Sewing Up a Storm!

I'm busy as a Bee!  

A sewing bee that is... 

My "Halloween Hoot Owl" wall hanging is finished...finally after I stared at it for several days before I decided to add more quilting lines to the top. 

I guess it is time to get the Fall and Halloween decorations out. 

Yesterday I sewed up a removable exterior no see um fabric screen for our travel van's side door window.

It wasn't difficult...just time consuming to sew all the "pockets" to hold the super magnets in place in the hems. 

Those super magnets are strong!  

Now my Hubby will have air flow upfront in the van on those nice days when AC isn't needed.   It's easy to remove, fold up and store when not in use. 

We can leave this screening up when we are set up at a campground site.   

I'm back to practicing my FMQ (free motion quilting) on my "Merry Christmas Santa" wall hanging.  

It's VERY free motion...my outline stitching is all over the place but I like the looks of it so far.  

Here's our  "Party with Patrick" project for next month.  

A cute birthday wall hanging for a child or for the very young at heart.  

I love adding my own signature touches to Patrick's patterns.   

This is a small wall hanging.  

I'm thinking of adding a border to make it a little larger.   

What do you think of my fabrics? 

I'm off this afternoon for another sewing class.  

This one is all about "Sound Foundations".   

Learning all about the right stabilizers to use with one's sewing projects.  

  P.S.  This is all I crocheted on our trip.  

It will be a multi-colored hexagon throw.  

I may single crochet the hexes together with black yarn.   

Still haven't decided what direction to take.   

Have a lovely day!  

It is beautiful here today.

Yellowstone

It's me again. 

Back to tell you more about our road trip out WEST. 

It's late at night.

I'm awake so I decided to post about our second visit to Yellowstone National Park since the 1970s.  

We're in West Virginia tonight.  And hope to be home late tomorrow.  This is our 21st day on the road. 

Yellowstone is one of the most beautiful parks in our country and did you know it was the first national park thanks to Teddy Roosevelt?  

Of course a visit is not complete unless you see Old Faithful.  We watched it erupt four times.  Unfortunately it was a cloudy day so the photos are not as dramatic if we had had blue skies.  

We stayed at Fishing Bridges Campground, a commercial campground  inside the park, and the only campground with full hook ups and electricity.  Yellowstone is a huge park, the size of a small state.   We spent hours driving around to see everything with our campground as the hub to come back to every night.  

The Old Faithful Inn is a must to see too.

 We were thrilled to have lunch there in their dining room.  

Take a look at this beautiful inn right next to Old Faithful. 

All the old timbers and high ceiling and look at that stone fireplace!

We had forgotten that there were geysers  basins all over Yellowstone.  

So many it amazes you.  

 

And the wildlife!  We saw Mule Deer, a Black Bear, a herd of Pronghorn, Coyotes and hundreds of Buffalo!  

Many up close and personal!  

We never got tired of seeing these magnificent animals. 

Another highlight was the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. 

It is just stunning with its waterfalls and we saw a baby Ospray  in its nest high up atop a tree.  

We were lucky a nice lady took our photo at the Lower Falls.  

This is the Yellowstone River.  We stopped one day and ate lunch in our van next to it.  

We spent three and a half days at Yellowstone and we still didn't see it all.  

 

There was a huge fire in Yellowstone in 1988 that threatened the Old Faithful Inn.   Years later the burned areas are coming back with Poletree pines.  You can still see the burnt pines sticking up out of the new pines.     

This is Mammoth Springs...we learned there are no geysers here. 

  

There is even a geyser basin next to the Yellowstone Lake!  

 

Unbelievable!  

We loved our time in Yellowstone!

 

Oh, I forgot...we also saw Elk!   

Thanks for coming along with us.   If you have never seen this national park we highly recommend it.  

I better get back to sleep we have one more long driving day before we reach home tomorrow.  Next up is the Grand Tetons so stay tuned.  

Cody, Wyoming

It's been awhile since I have had a chance to post mainly due to lack of sufficient Internet service or lack of any Internet service at all and to tell the truth we've been pretty busy sighting seeing the parks on our road trip out WEST. 

 

Here's a photo of the historic bar in Buffalo Bill's Irma Hotel in downtown Cody.   We had the best prime rib dinner EVER here and watched a gun fight show outside afterwards. 

We have been to Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons already and today we spent visiting Dinosaur National Monument near Vernal, Utah.  

Back to Cody, WY...it's named after its founder, William F. Cody, better known as "Buffalo Bill" Cody...one of America's first celebrities. 

Buffalo Bill rose from an expert  western scout and marksman to become a world-known showman with his "Buffalo Bill's Wild West show". 

Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show toured all over the United States, Canada, Mexico, South America and Europe.  Queen Victoria saw his show and liked it so much she asked for a command performance.  

I love to visit this town!  

This is our third visit since 1978.  The town and museum have changed greatly over the years (as we have too).  I highly recommend you visit Cody to see the town and especially their fantastic western museum. 

We spent six hours at the museum the first day and didn't see all of it.  We returned the next morning and spent another two hours there and STILL didn't see all of the museum.  

Charles Russell would add fantastic drawings to his postcards like this one.  

I'm a person who loves museums and I will try to read everything and look at everything.  We don't race through museums.   Here's another lovely Russell painting of an American Indian.  We bought the print of this one to frame.  

This museum has several sections: of course, the Buffalo Bill section, followed by these - Gun , American Plains Indian, Western Art (with my favorites Charles Russell and Remmington), Yellowstone and Natural History.  

However, this is the closest we will be riding an "animal" on this trip....LOL!

Hope you enjoyed Cody, WY!

Chicago

We hit Chicago on Wednesday, Sept. 4, during the day, so Hubby decided to drive straight through downtown on I90 rather than take I294 around Chicago as we head west on our road trip to Yellowstone, Grand Tetons and the Colorado Rockies.   

 

If you are a frequent reader of my blog you know that we lived in the Chicago area for 26 years.  That's the Sears Tower - the tallest  building the photos.  I don't remember what it's called now.  But it was the Sears Tower while we lived there.  

Hubby went to Northwestern Law School and when he graduated he looked for work in Chicago.   He got a job, we married and moved from Ohio to Illinois.  We lived all over the place - Mt. Prospect, Palatine, Arlington Hts. and lastly in Homer Township (now Homer Glen).   

As we were driving through downtown Chicago,  Hubby asked me if I wanted to take a drive by our first house we bought in Arlington Hts.  

Of course I said "yes"!  

It's a 1950s ranch built out of concrete blocks on a 3/4 area lot.  It was 35 years old when we purchased it in 1978.  

You can barely see the house for all the trees.  We planted two of them - a beautiful Linden tree and a Mountain Ash in the front yard.  

Years after we moved the empty fields across the street were developed into a large community of townhomes which is probably why the new owners put in all the plantings for privacy.  Unfortunately one of the development's entrances is  right in front of our old home. 

Hubby rode the commuter trains downtown for all 26 years we lived there.   I also worked downtown too and rode the trains.  Believe it or not for a few years I worked in The Equitable building on Michigan Ave.  But I have to say we don't miss riding the trains!   

We are very happy where we live now in southeastern Pennsylvania.   More on our road trip coming.