It’s been a long time since I’ve added a post to my blog categoryLife in B&W where I let my inner Ansel Adams run free (smile). So it was time to share some of the Black & White photos I took while recently visiting the Oregon Coast. I’ll tell you more about the trip in a future post, but for now here are photos from our visit to Yaquina Bay State Park in Newport, Oregon and the Yaquina Head Lighthouse:
While at the state park beach area we enjoyed looking for life in the tide pools (the tide was low), a visiting with a park ranger who gave us a great overview, looking at large rocks covered with endless mussels, and trying to carefully walk on the rocks on the beach near the tide pools (the beach is entirely made of black basaltic rocks) without wiping out on Cobble Beach!
If you’d like to see more and see some of what we saw but in actual color, here is a video I found on YouTube:
The photos are courtesy of the couple who run “Dog Camp”, they send me daily photos! His new crush is named Gracie and she is entangled with him in the second photo. We were informed that Mike was obsessed with her during dog camp!
Before John and I left for the Oregon Coast to rent a car and have a road trip (John’s never been to the Oregon Coast and I know it fairly well) and to have a reunion with some of my very dear old friends, John stopped by his Dad Chuck’s house to drop something off. He brought Mike with him (who loves Chuck so much!) and there was another Goose and Mike incident, ha! John of course took photos (smile).
Here is Mike getting loving from Chuck while Goose looks irritated:
Goose then whispers something in Mike’s ear:
Mike tries again to convince John that Goose is trouble:
And finally Mike just walks off:
John says Mike spends a lot of time barking at Chuck and at him when Goose is around. It is like Mike is saying: “get him out of here”!
Hopefully they will eventually learn to get along but for now he remains Mike’s nemesis…
Next post I will tell you about my Oregon Coast adventures!
I hate being behind on reading my blogging buddies posts, so I wasn’t going to post again until I caught up. I haven’t caught up yet but I am only like 3 – 4 days behind now so I am allowing myself to do this quick post!
As I mentioned in the February 6, 2023 post What’s On the “Design Carpet”, I am a nervous front seat passenger in a car. My best bet is to do something to distract me while I am a front seat passenger (especially when my partner John is driving, ha!). So I’ve been taking a granny square crochet project on the road whenever I am a passenger and I’ve made a bit of progress.
Instead of the “Design Wall” in my studio, I thought I’d show you my progress on the “Design Carpet” in my living room – ha!
Here is what the granny squares looked like in the beginning of the project:
I decided to add to more rows in a different color gray to float the centers:
And now 5 month later, I have 50 granny squares completed:
You might notice one very dark gray bordered granny square in the image above:
Well I have 30 more granny squares to complete and I plan to make a lot of them with that darker gray yarn (Currently I plan to make an 8 by 10 granny square blanket, so I need 80 blocks to complete it).
If you haven’t guessed it, I’ve been using up my collection of random gray acrylic and acrylic/wool blend yarn, including two different variegated grays/blacks yarns from my stash. So it will be another “scrappy” granny square blanket like these two I made previously:
I seem to have a thing about gray yarn as I notice there is a lot of gray in that blanket above!
I’d love to someday make a super “scrappy” granny square afghan like the one I came across in the blog post Scrappy July by View From Our Hill. She has like 16 different yarns in each granny square block – check out the link!
The Black Pioneers: Legacy in the American Westexhibit opened at the California Museum in Sacramento, CA on June 10, 2023 however the official exhibit opening event occurred on July 15, 2023 and I attended.
I was so surprised to discover my quilt Langston Hughes: Pioneer Poet was used as their show poster! The museum staff told me how much they loved my quilt.
Here are some of the photos I took (including the poster and my piece, see videos below to see the other quilts in the show):
This quilt has gotten a lot of mileage! I also found it posted on other online advertisement for the show:
GoodDay Sacramento morning show had a segment on the exhibit (you will see my piece toward the end of the segment):
GoodDay Sacramento
CBS News Sacramento also had a segment on the exhibit:
CBS News Sacramento
And here is the walk-through video I took while at the exhibit:
I recently returned from a long weekend in California. John and I visited family and friends in Oakland and Sacramento California. I’ll share some photos/stories from those visits in a future post.
It’s the 15th of the month and time for my monthly “ScrapHappy” post as part of the ScrapHappy group I belong. At the end of this post I have a link to the other blogs participating in this monthly event in case you’d like to check out their ScrapHappy posts.
I finished the freeform scrappy log cabin quilt I first wrote about in this post – What’s on the Design Wall: Scrappy Log Cabin. I pieced the blocks as a sample for theScrap Happy Quilt RetreatI had in May. I got it back the other week from the longarm quilter, put on a binding, and earlier this week I finished sewing down the binding.
It is now hung in the wall of the upstairs guest bedroom where I have a B&W theme going on with some framed Ansel Adams posters, Black & White wall art, and B&W photos I’ve taken (on the walls not shown in the images below).
