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".
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.
After leaving Glenwood Springs, we headed to see Leadville, Colorado where John’s paternal grandmother grew up and he’d not return to since he was a young child.
To get to Leadville, we crossed the Tennessee Pass, elevation 10,424 feet above sea level, and crossed over the Continental Divide.
An Emotional “Divide“
As shown in the image above, the Tennessee Pass section of the Continental Divide is home to the 10th Mountain Division Memorial.
My late husband, Terry (aka “Terry the Quilting Husband”) was a HUGE military history buff, with a focus on the Napoleonic Wars (we visited Waterloo in Belgium), the Civil War (we visited Gettysburg), and World War II (he didn’t want to visit Normandy/Omaha Beach in France and I always suspect he stormed the beaches in a past life by how much the thought of visiting deeply disturbed him*).
*An interesting little story about Terry: His older sister, who helped raise him in a family of 7 children, told me after he passed, that when he was a young child he would set up very elaborate battles with his toy soldiers that were far beyond the knowledge, skill and understanding of a 4 year old child. She always suspected he was a former military person reincarnated or something.
He read/studied/engaged in historical miniature wargaming and military strategy gaming (historical battle reenactment on paper/tabletop game) extensively related to World War II battles and was quite the amateur historian when it came to the United States Army’s 10th Mountain Division which is based out of Fort Drum, New York (Terry grew up in NY and when he served in the US Army as a Medic he spent time at Fort Drum). The 10th Mountain Division had an significant role in the European Theater of World War II.
I was very familiar with the 10th Mountain Division as Terry and I had many historical discussions during the 33 years we were together.
So when John and stopped at the memorial on our way to Leadville I was completely emotionally overwhelmed. Not only because of the memories of discussing the 10th Mountain Division for years with Terry; but because I knew Terry would have so loved to see the memorial. It would have made him very happy and moved him deeply.
I spent some time alone just being with the memorial and my thoughts (John was very understanding). It was a very emotional (Continental) Divide experience…
Leadville, Colorado
We continued on to Leadville and explored the town.
Exploring included wandering around downtown Leadville and visiting an independent bookstore and antique shop – The Two Dog Market; and a yarn/craft shop – Fire on the Mountain:
As well as a very quirky hardware and antique shop – The Western Hardware:
I got a little emotional again during our visit to this hardware store as in addition to historical miniature wargaming, Terry loved fantasy wargaming (like Warhammer 40,000 and Dungeons and Dragons). They had a display of the same type of fantasy wargaming figures that Terry had a collection of and liked to paint (see image above). I then had to spend some alone/emotionally reflective time with this display.
It seemed that the Universe was providing me with quite the memory and grief tinged day!
We also paid a visit to the famous (at least in Colorado) adventure clothing factory store Melanzana while in Leadville.
Here I am in the image above with my new Melanzana “hoody” and cap made with leftover hoody fabric.
After Leadville we headed to Breckenridge, Colorado and then home. I didn’t take any photos in Breckenridge but here is a post from 2024 on on my first visit there – Breckenridge and the Continental Divide (we crossed a different section of the Continental Divide – Loveland Pass – on our way there during of 2024 trip).
Closing the post with a random photo – somewhere that we stopped near Leadville.
Even though it was early June, there was still snow on the ground!
(As a I mentioned in the previous post: Leadville is the highest incorporated city in North America, sitting at an elevation of 10,152 feet/3094 meters above sea level)
As part of my birthday gift, my sister sent me a collection of upholstery fabric samples.
My sister is the Sr. Construction Project Manager for a university and the Interior Design team she works with had a collection of upholstery samples that they were going to put in the trash. My sister knows I love working with upcycled fabrics so she rescued them and sent them to me.
The collection of samples were beautiful and I decided to experiment and frame four that really caught my eye to hang on the wall across from my studio.
They look even better in person, the hallway is a little dark even with the light on so it was challenging to photograph.
I haven’t decided what I am going to do with the rest of the samples butI’ve been collecting ideas on one of my Pinterest boards.
Continuing the story about how I celebrated my 60th birthday that I began in the post Birthday-ing with Bruno.
After our trip to Las Vegas (see post Birthday-ing with Bruno), the next part of my birthday celebration was a Colorado roadtrip in early June 2025 to Dillon, Glenwood Springs, Leadville and Breckenridge, Colorado.
