High Waters

Well, it's really happening. As of noon today, they predict that the water will be as high as the flood of 73. They predicted that we'd have another one in 100 years. We'll it's only been 35 years. I was talking to my sister and we both remember when Dad took us to see the flood in 73. In Lincoln they had army trucks moving cattle somewhere. Dad had parked the car at the edge of the flood waters and we just watched. Funny the things you remember..

Just this afternoon, we just travelled across to the south side of the river and up to the mall. There is only one way to get onto the bridge now. The under the bridge approaches are now closed. You can only get on by approaching from Westmorland Street and up off Maple Street. We can't get to the Princess Margaret from the northside because the water is now covering the road and curbing in Barkers Point. The northside riverfront Green is completely under water. I just heard that they're shutting down the Legislature. While it's not underwater, the water will become a nuisance and traffic will be so interrupted, they don't need people downtown trying to park in places that are now flooded.

So I just got back from Fabricville, and I have the border and backing fabric to finish my onion quilt, so I'm all set for a couple of days. We'll go to the cottage and take update pictures at noon on Friday. That's when the water is supposed to peak.

PS: Happy Birthday Stephanie. Did anyone buy you rubber boots for your birthday?. If you get flooded out, you can always come here for a couple of days. Just ping and we'll send a canoe to pick you up.

Happy Birthday Patience!!

Today, April 29th, Patience turns 33. How the time flies. We had a special bbq steak supper and a chocolate cake for her. Caitlin, Grace and Baby Aurora helped her blow out the candles.

Quilting, Quilting, and More Quilting

Well, this blog entery should be called talking, laughing, eating and more of everything all over again.. Linda picked me up at 1:30 on Friday afternoon, and we were off to Bathurst. What a quick trip.. 3 hours, gone like that. Talking about quilting will do that. We arrive in Bathurst to be greated by the best group of quilters ever. The weekend was filled with great ideas presented by each guild along with a mini show and tell. We were all given notes, websites for patterns, recipes etc. I left my camera in Lois's car, so I'll post a few pictures tomorrow.

While I was away, Mert made a visit to the cottage to check out the water situation. The water is high, but not as high as a few years ago. Here is a picture from yesterday. The water was at a 5.0M level so thats a good reference for us. In 2004 the water was half way up the windows in the kids cottage.

Energy down the drink

Here's a picture of Stef and the kids on the way to the dam. See Stef's pretty hair. We went to see the water rushing through the Mactaquac Dam. The water level on the upper side is pretty much as high as they dare let it go.. I found it interesting, but the kids were just cold... See the short video of the rushing water below.

Do you see the Onions?

If you're trying to access my flood link from the other day, it's down. They had to turn the power off in that building because the water is creaping up on it. So we should see cresting tomorrow. The water is high.

I'm done 4 out of 6 packs of blocks on my onion quilt. I've decided it will go to somebody very special. It turns out, this quilt is a very hard quilt, every darn seam is curved. When I took the workshop, I thought there was going to be an easy way to do curves. There is not. The workshop talks about how to change colors etc. But now that I have 4 sets of 6 blocks (24 blocks) done, I can see it taking shape. I don't think I'll do the 9 onions like I showed in a previous blog. I think I'll make 3 onions scattered around the quilt. Can you see the onions? Squint your eyes. I have an appointment to have this quilted on May 21st, so I hope to get the other 12 blocks done by early next week.. Then borders etc..

Onion Quilt, River Watch, and Running

Well, I have 18 blocks of 36 done. I'm going to work on it every day this week to get all 36 blocks done before I go to Bathurst this weekend.

In Bathurst, Marijke and I will be representing our quilt guild, at this bi-annual gathering. Now there are 16 or 17 guilds in New Brunswick. Quilting sure has become popular, and it's not the quilting like your grandmother used to do. The purpose of this gathering is to exchange and share ideas so that guilds can take advantage of other guilds successes.

I finally went for a run yesterday. It felt so good to finally get out. It had been weighing on me for the past few weeks. I probably only ran 15 minutes out of the 30, but I didn't want to push it. I felt really good during the run and after I got home. But later in the afternoon, I made a mad dash for the phone in the bedroom, and I thought I was going to fall.. my hip gave out on me.. so I was instantly glad I didn't over do it. I'll go again on Thursday. Next week, I'll try for my Mon, Wed, and Sat...

