Carol Ann Waugh

I’ve been doing some pre-planning before I tape The Quilt Show with Ricky Tims and Alex Anderson in August.  Part of my homework is reading their blog and watching shows.  My friend Ami Simms did a wonderful show for them in 2010 (and you can watch it for free) about the Alzheimers Art Quilt Initiative that she has spearheaded, and, consequently, I have a much better idea about what to expect when I do my own show. It’s taped in front of a live audience, and that means it should be a LOT of fun!

On their blog today, I learned about Carol Ann Waugh, a quilt artist from Denver who works with couched threads on some of her pieces.  She also uses a technique she calls “stitch and slash”, which sounds a bit like my Mock Mola applique technique.

You MUST check out her quilts!  They are bright and fun and fantastic, and they use all those stitches your sewing machine came with that you never use!  I particularly liked her video demo of what she calls “Rattail Binding for a Quilt”.

It’s a good day, when I can learn about a new quilt artist!

Announcing the next quilting cruise!

Hello everyone, from HOME.  We arrived a few days ago, and have had our heads down, getting caught up on our lives here.  My garden needs a lot of work…..

We have just confirmed some of the details on our next quilting cruise.  Susan Purney-Mark and I will be your teachers on a Fall Colours cruise between Quebec City and New York City, with many exciting stops between. MARK YOUR CALENDARS: September 22, 2013 to October 2, 2013.

Itinerary
Sept 22/13 Quebec City (overnight)
Sept 23/13 Quebec City 4:00 p.m. Depart
Sept 24/13 Cruising Gulf of St. Lawrence (QUILTING TIME!)
Sept 24/13 Scenic cruising Saguenay Fjord (maybe more Quilting Time!)
Sept 25/13 Charlottetown Prince Edward Island 8:00 am to 5:00 pm (time enough to visit Green Gables)
Sept 26/13 Sydney Nova Scotia 8:00 am to 5:00 pm (I’d recommend visiting the Fortress of Louisburg while we’re there)
Sept 27/13 Halifax Nova Scotia 8:00am to 5:00 pm
Sept 28/13 Bar Harbour, Maine 8:00 am to 5:00 pm
Sept 29/13 Boston, Massachusetts 8:00 am to 5:00 pm
Sept 30/13 At Sea  (and you know what THAT means: QUILTING!)
Oct 01/13 Newport, Rhode Island 7:00 am to 5:00 pm
Oct 02/13 New York, New York 7:00 am

We’ll be doing this cruise with our old friend: Holland America Lines. If you’ve travelled with us before, you’ll already know where everything is on the ship!!!

If you’d like to inquire further about this cruise, our tour directors are John and Margaret Rumsby. email him at jrumsby@cruiseshipcenters.com, or call him toll-free at 1-866-477-4898.

Susan and I are planning the class details now. We also have an opportunity to organize a class with a world famous quilter in Halifax, which will be one of our “shore excursions”.

Details on prices, classes and extras will be on my website as they become available.  www.singingquilter.com

I hope to see you on this cruise – it’s going to be a blast! And the fall leaves will be SPECTACULAR!

I took this in the Gatineau Hills near Ottawa last year.

Large Scale Printing on Fabric

On our way through International Falls MN yesterday, I spotted a “Quilt Show” sign on the road.  “TURN RIGHT NOW!” I cried, and John drove an extra block before I talked him into it.  We walked into the Whispering Pines Quilt show and spent an enjoyable hour looking at quilts.

I stopped in front of a remarkable quilt – it looked like a photograph!  The label said it was a whole cloth quilt, and yes, it was a photograph, but HUGE!  I’ve printed on fabric before, using the EQ sheets that fit through my inkjet printer.  They are letter sized, and they work really well.  But what if you want to print something bigger?  That’s what the woman who made this quilt did!

