Author: tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles
Quilter, crafter, obsessive tea drinker and lover of all furry creatures (especially dogs and cats) - join me on my tierneycreates blog as I share stories from "A Crafter's Life".
After lots of time on the road during various roadtrips in 2025 I’ve exhausted my supply of “center flower” yarn for the Sunflower themed Granny Square blanket I’ve been crocheting while riding in the car.
So it is time to make it into a blanket!
There are a total of 137 granny squares!
This might seem tedious but I counted and photographed how many of each different mix of yarns squares (21 different versions of the square*) of the 137 squares I made (the count of each type in lower right hand corner):
I’m not using all 137 squares in the blanket. I figure I will make a 10 square by 12 square blanket and use 120 squares and save the rest (17) for a couple small projects like a pillow or something like that.
I decided not to use the “design carpet” to lay out the sunflower granny squares. Instead I separated them into VERY ARBITRARY “light” and “dark” piles, trying to make the piles as even as possible:
So I’ll post my progress as I crochet together alternating “light” and “dark” squares to make the blanket!
*(Why so many different versions for the granny squares? Well I was using up miscellaneous yarn I had thrifted over the years)
It been countless years since I visited Port Townsend, WA…not since when I lived in Seattle, WA for 8 years and would stop there on the way to British Columbia (which we visited as much as possible)…. Port Townsend is a city on the Quimper Peninsula in Washington state known for its beautiful waterfront and natural scenery at the northeast tip of the Olympic Peninsula; and many historic Victorian buildings remaining from its late 19th-century heyday. It is also a hub for numerous annual cultural events, and a maritime center for independent boatbuilders and related industries and crafts. (Wikipedia).
John and I had a delicious lunch at thr Sirens Pub with a wonderful view of the water:
Then we wandering around the shops in downtown Port Townsend including a fiber shop – Diva Yarn & Trim.
A shop with yarn and fabric is always my kind of place.
While walking in the waterfront area we came across two ladies playing guitar and accordion and singing in French. Their music was so wonderful I tried to find their tip jar to give them a little something but they said they did it just for fun not for any money.
They didn’t mind if I filmed the area with their music in the background:
It was a glorious day in Port Townsend, WA!
Postscript
When we first arrived in Washington State via the Seattle (SeaTac) airport, we stayed in Olympia and the next day drove to Port Townsend and then on to Port Angeles to take the ferry to Victoria, BC. On our way to Port Townsend, we stopped in Shelton, WA and visited one of my favorite Washington state quilt shops – Annie’s Quilt Shoppe.
I bought some very reasonably priced fabric to support this awesome shop (that perhaps I did not. need, ha!).
I always get a kick out of this sign in front of the shop that some of the quilters reading this post might have seen in front of other quilting shops:
Now that my year of travel has slowed down (only one more trip to go this year), I am easing back into my studio to make things. (Perhaps someday there will be more “tierneycreates” posts vs. “tierneytravels” posts in the future…)
John and I are obsessed with U.S. National Parks and ended up visiting 6 this year (I’ve only blogged about 2 of them so far as I am quite behind in my travel posts – Badlands and Wind Cave National Parks) and when we redecorated our basement guest room we did it in a Colorado and National Parks theme (see post “Pieces of Colorado” Now Hung in the Guest Room):
What you can barely see in the image above is some of the art on the wall are framed pages from a book I found thrifting for $2.99 (retails for $34.99) of 63 of the iconic Anderson Design Group National Park Posters on individual pages:
Image Credit: Anderson Design Store website
I took this amazing 9″ x 12″ book apart and framed 16 or so of the 9″ x 12″ to use as art in the basement and in the stairwell leading to the basement.
So when during our trip to South Dakota we stopped at a quilt shop in downtown Rapid City, SD (see post A Wander About Downtown Rapid City, SD) and they had the Riley Blake Designs National Parks Poster Panel featuring miniature U.S. National Park Posters by the Anderson Design Group, I had to have it!
Image Credit: Riley Black Designs website
Instead of letting it gather dust in my “impulsive-purchase-quilt-panel-collection”, I decided this week to actually make it into a wallhanging and hang it 🙂
I decided to use strategically placed fusible web tape between the panel and the batting, and the batting and the backing to hold it all together for quilting instead of thread basting or pinning it:
Here the wallhanging hung in the stairwell from the 1st floor to the basement:
Here is a close up of some of the miniature U.S. National Park posters on the panel which mirror some of the posters I hung on the wall from the Anderson Group book I thrifted:
My machine quilting on this quilt was very simple – I followed the lines in the panel and outlined the individual states, the miniature posters, and the longitude and latitude lines. The finished wallhanging measures 33″ tall by 43″ wide.
Of course now the MANY other panels in my “impulsive-purchase-quilt-panel-collection” are envious of the National Parks Map panel as they would also love to be completed wallhangings and hung (or made into quilts). 😉
Thought I share a little on a recent travel before I work on catching up on my blogging buddies’ posts.
