Capernaum Camp

Tertia and I had a wonderful opportunity last week. We flew out to Virginia to join big brother Daniel and go to Capernaum Camp with the Young Life Fairfax group. Capernaum is the branch of Young Life that reaches out to young people with special needs. Tertia has been attending a Capernaum Club here in Clark County since last December, but Daniel arranged for it to happen where he knows some of the leaders and had volunteered in the past.

The campground is Rockbridge Alum Springs, in rural Virginia. Young Life camps are designed to make you overwhelmed with the awesomeness of it all from the moment you arrive. Kids are told this is going to be the best week of their lives... and special needs kids are no exception. They each have a one-on-one "buddy" and are called Friends, not "kids with disabilities." They can do everything the typical kids can do... horseback riding, the zip line, the rope course, the "screamer" swing. All with the assistance that friends and family provide to people who need barriers to be removed so they can encounter Jesus... like the paralyzed man in Capernaum.

There is a pretty high energy level all week long. It reminds me of a perpetual Field Day, but cooler. Fairfax Capernaum dressed as the Toy Story Aliens for the Disney challenge.

 Club meetings are very loud, but noise-canceling headphones are available. Tertia is going to get a pair of these, I think!

 She loved most of the thrill rides, except the ropes course. But the giant swing was her favorite.

In the meeting time they break down the message of Jesus so beautifully and simply.
1. We can trust God because He made us "very good." I was in tears when I realized there were kids there who have never heard that, or maybe assumed that because of their disabilities, they weren't included in that. But here, they were the majority.
2. We can trust God/Jesus because He is always with us, like He was with the disciples in the storm at Galilee, and like He promised before the Ascension. We can trust God just like we can trust our harness to keep us safe on those thrill rides that are so fun and scary at camp.
3. When we turn away from God, it's like being cut off from our family. We feel scared and alone. The Narnia story illustrates this, and so does the great parable of the prodigal son. Scared and alone... how I'm sure many kids living with disabilities do feel.
4. But Jesus gave his life for us. So he can bring us into his family and we don't need to feel scared and alone ever again.

 With big bro in the dining hall. Did I mention, the food is fantastic... served family style with a comedy-variety show after every meal.

Tertia loved Stormin' Norman and his little sister Gigi, and fiercely booed the villain who was trying to steal camp from them.

With her wonderful Buddy.

It was an amazing week. I'm so glad she had the experience, and I hope we can participate again.

July ending, August beginning

 I haven't blogged all the July pics yet, and here we are in August. Some dancing shots of Daniel and Tertia at Ian and Ashley's wedding...

Tertia dances with such complete joy, even when her feet hurt from dancing all night.

 My July birthday girl made her own birthday cake. It was a Mocha Toffee Crunch cake, and it was delicious! She is seventeen now.

Also, Tertia and I entered the Harry Potter trivia competition on July 31 at Latte-Da Coffeehouse and Wine Bar. We won second place! Tertia is the trivia whiz... I provide transcription and spelling assistance, and I know Latin so if she remembers  something that sounds vaguely like "priori incantatem" I write it down.

 A shirt, a Dobby poster and a special vial of Felix Felicis (for decorative purposes only) were the spoils of victory. She is already making plans for the next event on Halloween.

 The Clark County Fair is  now open. Pygmy goats are always photogenic.

 I didn't enter any quilts, but enjoyed looking at those on display.

And the girls doing a silly shot in the 4H cats and dogs pavilion. Not pictured: our annual stop at the Dairy Women's booth to buy milkshakes before leaving the fair.

The plum tree is doing its thing, we are making plans for camp, the Megaquilter is semifunctional again and I am binding Grand Illusions quilt, which really deserves its own post. I'm also doing  genealogy semi-obsessively - which needs its own post; and I'm working on my Latin course for Wikiversity, which needs its own post. The random number for August is 9 - that means that my randomly selected UFO's for this month are (1) to resurrect the ancient Mariner's Compass rug hooking project from... maybe 18 years ago... and (2) work on knitted gifts for my stash. Neither of those is happening so far but I have finally turned the heel on my purple Sara Elin socks. 

Ravelry is still being a booger though, so I'm spending very little time there. They have lifted the restriction on me posting but they have blacked out my profile and are showing no signs of restoring it even though I purged it of everything political and asked to have it restored. And it wasn't even political in the first place! For the record, I oppose censorship. And the people who run Ravelry ... well, I can't say anything nice. But hey, at least they aren't spitting in my food or trying to get me de-platformed everywhere else. Their lunch counter, their rules. It's just one more symptom of a broken culture, where disagreeing with the Left on anything makes you a racist, and Twitter mobs can force the New York Times to take down the bland headline "Trump Urges Unity vs. Racism" because it wasn't anti-Trump enough. Yes, definitely time to tune out of Twitter and Ravelry and any other triggering sites for awhile.