As we lingered in front of the quilt, a woman who had been sitting with other quilters at a table behind me joined us.  She introduced herself as Val Sjoblom, “On a Wing and a Prayer quilting” and she was the maker of this quilt. I was able to ask her how she did it.  She bought a large format printer for this very reason, and now offers this (as well as longarm quilting services) to her clients.   She can use a normal 300 dpi photograph (on a minimum 10mm camera), and blow it up to fill a 45″ roll of fabric – WITH NO PIXELLATION.  It was a really clear photo on the fabric.  She specializes in printed shower curtains, printing on polyester fabric, but can also print on cotton.

In fact, this quilt started its life as a shower curtain too. She realized two days before the show that she had been working so hard on everyone else’s quilts, that she didn’t have anything of her own to enter.  So she took down the shower curtain, trimmed off the grommets, layered it on her longarm machine, and quilted AND bound it in time for the show!

Here’s the quilt.

Val Sjoblom and her quilt

I think this is a wonderful idea, and I’m so delighted to find out about this service.  If you’re interested, there’s lots of info on her website.

Val, it was great to meet you, and look forward to seeing you again next time we’re through the area!

Wisconsin: Cheese curd, Frank Lloyd Wright buildings, and a strange concrete village.

We’ve spent the last week in Wisconsin. We’re happy to be back in “America’s Dairyland”, as it says on their car licenses.

For me, Wisconsin is: the best cheese curds, drumlins, Frank Lloyd Wright buildings, apples (especially in Door County) and beer. Just now there are trilliums flowering in the forest, and lots of thunderstorms. There is a wonderful mix of people and culture that is evident in the bratwurst and sauerkraut on the one hand, and the Scandinavian fish boil on the other.  Turns out it was also where the Republican Party was founded in 1854, and it’s where the Niagara Escarpment ends.  Who knew?  I thought the Escarpment tailed off at the end of the Bruce Peninsula in Ontario (thanks, Barbara, for clearing this up for me, and I’m sorry I didn’t believe you at first!).

The last time we were here, we visited the Miller beer company store in Milwaukee so I could buy all my Miller family Christmas presents – it was terrific one-stop shopping, and the Miller gear was very well received.

I’ve written a song about Wisconsin, called “Peshtigo”, about a quilt that a train engineer used to keep him from the flames of the worst natural disaster in American history – a fire that wiped out the town on the same day as the Chicago fire (which is why you don’t know about it).  I also made a ribbon-winning little quilt at a retreat in Door County one year, using fabric I fished out of the garbage cans! (I HATE to throw out perfectly good fabric!!!) So we have lots of connections with the state.

Geese from the Garbage

We are in Wisconsin to do a few shows in Madison, Waunakee, Racine, and Lodi. We had a few days off to explore some of the sights in Racine, with our good friend Barbara Vallone, who is a wonderful tour guide.  We started with a Frank Lloyd Wright house called Wingspread, built for Herbert F. Johnson in 1939.

“Wingspread”

It turns out that Barbara used to work in the building, now used as a conference facility, and we were able to get a tour of the inside.  Very dramatic and Frank Lloyd Wright-ish, and it’s even said that Frank Himself haunts the place.  (A door that I had closed tightly with some effort blew open and closed while we were sitting in the living room. Our guide said it was probably Frank, and that that sort of thing happens all the time.)

The living room – hexagons and a huge fireplace grate.

The house is designed with four wings – hence the name “Wingspread”, and fits into the surrounds beautifully.  One wing is a bit more airy than the others, and juts out quite a bit (thanks to a steel beam that the engineer snuck in after Frank had left the premises – Frank didn’t like to use steel, it seems).  If I were to live in this house, this would be my sewing room! Here are two pictures – outside and inside of this room.

Inside the wing.

I loved one of the fireplaces.  Frank designed it to accommodate logs which would burn standing up.  It seemed like a good idea. The family tried to use it once, and all the logs fell into the room, burning.  They had to pick them up and turf them out the window so that they wouldn’t burn the whole house down.  Needless to say, they didn’t use this fireplace again (they had lots of other normal ones to choose from, though)!

The vertical fireplace

Frank wasn’t really known for his common sense…..he was an artist.