My epic year of travel continues and just a couple of days ago I was in New York City for a couple days with John, my sister and nephew. We had a blast during our 2 day trip to NYC and I will blog more about the trip at a later date, but here are some photos from our couple hours in Times Square.
I hadn’t been to Times Square in like 10 years. We used to stop there every we went to NYC but then it lost it’s excitement for me (super “tourist trap” to the max) and on my annual (or biannual) trips to NYC with my sister in the past we would skip it and just visit places like Brooklyn (see post Springtime in Brooklyn).
We spent about 3 hours in Times Square including our time to eat and I think I am now good for another 10 years – ha! (It is so many people and non stop overwhelming visual stimulation).
We visited John’s cousin in Bremerton, Washington in July 2025 and made an impromptu decision to take the ferry from Port Angeles, Washington to Victoria, British Columbia (Canada) for an overnight adventure.
The ferry ride was smooth until we crossed into Canadian waters and then it got pretty rough but luckily I had taken Dramamine for sea sickness and was okay.
I was pretty happy when the ferry docked after the 90 minute trip from Port Angeles to Victoria!
We stayed at the lovely Chateau Victoria Hotel and wandered around the Inner Harbour area/Downtown Victoria during our 24 hours in Victoria before taking the ferry the next day back to Port Angeles.
They had an amazing tea shop attached with lots of beautiful tea pots and tempting teas. I did bring some tea home!
We went to several “tourist trap” shops and John enjoyed having his photo taken in with various shop mascots:
We spent a couple hours at one of my favorite museums in the world the Royal BC Museum (where many years ago when I lived in Seattle and would visit Victoria, BC I saw the most amazing Leonardo DaVinci exhibit).
Back in June I experimented with making a golf shoe bag using a modified version of the pattern I use to make drawstring bags (see June 30, 2025 post Experimenting with Making Golf Shoe Bags). The bags are lined with vinyl so that if grassy/dirty golf shoes are put in it the bag can easily be wiped out.
I made one for John and one for his cousin M who we went to visit in Washington State in July:
I wanted to make another golf shoe bag for another golfer in my life but this time I wanted to add a pocket to the front of the bag. So I used a front zipper pocket pattern from Noodlehead’s pattern for the Firefly Tote (see December 28, 2021 post Adventures in Bag Making: Firefly Tote is done!).
I forgot to take a photo of the bag back in my studio and here I am balancing it on my lap as we are driving to meet up with my golfer friend to give him his gift.
My golfer friend happens to be in the financial services industry so as a little bit of humor I added a money fabric liner to his zippered pocket:
He loved the bag and said previously he was just throwing his grassy golf shoes into the back of his car when he was done golfing. Now they can be in a nice vinyl lined bag!
Recently my friend K reacquainted me with an old quilt with emotional ties I had forgotten about.
I’ve been quilting since the late 1990s and I’ve made a lot of quilts, most of which I’ve given as gifts or in some cases sold, so you kind of forget some of the quilts after a while; and sometimes the emotional connection you had with a particular quilt.
One of the quilts I had forgotten about was a blue and white quilt that I made from a pattern many years ago (10 years ago?) and ended up sellling (for basically the cost of the fabric and the professional longarm quilting) to a quilting friend L who fell in love with it.
Last week my friend K was staying at L’s home in New Hampshire and ended up sleeping under that blue and white quilt I made (and had forgotten about) and sent me photos:
It was nice to see the quilt but I forgot the emotional connection I had with the quilt until K mentioned that the quilt had a spectacular backing.
I gasped as I suddenly remembered the backing I put on the quilt and asked K to send me a picture of the back of the quilt so I could see it again:
On the back of what one might consider a “quiet quilt” (blues and white in a traditional setting) I put what one might consider a “very bold” fabric!
At the time I made the quilt I thought the front of it was “boring” and decided to spice it up with a colorful backing fabric I found in my stash.
That fabric was from my friend Tracy who suddenly died a couple years after giving me the fabric which she found at a thrift shop.
I met Tracy at work back in the 1990s when I lived in Houston, Texas and we stayed friends for many years, occasionally losing touch but finding each other again. I started quilting while livingi in Seattle, Washington and she, unknown to me at the time, had also started quilting! When we reconnected a couple years after each of us becoming quilters we were very elated that we now shared the same hobby.
I however have some intense regret related to Tracy. Over a year before she died we were supposed to go to the International Quilt Festival in Houston in October, and I cancelled and said it would work better for us to go next year.
There was no next year quilt festival for Tracy as she passed away the following year before the festival. I had missed a glorious opportunity and memory with my friend because I delayed going to the event with her a year. I also missed an opportunity to spend time with her before she left this existence.
Perhaps this is why many years ago I decided to sell the quilt to L. L loved the quilt and the quilt was just making me sad, reminding me of Tracy’s passing and my regret on not going to the quilt festival with her.
Now of course I wish I’d kept the quilt and honored Tracy’s memory by still having a quilt a made with a backing she gave me.