This afternoon, we're going to take a drive up to the Mactaquac Dam to see the water flowing through the Dam. I'll post a picture tonite. The power commission really hates letting water through the shoot because it's just like throwing money through.

The St. John River water is quite high this morning... You can see the Saint John River in Downtown Fredericton at the link below. If you watch the peirs of the old bridge every day, you can the water rise. Today the water is at 6.3 meters and tomorrow it's supposed to be at 6.7 meters. So that's probably another foot. Let's hope that they don't get very much rain up north or else we may have to go rescue poor Stephanie and Sean from their downtown apartment. They live on the second floor, but they might need rubber boots to leave the apartment.
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Fabrics

These are the fabrics for my onion quilt workshop on Saturday. We were to get 6 lights and 6 darks. After taking this picture and I see that one my lights is kinda dark. I'll see if I have something in my stash to replace it.

Into the swing of things

Well, I seem to be into the swing of things. It seems like it took about 2 full weeks, since that's how long it's been since we got home from Myrtle. With the French rose baby quilt now behind me, I now have 4 things on my plate that must be done before we get into the hard core of summer: 1) the baptism gown for Aurora for the end of May, 2) a birthday quilt for Emily July 11, 3)prepare my Quilter's Idol submission for May 20 and 4) this Saturday I'm taking a workshop that I need to buy and cut fabric for. This is a picture of the quilt I'll be making. It's called the Red Onion . I've seen other red onion quilts that don't have the spiral thing happening and it does't look like a red onion at all. I don't like onions, but if I'm going to make an onion quilt, I want it to remind me of onions.


Next weekend I'm in Bathurst attending a Gathering of the Guilds (Quilt Guilds that is). It's held ever 2 years. Marijke and I are making a presentation about our Fredericton guild. The rest of the weekend will be listening to other guilds present and hopefully we'll pick out some ideas that will be good to share with our guild in September.

It's so nice to have a to-do list that is managable.

Here are my Almond Squares from yesterday's post. They're as delicious as Marijke's. I cut them into 24 from an 8x8 pan. Some to eat and some to freeze. I think this will be a keeper recipe. It was so simple.

I went to my Pfaffie friends house yesterday for the afternoon. Jane and I went through some embroidery problems and solved the grand hoop problem. Well, we didn't solve the problem, we just found out what the problem was and now we/she can deal with it. Since Jane is going away for a vacation in Calgary to visit her daughter, I borrowed the Grand Hoop and the table that goes with it. I also borrowed the endless embroidery hoop. I'll try that next week. I used the table today to finish the free motion embroidery on the French rose quilt. It was so nice to use. So the binding is on the French rose quilt and all I have to do is press the binding over and sew it down. In the old days, I would hand stitch down the binding, but now I just sew it down with my machine. I have a special presser foot that does a good job.

Tonight, Mert and I are going to an Elvis concert at the playhouse. There is a local Elvis singer who we saw New Years Eve and he was very good. So tonight's production, with a band and local dancers should be pretty good. Mert has been singing Elvis songs to me all day.

Tomorrow, on my to-do list, is to gather fabrics and supplies, to take a quilt workshop to make a new quilt called "Stack a New Deck". The workshop is on Saturday so be prepared to see a stunning new quilt top. I might send it out to be quilted.

Almond Squares and Pfaffie talk

I was at an executive planning meeting for our Quilt Guild the other night and Marijke, the hostess, had prepared a really nice Almond Square for the light lunch after the meeting. It was a recipe developed by her Dutch mother. They were not too sweet and so delicious. I was thinking, it must have cost a few bucks to use ground almonds as flour but when I just looked at the recipe, there was no ground almonds at all. All the ingredients are normal stuff that you have in your cupboard anyway. I had the recipe all along in our guild cookbook from the year 2000. I'm going to make some tomorrow. I know some if you will ask, so here is the recipe.