In fact, the roof on this building leaked quite a bit before they repaired it at great cost. Wisconsin gets lots of snow in the winter, and one year there was a series of freeze/thaw cycles that built up the ice on the roof.  The story is told that it started leaking right onto Mr. Johnson’s head!  He called Frank and said “Fix the d**n roof!”. Frank replied “Move your d**n chair!”.  He was quite the guy… But the house is beautiful – stunning.  You should see it.

The next day we toured Fortaleza Hall, just next to the SC Johnson Company headquarters. It is a company that is still family owned and operated, and they early on had a commitment to the environment, adventure, architecture (their headquarters was also designed by Frank Lloyd Wright), and wax.  The main event in this building (recently completed) is an airplane that re-enacted the flight made by Sam Johnson’s father in 1935 to find the best source for the company’s floor wax.  Sam commissioned the reproduction and in 1998 he flew the same flight path as his father did to Fortaleza Brazil, where the wax was found.  The plane now holds a place of honour in this newly constructed building.

The Spirit of Carnauba

The building is beautiful, lots of crystal clear glass everywhere, and an inlaid floor underneath with a map of the world, tracing the flight of this little plane from Racine Wisconsin to Brazil.

Fortaleza Hall

The building has a restaurant for employees in it, and there will be soon a museum dedicated to Frank Lloyd Wright downstairs.  I loved the “living wall” – we saw one at the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg Florida in January – a wall of living plants!

A perfect reflection of the stairway.

From Racine we drove back to the centre of the state to visit Mill House Quilts in Waunakee.  I’d recommend this quilt shop – there are lots of yummy fabrics, enthusiastic and helpful staff, and owners who work hard at keeping things interesting.  We were part of their annual spring party, and we had a small and enthusiastic group. I love being able to stretch out a bit in concert, and that day we sang for 1 1/2 hours! Thanks to Dianne and Paul for inviting us to sing for you!

Our audience at Mill House Quilts

The next day, we were in Lodi.  We’ve seen the sign for Lodi every time we’ve driven this road, but have never stopped before.  It was good to visit such a large guild – there were over 100 there, and they gave us a standing ovation at the end.  Thanks!

Our audience at Lodi

After the show, one of the long-arm quilters in the audience told me a story. She was in a van full of quilters at the US border just after September 11, 2001.  He had a very nice car, and was well dressed. As the quilters watched, the officials searched his whole car.   He had a smug look on his face that comes from knowing they will find nothing untoward.  They searched the car’s interior, it was clean.  The trunk was also empty.  Then, the spare tire compartment.  It was FULL of fabric!! Not an empty space to be had. His face registered total shock – he had no idea it was there. But the quilters fell over laughing, as did the border crossing guards.  His wife at home is – BUSTED!!!

I love this story!

Today, we drove north in Wisconsin.  It was raining quite heavily when we stopped for lunch in a small park – I thought it said “Country Park”, but in fact, it said “ConCRETE Park”.  We entered a magical park of concrete figures that Fred Smith, a retired lumberjack, had made.  This picture is marred by the rain on the windshield, but you can check out this video for a sunny-day tour. The next time we’re through on a nice day, I want to stop and really take a look at these amazing sculptures!

Can you see the upended beer bottles that make the horse’s mane? Brilliant!

So we move north now, towards Winnipeg and our next show.  It was a great week in Wisconsin.  I hope you’ve enjoyed this mini-travelogue!

To be continued….

AQS Paducah winners

Just a quick note to you this evening.  John and I are packing to leave tomorrow morning to drive back to Wisconsin, where we’ll continue our tour.  After a bit of stress yesterday (thanks to my quilting bee, the Spool Board quilters, for allowing me to vent!) it’s all go today.  There are no more weeds that I can pull until we return home.  No more laundry, cleaning, cooking or last minute quilting projects.  What got done, got done.  What didn’t will have to wait. (btw: that’s NOT to say there aren’t any more weeds to pull!)

Do you remember the blog I wrote after we visited the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival in Virginia in March? (http://singingquilter.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=1580&action=edit) I was very excited about a rainbow hexagon quilt by Cheryl See that only got a 3rd place ribbon?  I remember saying to myself: “What do you have to do to win a ribbon around here?”