However, all I can do now is be grateful that is being used and not in a closet somewhere tucked away; to remember not to wait to do special things with special people; and tomorrow is not promised.
After seeing the Toward 2050 exhibit and walking the labyrinth at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, Arizona in February, I knew I wanted to contribute to the project in someway and ended up volunteering to sew one of the “blankets” (what they were calling the quilts, ouch) to be made from 30 of the flags that people around the world created inspired by their feelings on Climate Change.
So I turned this pile of 30 – 9 1/2″ by 9 1/2″ flags:
Into this quilt top per the detailed instructions provided:
It was challenging as the flags were really more individual art pieces and likely not originally created to be incorporated together into one piece*.
I ran into issues of trying to sew through very thick materials; and dealing with flag original construction and design issues such as sections within a flag not fully stitched together.
*I am not sure if the original participants knew their flags would become “quilt blocks”:
But I got it done(and so appreciated sharing my challenges with my friend W who was also working on piecing a different set of 30 flags) and will mail to the Toward 2050 project team tomorrow for them to send it on to their volunteer longarm machine quilters to finish.
Well he was in heaven in the rose garden in front of Victoria’s Parliamentary building!
Here are some photos of the other beautiful roses/rose bushes that we spent time admiring:
As it was July it appeared everything was in bloom in this glorious Pacific Northwest City!
In addition to roses there were flowers all about the Inner Harbour section of Victoria, BC.
It’s such a beautiful place and I was so happy to return again after so many years. John and I now plan to visit every summer, he fell in love with Victoria (maybe it was the roses…).
Well we’ve finished up the endless saga of our Wyoming, South Dakota, and Nebraska it’s time for a craft shop post – this time in Victoria, British Columbia!
More on this Pacific NW adventure in future posts, but for now let’s focus on the fabulous time I had exploring the Button & Needlework Boutique in the Downtown/Inner Harbour section of Victoria, BC.
John and I were wandering after dropping off our bags at the hotel and we turn the corner and see this:
Skipping around in my Summer of Travel stories to share a recent story (this past weekend).
I recently returned from a 3-day weekend in Portland, Oregon. I went with John to visit his son Z and decided to take a craft class in Portland one day so John and Z could have time on their own one day.
At first I looked into classes on crafts I already know – quilting, bag making or knitting/crochet. I couldn’t find any class that interested me on the weekend I was in Portland.
Then a crazy idea came to mind: I’ve been interested in learning to paint using Watercolors (not sure why I am so drawn to Watercolor but I am) – why not find a Watercolor Painting class?
I found two options at Wildcraft Studio School: 1) Introduction to Watercolor Painting; or 2) Color Theory: Watercolor.
I am very interested in Color Theory (see my post about my Colour Wheel Quilt – The Colour Wheel Quilt is Done) and the class said it was for beginner and experienced Watercolor artists.
So I selected this class. I figure I can watch YouTube videos to learn Watercolor painting techniques but I’d really like some hands on instruction with how to mix colors using the Watercolor paint medium.
Arriving to class this past Saturday I was greeted with a lovely courtyard in front of the studio as you enter (I ended up enjoying my lunch in that courtyard during our break):
I felt very intimidated as I sat down at my table – what was I thinking dabbling in Watercolors?!?!?
The class was comprised of women in my age group, one young woman and one man. They were a friendly and engaging group and I really enjoyed chatting with the two women who sat at the table with me.
The class was taught by the Seattle-based Watercolor Artist Robin Bundi who was kind, patient and an excellent instructor!
The class was focused on understanding color and color mixing and our primary class exercise involved creating color wheel mixing samples using different sets of primary color palettes.
The instructor had many amazing examples of how just a couple primary colors (some version of red, blue, yellow) can make an endless assortment of colors, tints and shades.
Here’s an amazing sample piece created by the instructor demonstrating how you can just use two colors (Ultramarine and Brick) to create a palette:
So I got to work and finally (sort of) got the hang of mixing colors.
And at the end of the class she had us each paint a small piece with basic shapes/improvisational design, using what we learned of color mixing as well as color washing techniques.
Here is the piece I made (yes, not ready for a solo exhibit in Watercolors yet, ha!) but I forgot to erase/lighten the original pencil lines I used (and then ignored) when sketching the piece.
I joked with the instructor when she critiqued the piece that it looks like I took some mind altering substances before I began painting – ha!
Now when I catch up on my sewing projects I am going to work through an Introduction to Watercolor book I found a couple months ago thrifting as well as watch YouTube videos on painting techniques.
I think my goal is to be able to make Watercolor cards to send to friends (for them to recycle – ha!)
Well I will close out my serious of posts about our ambitious roadtrip in July 2025 to Wyoming, South Dakota, and Nebraska with a post about where the roadtrip adventures began – in Cheyenne Wyoming.
Before we headed to Frontier Days in Cheyenne, we wandered around downtown Cheyenne, stopping at the famous The Wrangler western store.
