of the blocks, cut off one of the strips and add a green in place.
. Here I have taken the offending blocks out!
Ah, now that makes more sense! As I mentioned, each of these strips starts out only 1 inch wide so each of those stripes is only 1/2 inch wide. The thought of cutting all those 1 inch strips accurately was daunting so I went online and bought another one of the rulers that allows you to cut many strips at once without lifting up the ruler (it has slots). I have one at home but use it so rarely, didn't think to bring it with me.
It arrived today and is a little different than the one I have it home (more versatile) and it certainly helped me to cut these 195 strips in only about 1/2 an hour and very accurately!! As I only had 1 inch left of one of the fabrics, it was well well worth it. I had used one before back when I was cutting up fabric for knitting. They are wonderful and will use it when I do another one of those Texas lone stars again. So now all the strips are cut, I have a tape marking an accurate 1/4 inch on my sewing machine and am ready to go.
A few statistics though first:
1. There are 195 1 inch strips
2. There are 39 strips sets that I have to sew together
3. These will produce 480 blocks ultimately
4. This results in a jacket with 2400 individual pieces of fabric.
Now, my king sized Dear Jane probably only had twice that many pieces!! Most of my quilts have nowhere near that many pieces!! I think I must be crazy.
Greenfield Lake is beginning to look like fall and I loved the picture of the Cypress trees knee deep in the alligator filled water!
This Great Blue Heron took off while I was watching from his hiding place in among the Cypress.
It was just beautiful there at Greenfield Lake Park with many trees taking on their bright colors.
My second favorite duck -- Northern Shoveler - was there in abundance. Both males and females but they wouldn't let me get anywhere near them! There were places where the trees were filled with Great Egrets. Cormorants and Anhingas were also there in great numbers. I spotted a couple of Pied Billed Grebes as well. I have been seeing them lately at Carolina Beach Lake as well. I had to use my little camera with the 35x zoom to even see these birds, they were so far away!
A couple of the females -- I love their big bills!!
Couldn't resist taking a bunch of pictures of this almost full moon last week.
This is a "sun dog" caused by ice crystals. It is a rainbow completely surrounding the sun. The colors are more muted than a regular rainbow but the red is closest to the sun. They occur on our chilly days. I have only seen these down here.
There was a preponderance of Moon Jellyfish on the beach. They have these four bright pink circular things in the middle which are gonads! Shows what a jellyfish thinks is important!! No circulatory system or digestive system is present!!
I am slowly but surely making progress on the jacket pictured previously. Each of these strip sets is just 3 inches wide and this picture shows the four strip sets contained in the jacket with the darker two being the more prominent ones. I was shocked to learn that the jacket pattern was done by a woman who just taught a class at my home GVQC guild in Rochester! I had seen the jacket just because someone had "liked" the site in FB. Sorry, I missed the class now!
I cut two squares (3 inches by 3 inches) from each of the strips and placed them together to see how they look. I think this will be okay!
One thing that wasn't suggested in the pattern but which is downright critical with this is the checking of your 1/4 mark on your foot or sewing machine!!! I did a test and found that my 1/4 mark on my machine resulted in 2 3/4 inch wide strips. I quickly placed down some tape at what I measured as 1/4 inch and tested again. Perfect!!! Both Sharon Craig and Jan Krentz emphasize this checking in their classes. Even a slight variation when multiplied by four or five can mean disaster!
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