This weekend was a first of sorts…we went camping on Mount Desert Island (spelled like the dry place, pronounced like the one that is fun to eat), which is home to Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park. Paul ordered the jumbo sized tent (and a good thing) from LL Bean, complete with “screened porch.” Even on our first try, it went up as easy as could be!

Our campsite was one away from the water’s edge (a KOA campground), with tidal pools and “beach” (Maine style…mostly rocks) literally a stone’s throw away. At sunset, I headed down to the water:

After I cleared the trees, I spotted a blue heron at some rocks poking up from the low tide:

Considering that the photos were hand-held at very slow shutter speed, I’m amazed that even a few of them turned out! I deleted a bunch, but actually have some good ones!

Our first evening was the chilliest…about 40 degrees Farenheit (that’s maybe 6-8 C? Freezing is 32 F, so warmer than 0 C!). We had a fire, and even though I took a bazillion photos, obviously I needed a tripod. Since I now have one, I’ll have to take it the next time…

And tomorrow I’ll share more pics from our bike ride on the famous “carriage road” network in Acadia. I got to take lots of what I call “reference” photos…the ones I’ll save (bless digital instead of film…I can now afford to take lots!) to use in future quilts….

Joyce and Joann asked about how one gets the sitemeter. Here’s the info in case anyone else is curious:

Joann: your blogger settings are somehow set to “no reply,” that’s why I can’t respond to you. If you’d like, write to me via this link on my website, and then I can answer you directly. I’d put my e-mail here, except that every spammer in the universe is likely to find me then! Sigh…

And our ISP was down, so no post about our weekend in Acadia…tomorrow I hope! Now it’s late and to bed. Nitey nite!

WOW…this morning I checked my site meter, which tells me how many visits I’ve had since I signed up for the meter on February 17, 2006, and where you are from (in very general terms, like city and state, except that even that is not all that accurate…I know someone locally who visits from Belfast, but since they have Adelphia, it tells me they are from Rockland, a town in the other direction!). As of a few moments ago, it was 19,546 visits…WOW!

To celebrate the 20,000th visit, I’ll send one of my patterns as a gift to the individual who surfs in at 20,000 (and if that person doesn’t reply in about a week or so after the announcement, I’ll work my way upwards to 20,001 etc. until someone replies). Whoever wins can have the pattern of their choice from my pattern page on my website.

I TOTALLY love my site meter…I love seeing repeat place names like Paw Paw, Michigan; Friday Harbor, Wash; Spanish Fork, Utah; Pusan-ji, Korea; Melbourne, Australia; and I can guess that my friends Kathy, Hannah, Deborah and Kate, Sally and Jaquie have visited if China, Bowdoinham or Bangor, Maine, Lewisville, TX or Putney, VT, appear. If you click on the ClustrMap in the sidebar area (on the right of your screen) you can see a map of where folks come from…all over!

My farthest away visitors are from New South Wales (is that you, Fay?) or Western Australia (Dijanne?), both at over 11,000 miles from here! My closest are those that register as coming from Rockport, Maine, 5 miles away! (it’s probably closer even…just a couple miles to the Y in Rockport). And I’ve had visitors from all 50 US states and virtually every continent except Antartica…way cool! So let’s see who and where the pattern will go!

And since my computer isn’t cooperating at all tonight (I need a NEW one…gotta get work so I can afford one!) I’ll post another cool quotation from Twyla Tharp. Tomorrow, I’m hoping to share pics of our weekend camping in Acadia National Park. And before the quote…go visit Joan Hawley’s new blog! She is the creativity and hard work behind Lazy Girl Designs, which has some of the best and most popular purse and other patterns in the quilting industry…she has a “sneak peek” of a new bag on her blog…I hope Kona Bay fabrics let’s her play with more of their fabrics. And now to Twyla…..

I’d never quite seen it summarized like this, but Tharp posits that some folks look at the world from a great distance (think of the photography of Ansel Adams or the paintings of Albert Bierstadt — the vast panorama of majestic Earth), at arm’s length like Ben Shahn (one of the famous WPA — Works Progress Administration photographers…try here to see some photos from the Depression / 1930s USA) or close-up (I immediately thought of Textile artist Karen Kamenetzky’s “cell” quilts here) .

I think I shift from great distance to (mostly) arm’s length. Some of the “space” quilts, the Circular Paradox quilts, are about great distances. What examples can you think of in the quilting world? What is your creative DNA? I guess it’s why some of us just “do” abstracts and others of us “do” realistic…..

Joanna (who is also a “noreplyblogger” so I can’t reply off-list) asked:
This is a great quilt. Thanks for sharing all your stages on how you got there. The dragon wing is great! Is this all made from teal black metallic thread?

Joanna–believe it or not, the wing is made of truly tacky black tulle from JoAnn’s fabrics…with a Halloween spiderweb pattern on it! I knew as soon as I saw it that it would be useful. I used it to shade the mountains on my Nativity quilt, too! I used black Misty Fuse to fuse the tulle. I cut a wing pattern out of paper, then did the slash and spread at pivot points thing used in altering paper dressmaking patterns (to allow, for example, for a larger tushie or hips in my case, or a larger bust line in someone else’s case!). I used the larger pattern then to cut the tulle, which I sliced on the “dart” lines and overlapped it, creating the darker ribs in the wing. A narrow sliver of tulle outlines the entire wing, too.

Here’s a picture that may show the detail better on the dragon–most folks can also click on the picture and have it enlarge on their computer screen, which may also help:

And here’s the same fabric used in the nativity quilt (along with some camo mesh fabric, equally tacky but useful):

If you’d like to see more about the Christmas Tableau quilt, visit my June archives by clicking here and then scroll down to the beginning of the month…work your way forward in time to read the various posts on this big undertaking.

I quilted the dragon’s wing with Madeira Fs Jewel in dark blue. This thread is known as “black core” for obvious reasons, and is HEAVENLY. You can get it on-line at Web of Thread which is owned by the wonderful Rooby, who loves to cook and shares delectable recipes in her newsletter (free…follow the links from her home page to sign up). I don’t get to spend nearly as much $$ at Web of Thread as I would like (I would like to spend a LOT), but I’d absolutely croak if this site ever goes away…it’s the single best source for thread on the internet I think!

HTH! (Hope this helps!)