And being met with the largest cowboy boot selection I’ve ever seen:
John was a sport and tried on some boots which went so nicely with his shorts (not! ha!):
No sorry, as fetching as they looked, he did not leave the store with them.
Back outside there was a giant cowboy boot on display painted with western scenes:
To give perspective of how big the boot is here I am standing next to it and I am around 5′ 11″:
Then we headed to Frontier Days and ate our way through the Fairgrounds, ha!
It all began with a corn dog (I think I literally squealed with delight when I saw the corn dog booth as I hadn’t had one in like 8 years):
Then we found a booth with VERY amazing brisket birria tacos! They were so good we shared a second serving.
We of course had to get some lemonade to share in a commemorative cup when this booth, shaped like a lemon lured us over:
Yes we were on the verge of needing to roll ourselves out of the fairgrounds if we kept going, so we just admired the rest of the food from afar. Here a little gallery of some of the POOR NUTRITIONAL CHOICES we could have kept making 😉 :
Some of the foods sound like serious indigestion but they are probably fun to eat…
Fair Food makes me laugh – there is definitely some sort of competition to serve the craziest food that you’d never eat in your daily life. And of course they had things like deep fried Twinkies and deep fried Oreos. I am curious about the Pickle Pizza – I wish I could have sampled just a little of it to satisfy my curiosity!
After filling our tummies we headed to see the some of the annual Cheyenne Frontier Days Rodeo. I was good for about an hour and that was enough rodeo for me, I am not a big rodeo person. I can’t help myself I always start feeling bad for the animals like the little calves getting roped and tied. I know, I know, I’d never make it on the American Frontier! The bull riding was fun to watch for a while but then I started thinking about the bulls who didn’t want humans on their backs.
When I lived in Houston, Texas in the late 1980s to late 1990s, we used to go to the Houston Livestock and Rodeo once a year. I mainly went to see the livestock and I enjoyed seeing all the 4-H farm kids showing off their animals.
Then one year we went I absolutely fell in love with the cutest cow with fluffy ears. I was obsessed with this cow. I wanted to move to a farm and have a cow like that.
What a vaguely remember the cow looked like (image credit Depositphotos)
My late husband Terry said to me: “Yes we could adopt it and name it ‘Hamburger'”.
Oh no I realized – my sweet fluffy eared new friend was going to become a yummy burger someday! After that I stopped wanting to go to the livestock show – ha!
(I was a Vegetarian for a while when I was in my late teens/early 20s but bacon and the smell of burgers on the grill made lured me back to being an Omnivore…)
Oh so back to the Cheyenne Frontiers Day Rodeo – there was one moment during my brief time at the rodeo that captured by heart. The competition opened with a Native American/Lakota horse blessing by Mo-Brings-Plenty, a member of the Lakota Tribe who was also the Grand Marshall for the 2025 Cheyenne Frontier Days.
I took a little video of the end of the presentation as I was too enthralled at first to think to film it, but here is what I have:
I wish I had captured the whole thing.
Well that continues this series of posts. If you are just joining us, here are the other posts about our travels in Wyoming, South Dakota and Nebraska.
While on our ambitious Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska road trip in July 2025, we stopped at the iconic Wall Drug.
From Tripadvisor.com:
Once a humble small-town drugstore that offered free iced water to weary travelers, Wall Drug is now a buzzing 76,000-square-foot roadside attraction that draws travelers to this small city in South Dakota. Here, you can shop for Western-themed apparel at the shopping mall, snap a photo with an 80-foot brontosaurus in the kids’ area, and grab a 5-cent coffee and one of the best donuts in the U.S. at the restaurant. And don’t leave without getting the iconic Wall Drug bumper sticker—it’s free! Wall Drug is a great stop along a tour of the Badlands National Park. – Tripadvisor Some of our stores and the café may close earlier than our main store.
We ended up spending a couple hours wandering around and eating at one of their restaurants (and we did get a Wall Drug free bumper sticker for John’s toolbox).
John loves to sit for photos on benches with characters and here is John posing on a couple of their benches with their Western themed characters:
I first heard about Wall Drug in 2020 when I saw the movie Nomadland and the main character Fern (played brilliantly by Frances McDormand) stops along her travels to work at Wall Drug.
This movie is really tender to my heart and deeply touched me when I saw it in 2020. The main character Fern is a recent widow who has also lost her job when the town’s factory closes. She deals with her tremendous loss by putting everything in storage and embarking on an epic roadtrip across the US in an old van and exploring nomadic life.
There was a moment before deciding to move from Oregon to Colorado after my husband died in 2018 that I had considered such a journey. I watched a lot of “living in a van/RV” and “nomadic life” videos as I contemplated this option. It would have been Mike the Miniature Schnauzer and I on the road.