This quilt is very “scrap happy” as the quilt top was pieced entirely from my collection of black, white and gray scraps!
As promised, here are the bloggers that participate in the ScrapHappy monthly posting event, check out their blogs linked below for their ScrapHappy posts:
A month ago John and I decided to visit Fort Collins, CO for an overnight visit. We love Fort Collins and are entertaining the idea of moving there someday…perhaps.
On our way to Fort Collins, we stopped in the neighboring town Loveland, CO to visit John’s sister and her husband and go on a boat ride with her and her husband.
We had a lovely boat ride around the reservoir/lake area they live in (Colorado is far from the ocean but we do have rivers, reservoirs and lakes to sail on). Their adorable little dog Lacey came on the boat ride with us and had her own little bed on the boat:
After visiting with John’s sister and her husband we stopped at the Loveland Visitor Center to get John a sticker (he collects stickers to put on his toolbox) and took some photos of the awesome “Love” sign outside the visitor center:
(Did you spot John in the photo?)
Behind the “O” of LOVE, which is shaped into a heart, are “love locks” where people promising their love to each other have left locks:
You can see the theme of Loveland is “Love” and inside the visitor center they also had this sign that you could use as a background for photos:
Postscript
A Visit to Pink Door Fabrics
Before we got to Loveland, we first stopped in Frederick, CO to visit the retail store of Pink Door Fabrics, which is only open to the public 2 days a month.
Here are some photos from my wander around the retail store of Pink Door Fabrics, which is primarily an online shop specializing in Tula Pink fabrics.
I was well behaved until I got to this section of the shop:
I filled my bag really full and they did not mind!
For the Quiltfolk Magazine photoshoot (see posts Quiltfolk Magazine Photoshoot, Part I andQuiltfolk Magazine Photoshoot, Part II ), I wanted to have a quilt in progress up on the wall. The magazine editor had suggested it a day prior to the photoshoot and the quilt I had in my “UFO Stash” that came to mind were blocks of brightly colored “Crazy Curve Circles” that my friend D had given me a couple years ago (see June 2020 post Tweaks to the Tierneycreates Studio).
D already pieced a lot of the blocks; and I ended up piecing the rest of the sections together that she cut from the templates but had not pieced. She also gave me fabric and I made some additional blocks using the templates she also gave me.
Here is what the quilt currently looks like on my design wall – I’ve made a small version of the quilt pattern designed by Elisa’s Back Porch Designs:
There was a lot of piecing to get the whole quilt together – first the individual sections into a four patch, resulting in 16 blocks; and then sewing the 16 blocks together. I thought about making a larger quilt (I am so many blocks left over) but I just wanted to get this one done and move on to my other projects.
I’ve decided to hand quilt it as a late Autumn/early Winter project, and use this dusty collection of hand quilting threads I bought at a sewing expo show in Seattle, WA early in my quilting days (2000?):
So I am taking this quilt off the design wall and putting it away until the cooler weather when I’d want to have a quilt sitting on my lap while I hand quilt it.
So what to do with all the leftover blocks?
I’ve decided to make the large version of the quilt Circle Dance which includes both the larger “Crazy Curves” blocks (the one I made) and the smaller ones:
The pattern says “63 inches by 70 inches” but I think I can make it even larger with all the blocks I have left over. I will need to make the small “Crazy Curves” from the small template from the extra fabric D gave me.
I might start that in 2024 or 2025, who knows. I have so many projects in queue!
Next up on my project list is sewing on and then sewing down the binding for my black, white and gray scrappy freeform log cabin quilt – Oh Scrap – It’s Not Just Black and White (see post ScrapHappy June 2023: “Oh Scrap – It’s Not Just Black and White!” if you’d like background on this quilt), which is back from the longarm machine quilter:
And to close out this post, here is my Human Manager, Mike (see previous post) who is irritated I was taking a photo of the quilt on my design wall and not playing with him and his bear.
This is Mike, the Miniature Schnauzer that lives with Tierney and John and provides management of their lives. I am guest blogging since Tierney has fallen off the blogging-wagon again busy with summer visitors and trying to finish up projects (that she will eventually blog about…)
I want to share with you an irritating issue I’ve been dealing with for a while: a battle between my “cousin” (or “uncle”) Goose and I over who gets to manage the humans.
First you might be confused if you’ve never lived with Miniature Schnauzers. Miniature Schnauzers are natural “Human Managers” and can help guide humans in their daily lives. My late sister Sassy the Highly Opinionated Miniature Schnauzer had her own blog Schnauzer Snips and she addressed this in a Special Service Announcement she made on her blog:
I already had John and Tierney “under my paw”; and John’s Dad Chuck was very amenable to Human Management by a Miniature Schnauzer – whenever I stayed over my “grandpa’s” house I was able to keep him easily in line.
