This and That

A few bits and pieces...2014 grape crop, more house renos, a quilter visits and the making of a scarecrow!

The racoons are loving us this year! It has been a good crop! We have 2 grape arbours, one over the back deck and one over the secret garden room, both have had a good but sour crop this year. We are still using last years harvest which was made into grape jelly.

They have been here a long time!

House renos continue and thanks to the good weather Peter is making progress re-shingling the worst of the shingles, the south facing back wall. He uncovered a bit of a surprise...birch bark flashing! 

And lots more wide boards and handmade square nails.

After a Google search, yes, Google does know everything, I found it is quite common in houses as old as ours. Creative builders?

I was so delighted to hear from Kay Phillips awhile ago, she and her husband were coming to NS and would have time for a visit. Peter and Gerry went golfing and I gathered together a couple of quilt friends and we had a lovely but too short afternoon talking quilts! Kay shared a couple of her latest quilts, can't wait for her to come back next year!

Now we are getting ready for the Mahone Bay Scarecrow Festival which starts on Friday. Well over 150 scarecrows will appear all over town. If there is one thing this town does well, it is having festivals thanks to a huge crew of great volunteers. More information and the schedule of events can be found here. Our Mahone Bay Quilters Guild bi-annual quilt show and sale happens this weekend too with set-up starting tomorrow.

Please come!!

After moving here last fall, we were determined to have our own scarecrow this year. We get quite a lot of traffic by our house both cars and foot traffic so we just had to have a scarecrow who would advertise our quilt show. Here is her transformation...

This is how she arrived,stuffed with plastic bags and dressed in crimpoline! She is ready for any weather! Thanks to PJ's in Oathill, I had told them she was going to be a quilter and this is what I got! Gray hair and all!

Auditioning outfits!

Thanks to Ben we are getting there! The quilt top was pieced by Peter, a good 35 years ago! Come back to see the final version tomorrow!

Summer is Slipping By...

Here we are enjoying our first summer in our "new" house, enjoying all that Mahone Bay has to offer and continuing with smallish renovation projects. Nothing too ambitious that it won't get in the way of Peter's golf games or sailing plans! 

The flowering crabapple just after a rain, it is now full of very tiny "apples'.

The garden continues to surprise us every day. The rhododendrons and roses have been wonderful though they suffered from the high winds and rain of post tropical storm Arthur. Thankfully all the huge trees on and around our property stayed up! Lots of leaves came down and small branches. The town came through pretty well compared to other parts of Nova Scotia and we only lost power for 3 hours, lucky us.

Looking from the PEI side, it sure is an engineering marvel. You can read about it here.

We took a day trip to Prince Edward Island, on the hunt for some upholstery fabric at the Bargain Fabric Outlet in North Bedque, just across the Confederation Bridge. I had never been to PEI via the bridge so that was pretty cool and it was a beautiful day. And I found just the fabric for the two chairs that are desperate to be reupholstered. Now to fins a new smaller sofa and then tackle redecorating the den. But that is too bi a project for right now, maybe in the fall. Right now Peter is painting the downstairs bathroom, which used to be a pantry and enclosed staircase to the back (maid's?) bedroom.

I haven't been doing much quilting, I desperately needed some inspiration. Something or someone to give me a good swift kick and say "just do it". Well, that person just happened to be Kaffe Fassett! I heard last winter from a friend that Kaffe was coming to Nova Scotia for workshops in Amherst at Deanne Fitzpatrick's rug hooking studio. 

Yes, that's Kaffe Fassett getting his microphone adjusted.

We just knew that if Kaffe was willing we could get a bunch of quilters together and bring him to Halifax for a lecture. Long story short the three local Guilds did just that, we asked and he came! We booked a wonderful lecture theatre at Saint Mary's University and sold all 171 tickets. Suttles and Seawinds set up shop with a lot of Kaffe's fabrics and the university bookstore sold Kaffe's latest three quilt books. terrific co-operation from all involved and all without a meeting...just over 150 emails!

So I am back to "work", I have almost finished piecing my challenge for the Mahone Bay Quilt Guild's bi-annual quilt show in October, I have been quilting my redwork quilt as well as hand appliqueing a border for my Antique Flower Vase quilt and I have one last challenge to finsh ( a year later!) for my bee challenges that will hang in our quilt show. 

And then there is the garden, it is a beautiful day here today so I think I will head outside!

More Renovations

First layer of carpet is rolled up, second layer ready to go!

We are gradually making headway with the house renovations. It is a big job but we are making progress. Next on our list after Peter replaced 22 windows was to tackle the floor in our bedroom, get rid of the old carpet and paint the floor.

Second layer rolled, old linoleum revealed.

The carpet was not wall to wall, it was meant to be but it was too small so it was just there! We knew that there was a second layer of carpet underneath, smaller than the first. We moved all the furniture out and proceeded to roll up the two layers of carpet. Our incentive was "spring clean-up" day when we could put anything out at the curb for pick up!

Several layers of printed oil cloth

Closeup of the oil cloth exposing the burlap backing

When we started to roll up the second layer of carpet we realized there was a layer of linoleum. It was quite brittle, no idea how long it had been there. As we started to roll we soon saw more layers underneath. We realized they were a printed oil cloth, at least three different patterns. It was stuck together in several places!

Some of it was "imperfect"!

Not as much variety in the width of the floorboards as there is downstairs.

A few treasures found, a 1964 stamp - the year my family moved to Nova Scotia from Toronto!

It was great to get it all up and out of the house, much healthier for sure! The floorboards in the middle had never been painted so Peter did one coat of primer then 3 coats of paint. We decided to keep it light and airy and I think it worked!

All done!

For now the walls will stay blue, goes well with my "Herringbone Blues" quilt. The quilt is machine pieced and machine quilted by Donna Hazelton (Digby), she did a super job. The walls will eventually be repainted. They were wallpaper at one time and were painted over, as were a number of walls in the house. That is going to be quite the job to strip the painted wallpaper, a job for another day!