Willy's Dutch Almond Squares.
1/2 cup softened margarine
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 tsp almond extract
1-1/2 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
slivered almonds for decorating the top
Evap milk, egg yolk or a little milk and a sprinkle of sugar on top.

Cream margarine and sugar. Then add egg and almond extract and mix well. Sift together flour and baking powder and stir into the liquids. The dough will be stiff and may need to be blended by hand at the end. Grease and flour an 8 inch square pan. Press dough into pan, brush the top with evap milk or egg yolk or milk and sprinkle a bit of sugar on top. This makes a golden brown top. Decorate with almonds on the top. Bake 35 - 40 minutes at 350F. Cool and cut into 25 squares.

This afternoon, I'm going to visit my Pfaffie friend Jane. (Pfaffie is what Pfaff owners call themselves) She has new big hoop accessory for her Pfaff embroidery machine (same as mine) and I'm going to see how they work. This accessory might be helpful in doing embroidery on the entire bodice for Baby A's baptism dress. It should be a fun afternoon.

Sewing, sitting, and sniffing

With sniffly nose and all, I'm making great headway on machine quilting my little french rose quilt. I have 10 of 12 blocks all stitched. Just the 2 blue and pink blocks and the borders to do after that, then binding. We'll take baby for her first trip to Fabricville to pick out a plain pink for the binding. It'll definitely be ready for Tuesday night's show and tell at guild.

I also have Baby Aurora with us for the weekend. I'm teaching her how to hold her blankie when she sleeps. She wants to hold something and she keeps grabbing her soother, so by getting to hold her blankie, it keeps the soother in longer.

Superstore Pictures and Making Lists

Patience and Aurora's Superstore pictures came out so good. I'm so pleased with them. I don't have a scanner so I took a picture of the picture so you could see. Patience and Baby A. go back to Saint John today, so that leaves me no choice but to get on with things that are on my virtual to-do list. There are so many things on my list that the very first thing I need to do is to write down all these things on a paper list. Like my sister, I tend to forget things.

After a few minor shopping things, sewing is formost on the list. It's been over 6 weeks since I've sewn anything, except for an emergency juicebag this week for the triplets kindergarden student teacher. I would like to finish baby Aurora's French rose quilt this week so when she comes for a visit this weekend again, I can take a picture of it. Also, I have a quilt meeting on Tuesday and would love to have it for show and tell. Next time I blog, it'll be about sewing.

Also, have you noticed that there's not been one peep about running in my blog. While in Myrtle beach, I was 2/3rd of the way through one of my runs, and something happened to my hip... It seems to have just gave out. It stopped me dead in my tracks. I could walk back to the condo, but with a bad limp. I thought I had better let it rest for a few days. I had a hard time sleeping on it for days. But now over 2 weeks (almost 3 weeks) later, I think I'm ok. I did try to run a few minutes on the treadmill last week, but I could feel the problem coming on..so I just walked. So, tomorrow, Thursday, I'm suiting up and going to try just a 2 minute run, 8 minute walk for 3 minutes. I'll let you know how it goes.

Last Hockey Game of the year

Today was Mitchell's last hockey game of the year. Everyone was there to cheer Mitchell on. His biggest fans are Caitlin and Grace. He got lots of ice time. Baby Aurora and Pear was visiting. Aurora was sleepy and slept through the whole game.














Patience and Baby Aurora are going to the Superstore tomorrow to have their portrait taken together. So today we're trying out poses to see which ones would look nicest. Do you like this one? I do.

From Myrtle Beach to Freddy Beach

Well, we arrived home in Freddy Beach this week, to a mountain of snow. Everyone is talking about the snow. It's the first week of April and by now, there are warm days, and tulips are starting to show, but not here. Here is the picture I took as we drove in the yard. The Driveway is an icy mess.

It's good to have the long drive behind us and it's been a couple of days now. The kitty is back and is her usual noisy self. I thought she might take a lesson from Stef's cats and be a little quieter. She is also so clean and fluffy. I expect she did a lot of cleaning at Stephanie's place, since she couldn't go outside. She probably cleaned, even when she wasn't dirty.

We have baby A today which is a nice surprise. But she is totally off her schedule. Her mama will be here tonite, and she can take over.