November!

Well, how did that happen? I sure have been away a while. It was a busy summer that just flew by so fast. We happily celebrated our daughter's wedding in August which meant our son and his family came for the wedding and a holiday. It was wonderful having them here with us and having everyone together for such a joyous occasion.

Despite the state of the Canadian dollar we could not let November go by and without a visit to Maine and our dear friend (and quilter) Jo Diggs. We had perfect weather, visited our favourite quilt shops and wandered the old Port. We spent a wonderful day In Lowell, MA at the New England Quilt Museum. The exhibit of applique quilts was one of the best exhibits I have ever seen. If you are ever in the neighbourhood be sure and visit this gem of a museum.

I didn't get much quilting done or projects finished. The weather was really hot and humid this summer. We went almost 3 months with not much rain to speak of, thank goodness we are no longer on a well though we were still very aware of our water usage. I am back on track now working away on my "Pies and Tarts" quilt. It is a hand project, I am hand appliqueing the EPP circles on to the background. It is a great small project to take with me to my bee or meetings or to work on in the car.

My local guild, the Mahone Bay Quilters Guild had our bi-annual quilt show during the Scarecrow Festival. It was one of the best yet and we had a wonderful attendance with people from all over. The members once again showed some exquisite quilts, it was hard to pick a favourite.

At our Quilt Mafia gathering in November, Laurie shared her work in progress for her Halifax Explosion project Hope and Survival.

Last week the "Quilt Mafia" gathered again at Gaspereau Valley Fibres, a wonderful location near Wolfville and easy for all of us to get to. And it is near Avonport Discount Fabrics for those of us who are avid quilters! It is always so inspiring to get together with this group of women, seventeen of us made it, we were just missing two members! It was a beautiful late fall drive across the province for me, a grey day that was made brighter by the wonderful yellow/gold leaves still on the trees. Almost everyone brought something to share and everyone brought something to work on from stitching to knitting to quilting and piecing. It is a wonderful old building with lots of shelves of glorious colours of yarns. Many years ago the building was a garage/mechanic shop. There are wonderful rows of old drawers lining two walls, apparently the handles of the drawers were handles from cars!

These drawers would be great in my sewing room but I would need a much bigger room!

A Shoe in the Wall

Have you ever heard of finding an old shoe in the wall of an old house? I had heard of it before but we have never encountered it until this week when we found this shoe in the wall of our bedroom. It looks to be a man's show, it is about 12" in length and made of leather. Legends vary but I like the one that says it is for good luck and it will keep the witches away!

The sole of the shoe had been repaired several times by hand with tiny stitches and tiny nails.

Where we found it, buried in the wood chips. We put it back and it is now encased in foam! May the luck continue!

I of course couldn't resist, I had to ask Google about old shoes concealed in walls. Turns out there is a museum in England that has a database of where in the world people have found shoes in walls of old houses. Who knew!  Northampton Museum is the place to go! Soon I will send them the details of our show!

Another Reno Project

We have had some time off from any major projects so it was time to get going again. The crack in the sloped wall of our master bedroom had gotten worse over the winter. The time had come to do something about it, the plaster is the original about 160+ years old, like other walls in the house it had horsehair in it as a binder. We decided to remove the sloped wall and the ceiling, have it drywalled then Peter will paint. The ceiling had embossed wallpaper on it, under that were acoustic ceiling tiles, under that we didn't know. We soon discovered there were more bad plaster, lots of cracks but it was being held up with strapping so that was good, the drywall can go right on top.

While we (that's the "royal we"!) were at it we decided to remove the old insulation which was very old, dry wood chips (an R value of 0-1!) and have the sloped wall spray foamed for insulation.

The cracks in the ceiling.

Some of the 10 plus bags of wood chips!