Doggie Duties and Sewing Basket Quilt Shop

We have been having amazingly warm weather here in Wisconsin for November. Sunday was promising to be a beautiful day, so our friend Vicki asked if we wanted to go take all of our Shetland Sheep Dogs for a walk. Where? Of course, High Cliff State Park! They have wonderful dog-friendly trails, adequate parking, and the out houses are open throughout the park. Even though the flush toilets are all closed down for the year, by having adequate facilities in a park is a must if you wish to have winter visitors. So many city and county parks only have flush toilets and they lock up the buildings. Without outhouse facilities it makes it hard to attract patrons.

Plus ---- I don't feel like going in the woods ''au natural''.

Vicky has two sweet Shetland Sheepdogs, a full-grown female named Tara and a little pup 5 months old named Stuart. Little Stuart was trying so hard to get Finney and Binney to play with him. If we had been in a fenced in area I bet they would have had a blast! But we were on leashes and taking a walk and enjoying the scenery instead.

Honest to goodness, can you imagine that I got all 4 of them to sit in a row together?

(left to right Binney, Finney, Stuart, Tara)

The walking trails at High Cliff are just absolutely stunning this time of year. 

The leaves are down and you can see a lot further into the distance.

The morning sun was at an angle and creating some beautiful shadows. We walked along, just rustling the dried fallen leaves under our feet. The sun was getting higher and we were getting warmer. Actually, just a heavy sweatshirt was good enough by the time we reached mid morning.

Now that the leaves are down you are able to see a lot more of the rock formations and cliff structures in the park. This is all limestone rock throughout the park, which is a part of the Niagara escarpment. If you look on this map you can see it run up all the way along the Eastern side of Wisconsin across through the Great Lakes and to the Niagara Falls area. It's all big one glacial formation.

The limestone cliffs in the park have some sections that were left behind to help lower pieces of the mined limestone down to the waiting boats on Lake Winnebago. 

In later years of the mining operation they ran a railroad spur into the lime kiln area and the lime industry would ship out blocks and processed cooked lime on railway cars. That was long before the land was ever established as a park.

What is left behind looks so beautiful and natural, 

but it really is the leftovers of a large-scale lime mining operation.

Now that the leaves are down, 

you can see off into the distance over Lake Winnebago 

more easily from different places along the trail.

We walked about 3 miles back to where we parked their cars. The dogs were definitely slowing down and done with silly romping and roaming around on the ends of the leashes. It was a great way to spend the morning. Thank you Vicky for inviting us!

Then Vicky loaded up my car with about ten zillion quilting magazines that I get to read through. Good reading for the winter months, curled up by the fireplace, and finding new fun things to make.

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Tuesday morning I got up bright and early and welcomed the sunshine shining on the Wisconsin Countryside. Time for a little drive.....

I was loaded up with Precious Cargo! I had a wonderful little male and female Sheltie from the Wisconsin Sheltie rescue to transport.

I was transporting them to the veterinarian in Sheboygan because they were scheduled for a spay and neuter and some dental work. The Wisconsin Sheltie rescue has taken in 23 dogs that need medical attention before they are able to be adopted. We all volunteered to transport them back and forth to different veterinarians in the area for getting their work done. I was able to take in these two little sweethearts for their appointment.

They were very well-behaved Travellers
and friendly and social while we waited for their appointment.

You see, if you do not already know, my two dogs came from the Sheltie Rescue. Volunteers had to haul them back and forth to vet appointments too, and help get them healthy until they were adoptable. So I am just paying it forward by doing it for someone else to be able to adopt these beautiful dogs!!!

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On my way back home, I swung over to the town of Plymouth, Wisconsin to make a pit stop. Of course! A quilting shop! I have been to this sweet little shop before and it is chock-full of delightful fabrics, tools, and friendly faces.

The sunshine streaming in the windows was inviting
and it made me want to spend a couple hours here perusing the beautiful fabrics

A very nice sales clerk help me find some additional fabric in a line that was discontinued. Now I think I have enough of the colors in my stash for an entire quilt of that particular fabric. It was from Kansas Troubles by Moda.  Such beautiful fabrics and I am going to make a Log Cabin snuggle quilt for the livingroom couch. It will match the colors in my livingroom and add a touch of Craftsman Charm.

They also offer classes in the back area of the shop. The quilting group that I visit in Kiel comes down here on Wednesdays for a gathering. They can bring projects they are working on and sit and visit.