I am nearly done with my stories from our ambitious roadtrip in July, one more to go – Frontier Days in Cheyenne Wyoming. Here are the other posts to date related to our trip:
During our ambitious Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska road trip in July we stopped for an overnight in Deadwood, South Dakota, a historic Wild West town which attracted legendary figures like Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane.
A lot of the town is preserved as a Wild West style town and you get the feel of stepping back in the American West history when you visit.
John loves Bourbon/Whisky Tasting and we stopped at one of the many Whiskey establishments in Deadwood for a tasting.
I had to include some of the signs that made us laugh related to whiskey drinking!
Several times a day on the main street they have a recreation of the Wild West shootout with a couple of gunslingers!
If you don’t appreciate Wild West culture this would not be the place to visit, because it is over the top at Deadwood!
John and I had fun wandering around the endless gift shops/”tourist traps” and just had to take photos with a huge Sasquatch/Yeti/Bigfoot (where you are in the U.S. determines what you call this legendary creature):
John likes to play poker so he did spend the later part of the evening playing poker at one of the Wild West saloons (nope he didn’t win enough money to pay for our trip, ha!) while I relaxed in our hotel room working on my sunflower granny squares.
Here is a listing of the other posts to date about our ambitious trip and I think I have another post or so to come about it:
During my Summer of Travel I’ve been working on my Sunflower Granny Square blanket as crocheting the individual granny squares is a perfect portable project:
Passenger in the car with my crochet project bag on my lap, crocheting through the road miles…
In that January post I reported 39 granny square blocks done. I now have 91 blocks done as of this photo which I took before heading out on another recent road trip (to Santa Fe and Taos, New Mexico):
PLUS 10 more I finished on the recent New Mexico roadtrip (more in a future post on that roadtrip):
So in total I have 101 blocks done.
Here are a couple close up images of the different yarn combinations I used for the blocks (because I only wanted to use yarn from my stash); the ones with the green yarns represent sunflowers that are not fully open:
And I still need to make some more to make the blanket a little bigger. I might make 20 more, we’ll see. I am going to finish up all the remaining sections I’ve started which I think total 20.
Here’s my basket in the living room where I store my completed blocks (oh my will there be a lot of block ends to weave in someday!):
I’m going to do a different granny square block join than I did on the other three granny square blankets I’ve made. This time I am going to do a Single Crochet Join this time instead of the Join As You Go Method I’ve used in the past.
Single Crochet Join Example:
Image credit: Repeat Crafter Me
Join As You Go Example:
Image credit: Crochet 365 Knit Too
Oh something really cool I discovered – for the outside border of each sunflower granny square I used Lion Brand Wool Ease (an acrylic and wool blend) yarn in Wheat.
Image credit: Michael’s
Well when I was taking photos of the laid out granny squares on the “Design Carpet”, I was barefoot and ended up having to step on the laid out squares. I discovered THEY WERE SO SOFT under my feet and I think it is due to the border yarn I used for each square.
I think it will be a really cozy and snuggly blanket and now I really want to get it completed for the winter season!
“The Crazy Horse Memorial is a mountain monument under construction on privately held land in the Black Hills, in Custer County, South Dakota, United States. It will depict the Oglala Lakota warrior Crazy Horse, riding a horse and pointing to his tribal land. The memorial was commissioned by Henry Standing Bear, a Lakota elder, to be sculpted by Korczak Ziolkowski. It is operated by the Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation, a nonprofit organization.”
Crazy Horse was a Native American war leader of the Oglala Lakota. He took up arms against the U.S. Federal government to fight against encroachments on the territories and way of life of the Lakota people. His most famous actions against the U.S. military included the Fetterman Fight (21 December 1866) and the Battle of the Little Bighorn (25–26 June 1876). He surrendered to U.S. troops under General George Crook in May 1877 and was fatally wounded by a military guard, allegedly while resisting imprisonment at Camp Robinson in present-day Nebraska. He ranks among the most notable and iconic of Native American tribal members..”
Before we took a bus to see the Crazy Horse Memorial in progress, we first stop at the Visitor Center and wandered around the Indian Museum of North America, “a large collection of art and artifacts reflecting the diverse histories and cultures of over 300 Native Nations.” (crazyhorsememorial.org/the-museums)
Then we got on the bus to travel to the Crazy Horse Memorial carving site which is on a private road.
Here are some of our photos from the site and I bet you can guess that the photos do not do the experience justice of seeing it in person, but unless I can teleport you all to the memorial this will have to do! 🙂
At the Visitor Center they had a model of what the completed memorial will look like someday:
As far as completion of the Crazy Horse Memorial – so far the head and left hand are completed; and according to Google AI:
“There is no definitive completion date for the Crazy Horse Memorial, and it is expected to take many more decades, with estimates suggesting a potential completion around 2037 for the horse’s head, arm, and hand, but the entire monument is considered a long-term project with no firm deadline, according to Summer Creek Inn and Wikipedia. The monumental scale and funding challenges, which rely on donations, have contributed to the lengthy construction time.”
I’d like to visit it when it is complete someday, it will be spectacular.