Well, back to your previously scheduled summer. I want to prep a dehydrator full of plums today. Quarta has already made a load of plum-roll-ups for the winter. I also need to tackle Tertia's clothes and bag up the surplus ones so she can actually get them put away in her dresser. And there are a few quickie baby quilts I would like to make, but probably not until after camp.

Randomday with Catastrophe

 First the good news. Celtic Solstice has been finished for about two weeks, and is going to live with my brother in Virginia. I haven't been finishing quilt tops very fast for several years, and I would like to do better at supplying my family and friends with quilts. So this one's for Andy.

 She looks so innocent, Muffball does. But no!

This is the brain of the stitch regulator that was attached to my Megaquilter setup. I took the machine off the carriage so I could replace some worn carriage plastic tracks, as I blogged about after finishing Celtic Solstice. I was very optimistic that I could whip out those six quilt tops that need quilting. But I dawdled a bit with re-lifting the machine onto the refurbished carriage. And yesterday when I came home, I realized the entire carriage had been toppled over off the tracks, and the framework of the apparatus that goes around the heavy machine had fallen sideways onto the far end of the frame. This caused the wires leading into the red box to wrench out, and broke at least two of the black components on the circuitboard. It's a $500 piece of high-tech equipment that I can't possibly fix and can't really justify replacing right now. So now, instead of looking forward to zipping out lots of quilts, I'm going to have to try quilting with no real control of stitch length and speed. I used to do machine quilting on my little machine, not the frame, without a stitch regulator. But... grr. I can't even figure out how to dis-assemble the stitch regulator and replace it with the speed control switch that came with the frame, or whether that will even work. It unquestionably deflates my happiness in being able to solve the (relatively inexpensive) problem of wobbly tracks. Technology and I do not get along.

It was almost certainly the cat. Wish I could have been home to see her terrified reaction to jumping on the carriage... but only if I had hidden the stitch regulator first!

The Airing of Quilt Tops

The Megaquilter is disassembled, and I successfully put cut the track segments needed to replace the worn ones on the carriage.

They are now inserted into their grooves and the carriage is back on its tracks, which aren't worn enough to need replacement yet. But I haven't put the machine itself back on the carriage yet. It's still sitting on the round table in the family room where all the stuff gets put. I've stitched a bit with it to put it through its paces, and I think I'm almost ready to put it back on the carriage now and load another quilt.

I made this cute little thread-holder on July 4, in patriotic colors. It's replacing an old brown-paper lunch bag that was held on with masking tape. I love how it looks like a pair of suspenders!

This is how it will hang from the carriage assembly. It's very easy to snip threads and reach back and put them in there when I am having a marathon quilting session.

Also on July 4, I hung out the finished Celtic Solstice on the clothesline. Then I decided I needed to see all my quilt tops awaiting quilting. I definitely need a kick start on getting some tops finished.

I didn't have enough clothesline. These are the Bonnie K. Hunter mystery quilts I haven't quilted yet. Left to right are Good Fortune (last year), On Ringo Lake (year before that), En Provence (year before that), and Grand Illusion (2 years before that).

 I tried the panorama feature, but it came out kind of weird. I HAVE finished four of the mystery quilts since I started doing them: Allietare (2015), Celtic Solstice (2013), Easy Street (2012) and Orca Bay (2011)

 I took a close-up of On Ringo Lake.

 I have two tops that are not Quiltville mysteries.

 The Tone it Down quilt was the APQ quiltalong a few years ago. It's enjoying another round of popularity on Instagram, but I've had this top finished for a few years. It's a Burgoyne Surrounded block, but in scrappy low-volume fabrics.

 And this is one I've been saving for maybe the longest... I call it Country Stars and it was inspired by a quilt I saw years ago in a Lake Oswego quilt shop.

Photobombing provided by Quarta.

So I need to get some backings ready and just dive in to quilt these.

Celtic Solstice - A Finish

Celtic Solstice was the 2013 Quiltville mystery; I finished piecing the top in 2014, almost exactly 5 years ago. I started machine quilting it in November of 2017 and just finished it last week.

I hung it out on the clothesline on the 4th of July. It really sparkles with those vibrant oranges, blues, greens and yellows. I totally need to spur myself onward with getting quilts quilted. More of that in another post.

Closeups of the wave quilting on the borders. The outer border fabric and the binding come from that epic estate sale I went to over 5 years ago.

I have a set of rubber stamps with designs from the Book of Kells... I decorated some plain fabric with them once and decided to use the fabric here. Celtic kitties...

and Celtic knot patterns.  The quilt measures about 78"x81" - better for a Full than a Queen size. I used navy thread for quilting and, aside from the wave pattern and some outline quilting in the borders, an overall squiggle/loop/star pattern that is my go-to, standard pattern for most quilts.