I love Colorado and I want to get know as much of the state as I can/see as much of it as I can.
On the way to Glenwood Springs: Dillon, Colorado
We started out heading to Dillon, Colorado a small mountain town 10 miles from the Continental Divide; and is located 9,111 feet (2,777 meters) above sea level. In addition to Dillon, we stopped in the neighboring town Silverthorne, Colorado another small mountain town and visited the best Habitat for Humanity Restore (Thrift Store) I’ve ever been to!
Image credit: alignable.com
We spent an hour there wandering around and I found a lovely African basket there which I now use in my studio, along with a bunch of awesome CDs (I’ve rediscovered the CD player stereo component and have taken to listening to entire albums in the living, old school style!).
John and I spent a lovely evening with our cocktails sitting in the room above on one of the sofas chatting about life.
During the day we wandered around Glenwood Springs (famous for it’s Hot Springs, which I refer to as “the community bathtub”*) and had a wonderful lunch at the historic Hotel Colorado which in “1905 became the temporary home for the President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt and his assistants during a three-week bear hunting expedition. Already a fan of the state of Colorado, Roosevelt stayed at the Hotel Colorado on multiple occasions” (History of Hotel Colorado).
Here’s some photos from our lunch:
I love this quit when you enter the Hotel Colorado – any place with a quilt displayed when you walk in is okay by me!
Here are some of the “community bathtubs”* (the Hot Springs) that Glenwood Springs is famous for:
*You might be curious as to why I refer to the Hot Springs in Glenwood Springs as the “community bathtub”. Well the two times I’ve visited them and soaked in them, they were bath water temperature and it was like taking a bath with a hundred other people!
A Stop in Minturn, Colorado
On our way back towards home we stopped in Minturn, Colorado which is near Vail, Colorado the famous resort/ski town, and visited a tiny whiskey tasting room in a little house for the distillery the Minturn Whisky Company.
We had an awesome time sampling the spirits and John bought home a bottle.
From Minturn we continued onto Leadville (the highest incorporated city in North America, sitting at an elevation of 10,152 feet/3094 meters above sea level), crossing another section of the Continental Divide which I’d not been to before and then onto Breckenridge and back home.
I’ll share our adventures in Leadville and Breckenridge in the next post, but to close this post here are a couple photos from our roadtrip when we stopped at various scenic areas for a break from being in the car. Sorry I do not remember where these are located but they were lovely (smile):
It’s been a year since Mike the miniature schnauzer who was a “guest blogger” on my blog (smile) suddenly passed away at 14.
I came across this video which I uploaded to YouTube, which showed Mike enjoying life: instead of actually hiking at Castlewood Canyon, he was being carried around by John!
Just sharing this in honor of Mike…
Hopefully, you can recover from my terrible singing. While we were on our hike, I was composing silly impromptu songs!
It is getting close to the one year anniversary of when we lost our beloved Mike the Miniature Schnauzer. We don’t have any immediately plans to get another dog in the near future (we want to keep being able to travel on a whim right now) BUT we are enjoying other peoples’ dogs!
A couple days ago we went over our friends house for dinner and got to enjoy their 3 days and 2 visiting dogs. Especially Olso the sweetest little doodle (not sure what kind of doodle mix) who took to me and made me his own for the evening:
What a cutie pie! I kept kissing on him all evening, I was in love! He didn’t want to get down from my lap and would growl at the other dogs when they got near me!
Here are photos of the rest of the dogs:
In the photo above, Oslo is asking to be put back on my lap and not have to mingle with the other dogs. I wanted to sneak Oslo into my tote bag and take him home with me!
In addition to visiting with friends’ dogs, I appreciate all the nice people I meet on my daily walks who are walking their dogs and let me pet them! (The dogs I should clarify, I am not walking around trying to pet people – ha!)
I decided to “re-bind” a wallhanging size quilt I made years ago from a panel that I have hanging in a little alcove in the stairwell from the main floor to the basement:
I put the quilt together fairly quickly and did simple quilting on it years ago. I put a quick binding on it using the same Stonehenge fabric I used for the border of the quilt.
This binding has irritated me for years. I felt like I should have used black fabric to binding it, which would “frame” the piece. I have lots of pictures in black frames next to the wallhanging and it just seemed like a black binding was what the quilt needed to pull the whole alcove together.