Well, I’m DELIGHTED to tell you that Cheryl won big at Paducah this year! She won the Hand Workmanship Award and I couldn’t be more delighted.  This means everyone will be able to see this remarkable quilt in the AQS Museum in Paducah – it goes into their collection now.

I hope I get to meet Cheryl sometime in our travels. She lives in Ashburn Virginia, and we should be back there in 2014.  She’s an inspiration to all us hexaholics everywhere!

To see all the winners, watch the video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31nuxmYKxQM&feature=youtu.be.

Happy quilting, everyone, and cross your fingers that we get good weather across the mountains!

Ami and Scooter

We have stopped for the night to see the world-famous Ami Simms, who, among other things, heads up the Alzheimer’s Art Quilt Initiative (http://www.alzquilts.org/).  They have just celebrated receiving their 10,000th quilt. Way to go, Ami!

We will be sleeping with 1000 of the little quilts tonight.  Here they are.

This is what 1000 Alzheimers Art Quilts look like!

Ami has been working hard on this amazing endeavour for a long time, and has raised a great deal of money that has helped fund research into finding a cure for Alzheimer’s disease. Check out her website and help if you can.

Ami asked me to help fill an order for quilts that she received today.  It’s all very well organized, and I found the three quilts right away.

Found it!

We’ve spent a lovely evening with her and her dog Scooter. Scooter is a lovely (clean and soft) Golden Retriever who has his own Facebook page and he even takes over Ami’s blog on occasion. Scooter loves to have his ears scratched and he LOVES to play ball!

Scooter and Ami in the backyard.

He has a very entertaining party trick: he thinks he’s a lap god – er, dog!

It doesn't seem to matter what size of chair Ami sits in, Scooter thinks he can fit!

We have been playing ball all evening, and are all tuckered out now.  Tomorrow, we head for Indianapolis – our first time ever singing in Indiana!

Peggy’s Cove

It was a chilly (5 degrees C) but magnificently sunny day today.  We left Halifax this morning and took the slow way to visit friends partway down the coast, on the point between St. Margaret’s Bay and Mahone Bay. Our friends have a 300 degree view of water from their house – wonderful. We’re very happy to be here. On the way here, we visited one of Atlantic Canada’s iconic tourist traps: Peggy’s Cove.

I know why the Cove is such a magnet for tourists: the bare glacier-scraped granite rock sweeping down to the restless Atlantic Ocean is something you don’t see in many other spots.  There are perfect photo opportunities of a lonely lighthouse perched atop the rocks, and today we saw a fishing boat just off the point, as well. (There are signs everywhere saying “don’t stand on wet rocks or dark rocks” – many people unfamiliar with being by the ocean have been swept out to sea by standing in the zone where a rogue king wave can wash them away.) In the summertime, the place is overrun with tourists.  Today, we only saw Nova Scotia licence plates in the parking lots, and it was possible to take pictures without hundreds of people in them.

Here are some of the pictures we took today.

Here is the harbour.

A fishing boat picking up his lobster pots.

Lobster pots awaiting deployment.

Peggy's Cove lighthouse

Just down the road, in Indian Harbour,  we stopped at the monument to the Swiss Air Flight 111 that came down in the sea 11 kilometres off this coast on September 2, 1998.  It is a simple, but heartfelt memorial to those who lost their lives that day. There is another one across St. Margaret’s Bay in Bayswater.  The location of the two monuments and the crash site makes a triangle shape. You can peer through the slanted cuts in the granite to where the plane went down.

Swissair Flight 111 Memorial, Indian Cove, NS

We continued our drive along the coast to where our friends live, and we all went for a walk along the shore in the sunshine. All in all, it was a wonderful day!

Can You Imagine a Piece of the Universe?

We have just spent a wonderful day on Cape Breton Island, and I want to tell you all about it.