John had been there before I said it was a “must see”, I trusted him but I wondered if it was worth the hype.
It is worth the hype.
Carved from a section of the granite face of 5,725 feet (1745 meters) above sea level Mount Rushmore are the 60 foot tall figures of four former U.S. Presidents: George Washington (1789-1797), Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809), Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909) and Abraham Lincoln (1861-1865). These four U.S. Presidents are very significant in U.S. History. (A full listing of U.S. Presidents by year if you are curious is at The Presidents Timeline website).
According to the U.S. National Park website: “…surrounded by the beauty of the Black Hills of South Dakota, tell the story of the birth, growth, development and preservation of this country…”
Here was our view of the national monument when you first enter the park:
Actually when we first arrived it was very cloudy and misty and we couldn’t see anything on Mount Rushmore, and then it suddenly cleared to reveal an amazing view.
We walked through the State Flags of U.S. States and it was fun to try and locate the State Flags for states I lived in my lifetime: Pennsylvania (only briefly), New York, Washington, Oregon and Colorado.
After walking through the State Flags we walked down into the amphitheater area where very few visitors were (it felt like we had Mount Rushmore to ourselves compared to the busy upper areas) to spend time just looking at the Mount Rushmore National Monument.
It made us very reflective. After a while of sitting before these mammoth carvings it made us feel as if these four historical U.S. Presidents, each with major contributions, are looking over the U.S. today, watching.
I keep away from political discussions on my blog because I want to respect the different political opinions of others which stem from their life experiences and values, but I do want to share that we just started to wonder: “What would George Washington , Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln this of the U.S. today?. Would they be proud? Did the U.S. become what they hoped it would become?”
Not try to spur any political discussion, I just wanted to share some of our musings as we sat reverently and studied the monument.
After sitting with the monument we went back upstairs and visited the amazing museum exhbit that shared images, history and equipment from the carving/creation of Mount Rushmore October 4, 1927 – October 31, 1941. The exhibit shared photos of the workers who translated the vision of the the Chief Carver. (If you’d like to read the carving history of Mount Rushmore, which involved lots of dynamite see this link Carving History)
This placard in the exhibit particularly moved me:
To close out this post I just want to say that I like to imagine that the “Mount Rushmore Crew”: George Washington , Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln are looking over the U.S. and are hopeful that it will transcend the current political situations and the “principles of liberty and freedom on which (the U.S.) was founded” will prevail.
Just a quick post and next post I will return to my adventures in South Dakota.
Recently I returned from a trip to Southern Oregon to meet up with longtime Oregon based friends and during the trip my friend MJ surprised me with yarn she had spun!
I know, some of your spin yarn yourself and this might not sounds like a big deal but it was.
MJ told me the story behind the two skeins of spun wool she handed me and here her story paraphrased/summarized:
“Over a year ago I decided that I wanted to do something really special for you as my crafting friend. I wasn’t going to start quilting, and I can knit but I wasn’t going to knit you something. I know you are always working on knitting projects and I wanted to actually spin you some yarn as a gift. So a year ago I found a yarn spinning class with a woman who has a sheep farm and a yarn spinning business. She ended up becoming a friend and I’ve taken many lessons from her and rent a spinning wheel. I even got to know the sheep that the wool fibers came from and how wool from sheep is prepared to be spun into yarn. There will be more yarn from me in your future, be patient, I am slow but getting better with time.“
I asked my friend MJ if she was gifting others her spun yarn and she said “No, this is just for you”.
Wow, I feel unbelievably special – someone learned a new hobby just to gift me an amazing surprise!
Here is the photo I sent her when I got home of me loving on my new yarn.
As I mentioned in the posts A Wander About Downtown Rapid City, SD and Carhenge, in July we ventured on an ambitious and kind of epic roadtrip to Wyoming, South Dakota, and Nebraska, some of our neighboring (and sort of neighboring) states to Colorado.
Since John retired, we are trying to see as many of the U.S. National Parks as possible over the next couple of years (and who knows what kind of funding they will have in the future to host visitors, their have already been serious cuts to National Park staff); as we feel they are some of the best parts of the U.S.
Whatever images I share they will not do justice to the magnificence of this National Park.
As the park’s website states: “The rugged beauty of the Badlands draws visitors from around the world. These striking geologic deposits contain one of the world’s richest fossil beds. Ancient horses and rhinos once roamed here. The park’s 244,000 acres protect an expanse of mixed-grass prairie where bison, bighorn sheep, prairie dogs, and black-footed ferrets live today.”
First we stopped at the Visitor Center so we could get our National Park Passport stamped for Badlands National Park and pick up some souveniers.
Here are some of the amazing rock formations outside the Visitor Center and a section that John was brave enough to climb up:
After this initial stop we got on the Badlands Loops Road (Highway 240) and drove through the park. Here are some of the zillion photos as we made our way along the road.