So one day on impulse I cut the old border off and put on a new border!
I like it MUCH better and now it frames the wallhanging!
(By the way, the photos underneath are travels/adventures that John and I have experienced together since we met 6 years ago.)
In late May we traveled to Las Vegas, Nevada to celebrate my 60th birthday Part I (I wanted to two part birthday trip and the second part was a Four Corners/Mesa Verde National Park/Durango/Ouray/Pagosa Springs trip which I share in other posts).
So yes I just said it – I turned 60. It’s very shocking. I’ve been blogging since I was in my late 40s (October 2025 is my 12 year blogging anniversary) and when I turned 50 I kept it pretty secret in the blogosphere as I didn’t want my readers to know I was “that old” (ha, that is no longer old). At first I was going to hid the turning 60 but why – who cares?
Actually I only feel like celebrating getting older these days as 1) I can’t age backward so I’m stuck with it; 2) my mother only got to live to her early 50s; 3) my late husband passed at 58; and 4) I am in good health (at least in my mind).
Originally I was going to spend my 60th birthday in Bend, Oregon where I lived for 14 years before moving to Colorado in 2019. It would be my first time returning in 6 years since my husband Terry died suddenly in December 2018 and I moved in April 2019.
I was planning a wonderful reunion with several groups of Central Oregon friends, staying at several houses; and the opportunity for several of them to meet John for the first time.
But I couldn’t do it. Not yet. I ended up disappointing several groups of friends and giving a lot of apologies. I just could not return to the place where I “lost it all”. Grief is weird and people react different ways to big life losses.
I guess I am still reacting to the loss of my wonderful life partner and life in Central Oregon by not being psychologically able to return…at least not yet.
So I had to rethink what I wanted to do for my 60th birthday and I came up with a strange combination: 1) go to Las Vegas and see some type of major show (Bruno Mars); and 2) go on a major Colorado roadtrip!
So on part one of my birthday celebration we went to Las Vegas, Nevada for a couple days and saw Bruno Mars in concert at the Park MGM Resort (where we also stayed) in Vegas.
It was one of the best concerts we’ve ever been to in in our lives. They locked up your phone when you entered the concert venue and no photography was allowed so I haev no photos from the experience to share.
Here is a video I found on YouTube from 2024 to give you a taste of his music and talent if you are not familiar with Bruno Mars:
It was a cool experience watching a concert without anyone having their phones recording the show, taking photos, or checking their messages, etc. The entire audience, including John and I, were laser focused on the show without any distractions.
We had really good seats and discovered later in the show when Bruno Mars pointed her out and gave recognition to her progeny that we were sitting a tiny section over from Katherine Jackson, the mother of the Jackson 5/Michael Jackson, and Janet Jackson! She was the special guest of Bruno Mars for that particular show so we kind of had a once in a lifetime experience to sit within 100 yards of the mother of Michael and Janet Jackson! The woman sitting in front of us broke down crying as she said she was a huge Michael Jackson fan and to be sitting close to his mother completely overwhelmed her!
(Security ushered her out of the show before it ended so no one got to bother her)
In addition to seeing Bruno Mars in concert, we enjoyed a fun couple of days wandering around Las Vegas and going to the exhibit I always stop and see when I am in Las Vegas – the Bellagio Conservatory & Botanical Gardens.
Their current exhibit is Glam Menagerie: A Surrealist Summer. Here is the 3D tour if you’d like to see: Glam Menagerie 3D Tour.
Here are some of my photos from the exhibit:
We always enjoy yummy dining experience when visiting Vegas and in addition to stopping at some of our favorite places (Eataly, Taco El Gordo, and Din Tai Fung) we had a scrumptious breakfast at Paris Las Vegas Hotel in their Parisian themed restaurant Mon Ami Gabi.
I had the lemon curd and raspberry crepes and they were a “spiritual” experience in breakfast dining!
It was a good part one celebration and in future posts I’ll share our adventures during the second week part of my 60th birthday celebration.
Once plated the dish we topped it with a little fresh parmesan for an extra boost.
It is very easy to make and I was able to use fresh basil from my garden. If you have a better growing season where you like than we have in Colorado, you might be able to use tomatoes from your garden too.