This part of Nova Scotia is definitely high on the list for people who love Celtic music and history. It features one of the first permanent settlements in Canada by the French – the Fortress of Louisbourg, a National Historic Site of Canada. It was founded in 1713, and has been restored beautifully to its original glory, after the British destroyed it in 1760. In the summertime, costumed actors portray life as it was in 1744. I wish we were here then – someday!

We set out from Sydney in the morning.  On our way towards Louisbourg we stopped in Sydney Mines to visit the Cape Breton Miners’ Museum. Alas, because it’s only March, things aren’t very open here (too early in the season, and only we crazy BCers would be visiting at this time of year!).  We had lunch in the parking lot before we went in, and John spotted a local fox looking for some lunch as well.

The fox jumped into the box, and the pigeons all scattered!

We were the only visitors to the museum, and the director had to turn on the lights for us (but not the heat!) so we could see the displays.  Cape Breton has a long history of coal mining, something I learned about through working with Lawrence Chrismas for a couple of years, writing songs about Canada’s coal mining history (this was the last project I did before I started writing about quilting). I was fascinated by the tales of miners following the coal seam – right out under the ocean!   There’s a story of a coal mine so far offshore that the miners could set their watches by hearing the toot-toot of the ferry, rounding the islands overhead!!  Many of the seams were only about 3 or 4 feet deep, which means the miners spent most of their work days on their knees.

It’s a dangerous business, but coal miners are smart, loyal to each other and very proud of what they do.  In 2001 the last underground coal mine here closed, leaving many skilled men out of work.  A great many of them have had to travel far to find replacement work. This museum describes how it was then.  I was moved by the wall of helmets.  During the tourist season, retired miners conduct tours underground and presumably everyone wears one of these hard hats.

Required underground wear.

The museum features concerts by the magnificent folk group of ex-miners: “Men of the Deeps“. They used to sing with Rita MacNeil, and tour extensively.  If you ever get the chance to see them, you won’t regret it! They enter in the dark, with only the lamps on their hard hats as illumination.  It’s very moving.

We hugged the coast until we arrived in Louisbourg.  It looks like there are a lot of summer cottages, but many people live there all year round.  We saw piles and piles of lobster traps, ready for the season, which starts May 16th here. All the boats are still ashore, so there’s a lot of work to be done before May.

It’s easy to see that lots of tourists arrive in Louisbourg every year: not only are there lots of shops and B&Bs in town, but the first entrance to the park is over 3 kilometres from the fortress!  That’s a long walk in the winter when it’s only 2 degrees C – with nobody else in sight! The area is out on the end of a small peninsula, quite exposed.  We were allowed into the site, although it’s not technically open until June 15th, but we couldn’t go into any of the buildings. There is a lot of construction going on to prepare for the season, but we were excited to walk around and see the buildings.  I took a lot of pictures, thinking I might turn some of the “artsier” ones into quilts.

A great stone wall on the side of the Royal Storehouse

Outside the artillery storehouse

A couple of spare cannonballs

John on the ramparts.

During the summer, this place is overrun with tourists and costumed interpreters.  It must be very exciting, and I would love to eat in the restaurants or see how they baked bread or listen to their music.  It was great to imagine everything happening around us.

We wanted to drive through Marion Bridge on our way home.  It’s a song that made us do it, one of the most beautiful songs in the English language.  It was written by Allister MacIllivray, and recorded by, among others, Anne Murray, and it’s called “Song For The Mira”.  Here’s the chorus:

“Can you imagine a piece of the universe
More fit for princes and kings?
I’ll give you ten of your cities for Marion Bridge
And the pleasure it brings.”

Here is Marion Bridge

Marion Bridge

It turns out there’s a quilt shop in Marion Bridge. (Are you surprised?) We drove by and I made John turn around and go back!