Then everything changed…
John’s sister decided to get a Miniature Schnauzer puppy (Goose) and share custody with her father Chuck. At first I was okay with this as I know I am a role model of dog fabulousness and I figured they were just trying (and would not succeed) to find their own “Mike wannabe” that they could have regularly in their life.
Little did I know Goose had his own plans and would become my nemesis in a battle for control of the Humans!
Here are some recent photos from when John and I stopped by for a visit with Chuck and Goose (I much prefer when we visit Chuck and irritating Goose is at his other home!)
Goose is whispering in my ear: “Chuck is mine and soon John will be too, I’m going to be in charge of managing the humans!”
Here we are at a stand-off, each one of us wanting to get on John’s lap.
Here I am pleading to John to just ignore Goose, I am his one and only manager!
Goose succeeds in getting on John’s lap and his now mocking me.
Here I am whispering to Goose: “You might have won this one but watch your furry back. There can only be one human manager in this family!”
Hopefully Tierney will return to blogging in the future, until then I am happy to let you know about my struggles to be the primary Human Manager of John and my grandpa!
Recently my sister and my nephew visited us in Colorado for 4 days. Here are some highlights of their trip which included a visit to the Night Bazaarin downtown Denver, hiking at Castlewood Canyon, and making homemade Ramen.
THE NIGHT BAZAAR
I liked calling it “The Night Market” (it sounded more mysterious) and we stumbled upon it when visiting downtown Denver one evening.
My nephew, who likes trying out eateries he hears about on viral Tik Tok videos, asked if we could visit Dave’s Hot Chicken (which they do not have available in Virginia where they live). It is a “fast food” type of eatery but one of the founders trained at Thomas Keller’s French Laundry (one of the world’s most famous three-Michelin star restaurants) and it shows in what I would consider a masterpiece of “fast food” eatery chicken.
daveshotchicken.com
So we ventured to downtown Denver where one of the Dave’s Hot Chicken locations was located and across from that eatery was the Night Bazaar. After our visit to Dave’s we headed over to the Night Bazaar.
We had so much fun wandering through the vendor booths as the sun was setting. Mike the Miniature Schnauzer was in the backpack and got to enjoy some sightseeing in downtown Denver:
John was continually stopped as we wandered through the market and then the Platte River Plaza bridge area with questions about Mike in a backpack. In the photo above he is chatting with a large group of people who want to know how Mike ended up in a backpack (the other dogs were being walked on leash through the market).
My sister and nephew found this cool sidewalk art with very wise words and took this cool photo:
THE CANYON
My nephew loves Colorado and wanted to go on a hike while he was visiting. We decided to take him to Castlewood Canyon which is not too far from our home and has lots of hiking options based on desired activity level. Here are a couple photos from our hike:
I’ve learned to wear a hat (I am the sister in the hat) when it’s hot and you are hiking – it helps in the Colorado sun!
At the Visitor Center, where I stopped to use the bathroom, I met a Park Ranger that had a rescued Bull Snake wrapped around her waist. The snake was recovering from an illness and she was “babysitting” it by keeping it on her all day at work!
Now that is dedication to the park’s wildlife!
If you’d like to see more photos of Castlewood Canyon check out this post I did in April 2020 – And on the 8th Day…Part III.
THE RAMEN
John’s loves to cook and always wants to challenge himself and experiment with making foods outside his comfort zone. A couple weeks ago, after much YouTube watching, he began making Ramen soup at home. He was using pre-packaged air-dried noodles (much higher quality than the instant ramen you eat in college) along with his fresh ingredients.
Well he wanted to take it to the next level and learn how to make his own Ramen noodles from scratch. My visiting nephew also loves to cook and was game to do a “Ramen Night” one evening for dinner and make Ramen with handmade noodles.
It took them two evenings to complete the dish – you have to let the ramen noodles sit for a day before you can use them. You also have to let the prepared chicken thighs for the ramen sit overnight before cooking the chicken so it will have a nice crust on the skin.
After all their hard work, they served us Ramen for dinner on Sunday night:
Their Miso based broth was amazing and I thought I was at an authentic ramen eatery!
So those are some highlights from their visit.
I’ll close this post with a couple bonus photos from their visit:
1) My sister brought a kimono for me as a belated birthday gift. She has connected with a woman with in Thailand that makes these kimonos with fabric sourced from Japan. She plans to import some of the kimonos to sell in the US. Here I am modeling the kimono she gifted me:
2) My sister and nephew adore my dog Mike, they are dog people…and cat people (they have two cats and two dogs) and Mike went on a lot of road trips with us. Here is Mike acting as a granny square crochet square rest as I crocheted sitting in the back seat of the car with my sister during their visit:
(I work on crocheting granny squares when I am a passenger in a car for a long car ride…keeps my passenger-in-a-car anxiety under control!)
3) My nephew and John played tennis at the tennis courts in my neighborhood and had a blast.
John didn’t do too bad playing someone like 1/3rd his age. (Both had played on tennis teams in junior high school but there was quite the difference of years since those experiences!)
tierneycreates 