As I mentioned whatever images I share they will not do justice to the magnificence of this National Park. Checking my photos after I took them and already anticipating the disappointment (ha!) I decided to take a video at one of the many glorious viewpoints on our drive through the park.
As I was about to take my video I cleverly (not so cleverly perhaps) decided to narrate the video using the placards (? not sure if that is the right term) at the viewpoint describing the view. Here is an example of a “placard”:
They were rather weather worn and difficult to read but once I started my narration I was kind of committed to complete it.
So here is the video, which I uploaded to YouTube in order to post, with my very monotone voice as I attempted to take the video and read the whole line of different “placards” before other people showed up at the viewpoint and blocked my view or wondered what the heck the crazy lady speed reading the “placards” was doing!
By the way it is VERY WINDY in the Badlands and the wind provides a soundtrack to my monotone awkward narration – ha!
Perhaps my lame videography provided you with a tiny bit better sense of the awesomeness of the Badlands.
Wind Cave National Park
Not much to report on this National Park. Unless you take one of the Park Ranger guided tours of a section of the Wind Caves there isn’t much to see. The wait for the guided tours was a couple hours. So we just looked around the Visitor Center, got some souveniers and got our National Park Passport stamped. We were wondering why it was free to get into the park and that is because you pay when you sign up for one of the tours.
In the Visitor Center they did have a cool diagram of the cave system.
So that’s our South Dakota National Park adventure!
We were tempted to pop over the Theodore Roosevelt National Park but it was quite a bit away and we’d already been to Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse Memorial on the trip so far (next post).
Postscript
After I posted this post I discovered that John had taken a video on his phone also at Badlands National Park at the same viewpoint but without the narration. His video shows more of the 180+ view so I uploaded it to YouTube if you’d like to see it also. (Sorry it only has the wind as soundtrack no monotonous voice!)
“According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change, global climate is on track to increase by 1.5° C by 2040, and with that, irreparable damage will likely be done to earth’s ecosystems if our course is not changed decisively and with haste. In the IPCC’s Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report, clear goals and pathways have been defined to reverse our emissions of green house gases – 50% by 2030, and to arrive at net zero emissions by 2050, keeping the global rise in temperature to under 1.5° C in perpetuity. Hence, 2050 marks a very important point in our human history…
Textile work from makers from 45 U.S. states and 9 countries have become important parts of TOWARD 2050, which has culminated in this immersive installation at Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, Arizona – February 8th through June 1st of 2025. Makers were called to create environmentally themed, textile panels in the style of “prayer flags”. Our goal was to collect enough double sided flags to define the pathways of this interactive labyrinth experience. That goal was met thanks to the generousity and commitment of all the makers participating in this project.”
Here are some images from the TOWARD 2050 textile flags labyrinth (which took over a half hour to the center and back) I walked during my visit to the Desert Botanical Garden.
I recently found this video on YouTube of the labyrinth I walked back in February 2025:
NEXT STEP: MAKING BLANKETS (QUILTS)
As you can see from the Toward 2025 website screen shot above, after the exhibit (and raising awareness), the next step is to make “blankets” (to me they would be quilts) to donate to communities that will “suffer future climate catastrophe).
From the Toward 2050 website here are the packets that will be sent out to volunteers and what they want the “blankets” to look like:
Images credits: Toward 2050 website
VOLUNTEERING TO MAKE A QUILT/BLANKET TOP
So I signed up and a couple weeks ago (while I was traveling) a package of 30 flags arrived in the mail:
Here are the 30 blocks laid out quickly on my design wall:
And here is a sampling of some of the blocks I was sent to piece together made from participants all over the world:
Volunteers are required to provide the fabric for the lattice and borders for the “blanket top” they are piecing from the Toward 2050 blocks (the “blanket” will then be longarm quilted by other volunteers).
I was planning to search through my fabric stash to find something that would work with all the different colors in the blocks when I received a gifted piece of fabric in the mail from one of my awesome penpals! (You know who you are and you ROCK! Impeccable timing!)
Turns out this fabric would work well with the blocks and I tested it out in the image above.
Talk about a serendipitous surprise!
I will of course share the pieced blanket/quilt top with you all in a future post once I get it put together.
Postscript
If by chance you are interested in participating, they are still looking for volunteers to piece tops using 30 of the textile flags the they will send you.
I will blog about Frontier Days, Mount Rushmore, Wind Caves and Badlands National Parks, the Crazy Horse Memorial in separate posts, but for this post I will share some photos from our wander around downtown Rapid City, South Dakota.
Before heading to Wind Cave National Park and Badlands National Park, we stopped for a break in downtown Rapid City. It was my kind of place as it had a USED BOOKSTORE and a QUILT SHOP!
AGAIN BOOKS & BAZAAR
At Again Books & Bazaar I bought some used CDs (a future post about how I’ve rediscovered our stereo and CD player) and enjoyed looking at their large collection of used books.
QUILT CONNECTION, ETC.
What a lovely surprise to find Quilt Connection, Etc. quilt shop in downtown Rapid City! The staff was welcoming, helpful and friendly and they had a wonderful fabric selection.