Mira Stitch 'n Post

I walked into the shop and was immediately surrounded by laughter and the sounds of a successful class at the end of the day.  I felt right at home!  Jacquie Gillis owns Mira Stitch ‘n Post.  There are lots of bolts of fabric, lots of rulers and notions, a long-arm machine, a kitchen and a nice classroom area.   She and her employees know everyone’s names by the end of their visit, and seem really really helpful.  She sells Husqvarna sewing machines to the area.  If I lived here, I’d be hanging out at this shop all the time!  I was delighted to see my friends’ Susan Purney Mark and Daphne Greig’s book on their shelves.  Here’s Jacquie showing it off.

Jacquie with "Fat Quarter Frenzy" by Susan and Daphne

It turns out that Jacquie based her shop on one that I’ve just discovered in Florida: Quilting by the Bay.  We stopped off there on our way to the cruise in January, and I was really impressed with them.  It had the same frisson of excitement when I walked into the shop as I felt in Mira Stitch ‘n Post.  I’ve decided that shops like these are the community builders – where people love to hang out and support the shop because it’s just so much fun to be there! I was very happy to discover them.  Turns out that Jacquie was at our last show in Cape Breton, in Port Hawkesbury two years ago, and she remembered us.  She is now carrying my CDs there, so if you want some, stop by and tell them you heard about her here!

We drove back into Sydney for the night, which is where I am now.  Sydney is a cruise ship port, and if we ever do a quilting cruise that comes here, I’ll be very happy.  (For one thing, Louisbourg will likely be open!!!) This is what you will see if you ever cruise here.  It’s right at the cruise ship dock, and speaks loudly to what’s really important here in Cape Breton.

MUSIC!!!

I hope you can visit Cape Breton someday.  You’ll find the people warm and welcoming (everyone waved at us from their cars and from the sidewalks), the laughter infectious, the beer local, the sights well worth the stop, and the quilt shop just like home.

Quilting Patterns and a fabulous market

We are back in Canada for a brief time, in one of my favourite places: Nova Scotia!  We have a week off to spend with friends and family before our next gigs in the area: Mahone Bay and Lower Sackville.  So we’re exploring a bit.

Before we left the US, though, we had a night at a lovely B&B in Dover NH.  It is an old Victorian House, with much original decoration indoors.  We stayed in the Silk Room, with original silk covering the walls.

Original silk wall"paper" from the 1840 era house.

I saw quilting designs everywhere in this house!

It was a wonderful visit to Dover NH, with lots of positive response from the gals at the Cocheco Quilters Guild.

Now, we’re enjoying our time in Halifax.  I haven’t spent time in the city proper for many years, and they have done some major changes.  The thing to do on a Saturday morning is go to the market at the pier, so that’s what we did.  It’s at the fairly new cruise ship dock, and  it is certainly a happening place!

This is a large indoor marketplace with food, crafts, wines, and farm produce.

It is a wonderful thing to be met at the entrance by a couple of Celtic musicians.  They were so popular that the audience even got involved – see the blur of this little boy’s legs, as he clogs along with the tune!

We found a booth run by Laurie Swim’s son, featuring her quilts.  Laurie was featured in the latest Quilters’ Newsletter Magazine, along with me and the Panguitch Quilt Walk Festival. She has been a famous art quilter in Lunenburg for the last 40 years – it’s about time she was known everywhere!  We’re hoping to be able to meet her in a week or so.  It was wonderful to see some of her quilts at the market today.

 We had a bite of “breakfast pizza” and coffee before we left the market.  The building is right on the pier, and as I looked out, there was some exciting traffic.

We’re bound to find some more interesting things to tell you during the next week.  Hoping to get a visit in to Louisbourg, up in Cape Breton before we go, even though it’s off-season, they have winter hours.  We’re at least 2 months early on all the tourist traps being open.  But that’s okay, we’ll continue to find the stuff that the locals know about.

Our busy two weeks

Whew! We’ve finished our busiest two weeks of the tour and are relaxing before our next gig in Dover NH.  If it wasn’t for the extraordinary welcome and hospitality that we received from each and every one of the six quilt guilds we visited, I would have been exhausted by the end.  But I wasn’t.