John made fresh pasta (he has mastered pasta making…as much as an American can…he daydreams someday of going to Italy and attending one of those “learn pasta making with an Italian grandmother”workshops we’ve seen advertised) for the dish. According to this chart below, he made Tagliatelle:
Warning: this dish requires you to turn on your oven and you might not want to do it in the summer heat. This dish is fun to enjoy in other seasons too 🙂
Buon Appetito!
Postscript
This past weekend my brother and sister and my nephews met up in Baltimore, Maryland to hang out and go see the new Superman movie. I sure wish I lived close enough to join them (but I love Colorado so much!).
Thought I would share this sweet selfie they sent me with the four of them together. I love my family so much!!!
This was buried as a “Postscript” section in one of my posts from 2020 (Curating a Home Library) and I thought it deserved it’s own post.
I enjoy browsing charity thrift stores for treasures but I’ve come across some very strange items over the years. I wonder when I see these items: 1) Why did anyone originally own this item; 2) Why did someone donate this item; or 3) Who is going to buy this item?
During the height of the COVID pandemic in Colorado, when most retail stores were closed, Colorado considered thrift stores as “essential” stores and let them stay open. John and I, all masked up, would visit thrift stores as something to do and to work on putting together our home library.
Here are my top 5 favorite “curious” finds that gave us a chuckle (and I promise you I did not buy any of them):
Number 5: If you need a lamp and a place to store your leftover yarn, would this not be the perfect solution?
Yes it’s – YARN LAMP!
Number 4: Patriotic pants – they defy any further comment (but my apologies to you if you happen own these…)
My husband John is graciously modeling them
Number 3: Donated photo frames with family photos still in them.
I could not believe how many donated photo frames I came across with family pictures still in them at various thrift stores, like the example below. Wouldn’t you perhaps remove your family photos before donating?!?!?
It would be funny to buy the frame and keep the photo displayed and confuse people…
Number 2: An outfit for a very adventurous and crafty person.
Though it was on display way before Halloween, I think this was supposed to be a suggested Halloween outfit (hopefully as you would get a lot of stares should you select it for a cocktail party…)
Interesting use of pom-poms!
And Number 1 is…
Something that you absolutely cannot imagine living without…
A cattle leg (yes real cattle leg) with hoof attached Barometer!
Yes, now you can remember the favorite steer you raised on your farm and know the current barometric pressure!
It’s nearly 5 years later since the original post sharing this find and it still remains the number one most “curious” thing we’ve discovered at a thrift shop!
My regret is I did not buy the Cattle Leg Barometer and put it away as the ultimate future “White Elephant” Christmas gift! (Could you imagine the look on someone’s face when they opened their gift!)
Well it’s been quite the Summer of Travel (after a Spring of Travel) so far; and I thought I’d dive into sharing my adventures with a little tour of a quilt shop I visited for the first time in Durango, Colorado in June 2025 – Stitch.
We visited Durango, Colorado as part of a Colorado roadtrip. In May I turned a “milestone birthday” and we’ve been celebrating with travel and adventures that I’ll share more about in a future posts.
Stitch is located in charming downtown Durango and has a warm and inviting atmosphere and friendly staff.
Here is the antique sewing machine vignette inside the front window (first image above):
Here are scenes from inside the shop:
And here is where I got into trouble (ha!) and invited fat quarters that I did not need to come home with me:
I mean I got one free, how could I turn down the deal?
And here is the sign in front of the shop to lure you in…
(Because quilters need to be lured into quilt shops…)
John saw all the drawstring bags I’ve made and asked me if I could make him a golf shoe bag for when he goes golfing (one of his main hobbies besides woodworking).
We found a bolt of nylon fabric to line the golf shoe bag and I altered the Sotak Handmade pattern I use for drawstring bags to make it longer for a golf shoe bag. After I made a test bag, I made John a bag.
Here’s the photoshoot:
The nylon liner in the bag is backed with fusible fleece that I had to carefully iron from the fusible fleece side to adhere to the nylon without damaging the nylon with heat. The nylon lining will allow John to easily wipe out any dirt from his golf shoes that gets in the bag.
John told me that “men like long drawstring cords” (Perhaps he secretly did a national survey of preference, ha! And what about women golfers – do they have drawstring preference??!!?!) and so I used long cords used for drawstrings on clothing for the drawstrings for the golf shoe bags.
We are going to give the test bag to his favorite cousin who is also a golfer. They should look adorable on the golf course with their handmade golf shoe bags – ha!
tierneycreates 