Also, since it's a new month, the UFO challenge random number is #1, and for me that breaks down to my long-neglected "classics" tote bag, and spinning the light green with silver glimmer fiber that I bought at Sock Summit. Both of those are theoretically possible, but I haven't worked on either so far.

Randomday and Family

It's once again Randomday. So since I have figured out how to upload videos (actually, download from cloud, then upload onto blog), here is a random bird that crashed into my bathroom window several days ago, then started squawking about it with a few other friends. I think it was a woodpecker. Hairy or Downy? Any guesses?

This is a potato plant in bloom. I was surprised that I had never seen what their flower looked like before.

Raspberries are in season, or will be for a few more days, and blueberries are starting.

 Quarta is the Washington State winner for the Trig-Star contest, a trigonometry test that is sponsored by the surveyors' association! Really proud of her outstanding math skills, which she definitely gets from her father!

Tertia and I are going to a wedding this afternoon. A good friend and classmate of Daniel's, who is also back in town to be in the wedding party. So we had a family dinner last Sunday. Peter is just back from his annual training, too. It's great to have them all around the table at once!

I've been working on an Ancestry.com family tree for myself ever since I got the test for a Christmas present from Steve. He got his from a birthday present from me, and his mother started it off by getting herself one. She is still looking for her elusive grandfather, Henry M. Brown, born around 1850 in Maine, and died in Florida 1932. He is a mystery man. But my family is pretty easy to trace. For 4-6 generations before me, they were in Ohio on my mother's side and Indiana on my father's side. Early settlers in the Ohio River Valley. Steve's mom did most of the research for it back in the 90's, and I have her notebook. My mom and grandmothers contributed to some notes and charts. But of course when you add the DNA element and computer research, you can find out a lot more. So now I find myself mildly obsessed with one particularly interesting branch of the family that goes all the way back to the Norman conquest. I've joined WikiTree and will probably spend way too much time trying to connect myself to the gateway ancestors listed there. Hey, it keeps me off the streets and away from the knitting thought police.

On the Fourth I found myself wondering, if 50 million American kids lit a billion sparklers all at once, could it be seen from space? We did our small part.

To Ian and Ashley: may your marriage be blessed with faith, love, family and friendship.

Randomday

Randomday is the day the blog eats leftovers.

Daniel is home from Virginia for a friend's wedding! We met him at the airport Thursday evening and took him out for a late (very, for him) dinner at Deschutes Brewery Public House. Excellent burgers and elk-burgers, and you should totally go extra for the garlic fries. It was his birthday so they gave us a little plate of birthday cake/ beer flavored cake-pops.

Daniel is off at a bachelor party beach weekend, and Peter is home from annual training with the National Guard in Yakima! Here's some of what he was up to. Driving a Stryker sounds very cool, but sleep deprivation and only one shower a week, not so much.

I have the Megaquilter taken off the carriage and am going to cut the half-length rails that were included with the Grace Frame set-up many years ago, to fit them onto the carriage length. I found this blog post from 7 years ago about my fears with that, but I think it will be okay. I did it once before. The hardest part was getting Steve to lift it off the carriage for me. I need to dust and clean all the parts that haven't been given any TLC for awhile, and then reassemble it. But first, I'm going to attach the walking foot and try stitching on the binding of Celtic Solstice with the machine alone set up on a regular table. That should give me a good idea if it needs professional servicing.

We have a branch down from the plum tree in our back yard. It tends to prune itself when the weight of the fruit is too much for it. But the fruit that is ripe right now is strawberries and raspberries. The raspberries are especially delicious this year. We have red and golden varieties. I harvested all the fava beans which Steve grew as a cover crop. It is so laborious to prep them, and you really need to do it when they are young... but if you do, they are delicious. 

We have a hummingbird feeder that is right outside our front window and is quite fun. It had steady customers all winter and now there's still one who comes by a few times a day.

Below is the video I took of the tiny bunny we saw on our walk earlier this week. It was one of about 11, and it was too small to be afraid of us. We walked around the entire wetlands loop and he was still there when we came back. (This is also a test to see if I can figure out how to upload videos.)

If this video works, I have another of a suspected woodpecker in our backyard that I can share another time.

In other news, we have successfully gotten both Tertia and Quarta hooked on Monk reruns after watching the first few episodes ourselves. Amazing how many shows we missed out on during the 2000's when they were little. Steve has been watching through the original Star Trek series with Quarta, who is quite persnickety about the lack of good visual effects and generally male chauvinist worldview. They are in 3rd season and so there is some pretty regrettable stuff! But even the Next Gen. looks hokey by today's standards. Okay, I'm feeling old.