I think it’s something about teaching as well as doing concerts.  For one thing, it means we get to spend (usually) two days in one place without a big drive between.  For another, I’m sure the energy I get back from my students gives me the ability to do such a schedule without falling over.  Funny – classes are generally a full day long, but I feel better at the end of them than I do after only an hour on stage!!!   Another reason why I’m glad I’m teaching quilting.

We started in Lewes, DE, a really cool seaside town (and the first time we ever sang in Delaware). While I was teaching, John got to walk around a bit and take some pictures.

This is the Zwaanendael Museum, built in 1931 to commemorate the 300th anniversary since the first Dutch settlers arrived.  Lewes is the first city in the first state – very impressive.  And very reminiscent of the buildings we’ve seen in Holland!

We stayed with our new friends, Sue and Bob, who relocated here from New Jersey.  They decided to take the ferry across to get home when they still lived in NJ, rather than driving all the way around, and as they were waiting, they fell in love with the town.  We certainly could see why.

The class was held in the open lobby area of a closed motel.  We set up tables, and had at ‘er!  I’ve already shown you what they got done in the 6 hour class in my previous post.

We drove partway up towards Massachusetts that evening, after the class, so the next day wouldn’t be too onerous.  We were returning to sing in Pepperell – last time we were there was only 2 years ago, and we were happy to return.  We stayed again in a castle-looking Radisson Hotel in Nashua NH, just across the state line.  It’s fun to come home to a castle! I taught a class the next day.

It was a short drive up to Milford the next day.  It took us about an hour to get to our next port of call, and I said to John that this is how most people travel – short drives between gigs.  An hour seems like cheating, to us!! Is this really working??!

We became instant friends with Jeannie, who hosted us in her 100 year old house, which she and her husband moved from its previous location, a half a mile away.  It must have been really something, to see that house on the move! Another show and another class.  I was so sorry to leave Milford/Amherst that I left behind my date book (with the cheque inside….!!!), ensuring we HAD to return to pick it up the next week! Thanks for taking such good care of it, Jeannie!

Our “day off” was a 6 hour drive down to southern New Jersey – another new state for us!  Marmora is on the Jersey Shore, south of Atlantic City, and it must be a real happening place in the summertime.  A bit slow this time of year, which suited us just fine.  They still have very popular seafood restaurants operating, though, and we ate lots of good food while we were there.  I didn’t really have much time to appreciate the sunshine and seashore, though – a full day class followed by an evening concert.  At the end, they presented John with an early birthday cake (chocolate, of course), and me with a guild cookbook – with lots of great-looking recipes!  I’m looking forward to trying some of them out if we ever get home! LOL

We did the whole drive back up to Tewksbury MA the next day, and a show that night too. The Tewksbury Piecemakers decided to forego their meeting and just present us, which was great.  It meant I could stretch out a little bit, do an extra song or two, and tell a bit more story.  Sometimes I find an hour very constraining – I want to sing more songs, tell more stories!  So I appreciated the opportunity in Tewksbury.

And then, our last gig of the week, in Wolfeboro NH.  This also is a small town, right on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee (NH’s biggest lake).  We stayed with Kathy and Frank in their wonderful house right on the shore, in great comfort.  We get to stay in some beautiful places!

This was the view out our window in Wolfeboro

The hospitality of the gals in Wolfeboro was stupendous, and we felt right at home immediately, despite a long drive that morning from Tewksbury to make the 10am meeting. It was, of course, the meeting closest to St. Patrick’s Day, and they pulled out all the green food colouring they could find!

The green cake on the left is lemon, the one on the right is chocolate mint. Yum!

And on these plates are green eggs and ham! First time, for me. Thank you, Dr. Seuss!

After the “Ladies of the Lake” Mock Mola class, we were taken out to dinner by the board, and we felt a great affinity with them.  We could live here, too.  (We could live a LOT of places…..!)

It was an AWESOME class!

So, that was the last two weeks.  We have 4 days off now, before another gig in New Hampshire, in Dover.  We are enjoying some spectacular weather – today was t-shirts and shorts – before we head further north. My sources say parts of Canada are enjoying spring-like temperatures, too.  Winter? What winter?