If that wasn’t enough to be a friendly quilt shop with a lovely fabric selection, they had a surprise area downstairs…
That had this rack…
And if that wasn’t enough downstairs also had this magical tub…
I am always up to a challenge so I immediately worked on how many fabric scraps I could shove into the bag!
I made my way back up the stairs to see John patiently waiting in “The Husband Seating Area”:
They had many quilts on display and I really liked this Mount Rushmore quilt and this teal quilt which makes me thing of the teal quilts that Kate @talltalesfromchiconia coordinates each year for annual the Ovarian Cancer fundraiser.
But the quilt that really made me smile was this “Mrs. Bobbins” quilt with very humorous panels that only a quilter or someone who lives with a quilter can related to:
So what did I buy at the quilt shop? Well I got a $5 fill a bag, bag of fabric scraps stuffed to the max; and this Riley Blake National Parks Map panel:
I sat down this morning to catch up on reading blog posts and to write a blog post and I discovered that Yvette @Priorhouse Blog has posted the interview I did for her blog.
A couple of months ago she invited me to be interviewed for her Summer 2025 series of blogger interviews. I accepted and here is the interview on her blog:
Hopefully clicking the above image where I’ve imbedded link to the interview works to open it.
I use Amazon Photos to backup my photos and to pull photos from for blog posts. I was going through my photos to put together my next blog post about my travels when I noticed this:
The search bar states “Describe photos you’re searching for…”; so I thought I would try it and I put in the word “HAPPY” just to be silly and see the search results from my collections of photos I’ve taken over the years.
Well, here are most of the images I got that it pulled from my collection of photos and they made me smile:
This summer has been a “Summer of Travel”, and a little over a week ago we returned from a 4-day trip to Wyoming, South Dakota, and Nebraska.
While in Alliance Nebraska, an overnight stop on our way back to Colorado, we visited Carhenge.
I bet most of you have heard of Stonehenge the “prehistoric monument located in Wiltshire, England, known for its stone circle structure” (Google AI).
image credit: Wikipedia
Well the Carhenge is described as “Nebraska’s unique tribute to Stonehenge” (using old cars). You can read the history of the creation of this “roadside attraction” here – History of Carhenge, but here are a sampling of our photos from our visit to give you a virtual experience of seeing Carhenge!
I look forward to seeing Stonehenge someday when I visit the UK, but Carhenge was quite breathtaking in person. Very creative recycling of old cars!
Inside the gift shop was a humorous comic style poster by the designer about the attraction:
Thought I would share with you all a little fun from our most recent roadtrip.
Let me know in the comments if you’ve ever been in Carhenge (or the original Stonehenge) and let me know what you thought of it.
What is an “Agriculture Report”? Well I was inspired by @quiteayarnblog‘s ongoing series of posts titled “Agriculture Report” (and this title always cracks me up) that are actually updates of what is going on in her garden.I just had to adopt this same title for updates on what is going on in my garden/my “garden report” (and now @AlissaMakeshas joined us in Agriculture reporting on her blog too!)
Oh the Sunflowers!
I love sunflowers, I am actually obsessed with them. When I was in Asheville, North Carolina in May 2025 (see post Concerting in the Carolinas and More), I became obsessed with the menu for the eatery we stopped at for breakfast one morning – Sunny Point Cafe with it’s sunflower art:
And the very kind manager on duty gave me a laminated copy of the front of the menu to take home!
(I have it up on my studio and it always makes me smile when I look at it)
In Spring our friends R and D gave us packages of heirloom seeds from a family collection which included packets of sunflower seeds.
We planted them in the raised bed that John built in the backyard last year (see post John gets “ScrapHappy” too – new raised bed) and they did very well! They are now pretty tall and blooming!
Other Agriculture
In the raised bed with the sunflowers is our “bumper crop” of basil also from the heirloom seeds our friends gave us:
There is going to be some pesto in the future!
Here are some happy flowers around my front and back gardens:
It is a delightful time of year in relation to “Agriculture”!
Lasagna From the Garden
We also have fresh herbs and tomatoes growing on our deck patio garden. Along with the basil in the raise bed and tomatoes from the patio John and I made some lasagna for dinner on Sunday with handmade noodles and sauce from scratch.
We roasted the tomatoes for the sauce with garden herbs, garlic, onions and carrots; and then blended the roasted tomatoes. We combined this blended mix with a large can of San Marzano tomatoes, red wine, pepperoni, beef and bacon (we didn’t have prosciutto handy) and let it simmer for hours (the house smelled yummy).
With John’s handmade thin pasta sheets we were able to make an 8 layer lasagna layering the sauce with a ricotta mixture and mozzarella.
It was delicious and partially made from our garden! We froze the leftovers for a future meal.
We enjoyed eating it outside on the patio on a lovely summer evening with a nice bottle of red wine, caesar salad and garlic bread.
tierneycreates 