I might start coming down here too, it's such a cheery place. Of course my budget will be strained because it's hard to leave a store like this without buying something! Here is their information in case anybody is interested in visiting the store, or find them on the Internet.

www.sewingbasket.biz

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On my way back out to the highway I thought I would swing by the St. Vincent DePaul in this town. This isn't a normal dumpy little Thrift Shop, it is actually arranged very nicely and their items are very good quality. I have wandered through here a couple times and I always find nice things to buy. I found some blown glass paperweights that I collect, amd some big bags of beautiful Christmas ornaments that I will write about in my next blog.

~~~then I found this wonderful alpaca jacket from Peru!~~~

The buttons were all missing so I got it for half price. I am assuming there were some beautiful horn buttons made from antlers that were removed by someone before they donated the jacket?  I wanted a warm wool jacket for winter dog walking. This one is very heavy and thickly felted wool. My nylon lined ski jacket is sweaty once we start walking and I get chilled from the silky fabric that does not breathe or absorb moisture. This wool one will be much nicer!  Alpaca is some of the warmest wool you can wear!

I need another visit to a sewing shop to get some cool new buttons,

maybe this Saturday up to Green Bay I will find some. 

Now it's back to the sock knitting machine. I am working on orders for people for Christmas gift orders and shipping out a bunch today. It is December 1st and I need to get caught up on all of my work around here for my holiday customers.

Steve's Retirement countdown is at 15 working days. 
His final day should be December 22nd!

P.S. I used my new electric pressure cooker for supper last night.  Spaghetti and Meatballs in 10 minutes!   Dump in frozen meatballs, uncooked raw noodles, a tall jar of sauce, and a jar and a half of water, some spices and I added some freeze dried onion bits.  10 minutes.... done! Stir it up once you open the lid and supper is ready.  It took longer to make the garlic bread in the oven while the pressure cooker was running. Yummmmmmmm

Quilt Til' You Wilt shop in Hudson, FL

We are patiently parked in a lot at Suncoast Designers in Hudson, FL.  They have removed our blown thermopane window and are going to take it apart, clean the glass, and reseal it up and put it back in!

I will do a complete blog post on that tomorrow with pics of our tour. I am waiting for the final pics to post of the finished project.

I promise, my dear RV readers, it will be an interesting post!


We woke up at 6 am to tornado watch alerts... but all storms soon passed around us to the south or the north, and we were just fine. But just in case, we packed an Evac Emergency Bag with laptop, meds, purse, wallet and phone.  Both dogs were on harnesses and leashes, and we had on shoes were ready to grab the dogs and bag and run to the big building if anything was happening nearby.

Paula and Mel, fellow Safari-ites who have been at my mom's with us these last two weeks were with us too.  They are having a window fixed on their rig as well.

While we are waiting for our windows to get done, Paula found two quilt shops in the area!  Imagine that!  One was closed and moved to another location further away.  But the other sounded interesting.....  We googled for directions, and found this delightful place tucked back in the Florida woods.  At first we were not sure if we were in the right place, till we saw all the cars parked by this adorable little building set back in the trees.

http://www.quilttilyouwilt.net/

Quilt Til' You Wilt FaceBook page

We came into a wonderful shop full of fibers, fabric, tools and lots of friendly chatter.  That is a sign of a Good Quilt Shop!  Sometimes you walk in and people stop and stare, but this one was busy!


This is the first shop I have been in that has it's bolts of fabric displayed sideways on hinged racks. You can page through the bolts like pages of books hanging on a wall!  What a great layout display idea!  All the prices and manufacturers were readily available on the ends of the bolts, and you could still see the the fabrics  (AND TOUCH THEM) as you paged your way through.....

All around the store were interesting displays of finished projects

inspiring with a lot of ideas! 

(I know my mom would want to see the bears!)

Towards the back of the shop was a class room.  Instead of a sign that said "keep out"  this one had a sign that encouraged you to "peek inside"!!!  How refreshing!   We saw a number of ladies working in a class, with a lot of wonderful items on display too.

I saw some beautiful looking new machines...  these came out in honor of Singer's sewing machine anniversary.  How cool is that?  Everything Old Is New Again?   I told the ladies that I do most of my piecing on a 102 year old Singer treadle machine.

Since we are RVer's, 

this display of little blocks was pretty cute.... 

In another room, off to one side, were a couple long arm quilting machines.  This gal was from out of state, but was here "renting" time on this machine to do up her quilts.  This is where the pieced quilt top is sandwiched with the batting and bottom fabric.  Then she can make the patterned quilting stitches all over the smooth quilt layers and have a finished quilt (all she has to do now is sew on a binding around the edges) .

She worked so fast (even with me interrupting her) that she was already loading up another quilt to get worked on before we were ready to leave!  She sure is doing a great job.

I haven't had the need yet for a machine so big, but never say never! 

The owner of the shop, Pat, created this wonderful lighting bar over the other machine.  Great ingenuity!  She used shelving brackets, L brackets and track lighting.  Great idea!

Another cute idea was this bobbin holder! 

We looked at a lot of fun stuff.  I was on the hunt for a certain book, but she didn't have it. I guess I will have to order it from Amazon.  I was hoping to find it in a little shop, so I could have fond memories of buying it from a special place.  Oh well, instead I bought some fabric that "spoke" to me when I first came in!   Quilters know that feeling.....     

The top one is the speaking fabric! 

Paula helped me pick out two other coordinating fabrics to go with it.... 

I found some little sections of fabrics called "fat quarters" for my mom. She likes to clip out little patterns and figures of fabric and glue them to cardstock. She makes wonderful note cards and greeting cards, and sells them at craft shows.  Now when she reads this, she will see the ones I picked up for her. 

 Paula had some fabrics cut up too, 

and we both left the shop with big smiles on our faces. 

It was a great outing,

and next time we are in the area, 

we will be SURE to stop back!