Outer Banks Wildlife

Good evening everyone!  We just had some monster thunder rolling through.  The cats get super nervous when its that loud.  Just being inside the house isn't good enough, they have to hide under a piece of furniture too.  Maybe they know something I don't...

In my last post, I mentioned how much I enjoyed seeing the wildlife on our vacation at the Outer Banks.  I thought I'd share a few pictures of that wildlife tonight.

One of the first animal sightings we had was at Cape Hatteras Lighthouse.  Look how close these deer let me get!  We saw deer several times over the week, but this encounter was amazing to me because of their complete lack of fear.

The wild rabbits were the most common animal we saw (other than birds of course).

Oracoke Island has a population of wild ponies.  I'm not sure how 'wild' they really are since they've been living in pens for decades (to protect them from cars and vice versa), but they were an enjoyable sight all the same.

A few miles north of our beach cottage was the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge. It's known as an excellent place to bird watch.

This tri-colored heron was one of the few birds that I could actually identify.  A lot of them just looked like 'seabirds' to my untrained eye.

There were so many pelicans swooping about.  I think there is something prehistoric about the appearance of these birds.  They fascinate me.  We also saw some sort of duck, migrating just off the shore in wave after wave.  There were literally hundreds of them flying past our cottage.  Don't know what they were, but Alton and I were both fascinated.

Speaking of a prehistoric appearance, how about this lovely old turtle?  He was hanging out with a few friends in one of the ponds in the wildlife refuge.

Probably the animals I was most excited about seeing were the dolphins we watched swimming just north of the Rodanthe Pier.  They were swimming near a group of surfers.  This was only the second time in my life that I'd seen dolphins in the wild, with the first time being on our honeymoon in Hawaii.  I could have watched those guys knifing through the waters for hours if they hadn't swam away from view.

That's all for tonight.  Stay dry and stay safe!

I'm back; Visiting the OBX

Hello everyone!  It's certainly been a while since I posted.  What can I say?  Life has been busy, and I haven't always felt about sharing what's been going on.  And sometimes I've felt like I couldn't share even if I wanted to.  My stitching is often for design models, and my personal was filled with the rather large task of applying to be adoptive parents.  That's right, Alton and I are hoping to adopt.  We were approved in December, and now we're just waiting for someone to choose us to raise their beloved child.  Some days I wonder if it will ever happen.  Other days I am perfectly at peace, trusting that God will provide us with a baby if and when it is the right time.  I'm sure I'll have more to share about the adoption process in the weeks and months to come, but for now, it's time for some vacation pictures!

Late last month, Alton and I spent a week staying in a cottage on Hatteras Island here in North Carolina.  For those who don't know, OBX is a shortened version of "Outer Banks," the barrier islands on North Carolina's coast.  We didn't have the warmest or sunniest weather while we were there, but we really enjoyed our vacation.  For one thing, it wasn't crowded at all!  It made me super happy that we could walk along the beaches and see no one else at all for long stretches of time.  And, it meant that we got to see a lot more wildlife than we probably would have otherwise.

We headed onto the islands around midday on a Saturday, and immediately stopped at the Bodie Island lighthouse.

The light had just opened for climbing this season on the day before we arrived.  Perfect timing!  It was a lot of stairs, and my asthma certainly made it a challenge to climb.  But the cool weather certainly made it easier to achieve than it would have been mid-summer!  The staircase is actually rather pretty when you look down from the top:

Sort of looks like a seashell pattern, doesn't it?  We took a selfie from the top.  Let me tell you, it is no easy task to take a picture of ourselves with the phone!  There is a foot difference in our heights, so Alton has to crouch a little, I have to stand on tiptoes, and sometimes you can tell we're working really hard at it.  The results sometimes frustrate me, but often just make me laugh.  Sort of like this one:

Odd expressions and all, I think you can tell we're enjoying ourselves.

We actually stayed in the town of Rodanthe, about a block from the house made 'famous' in the Richard Gere movie "Nights in Rodanthe."  No, we haven't seen the movie.  I thought about renting it for us to watch, but it sounds like a cheesy romance, and I really have to be in the right mood for that.  Each night we would open the windows in our bedroom just a little bit and listen to the sound of the waves crashing on the shore.  I loved that!  I find that sound so relaxing and peaceful.

Just down the beach from us, in plain view from the cottage, was the Chicamacomico lifesaving station.  Isn't that a cool looking building?  It's the oldest building on the station's sight, and I really love it's unusual look.  The site is now a museum (the station was decommissioned in the 1950s) and we were able to tour several buildings.  In the summer, they do lifesaving drills to show what it would have been like if they had to rescue people from a distressed ship.

Inside the Midgett house, which is on the station grounds, we saw this piece of needlework hanging in one of the bedrooms.  I've never seen anything quite like it.  It's obviously a piece of feed sack with thick wool yarn drawn through it.  Some sort of early 20th century sampler?  A pillow case?  I'm just not sure!  It's interesting though.

We also visited the Cape Hatteras lighthouse, which is the tallest brick lighthouse in North America.  We climbed it too.  Even more steps!  But the views from the top were quite lovely.  You could even see the path that the lighthouse took when they moved it away from the shore back in the 1990s.

We completed our 'lighouse tour' with a visit to Ocracoke Lighthouse on Ocracoke Island.  This one is significantly shorter than the other two we climbed, and it's not open to the public, so no more stairs for us!  Ocracoke was an interesting island to visit.  We saw the lighthouse, the downtown harbor, toured the local historical society's tiny museum, and saw the graveyard where four British sailors were buried in the 1940s. We even found a tiny little museum about Blackbeard the pirate, who was killed just off the shore from this island.

A few months ago, I discovered this website called Roadside America that lists weird roadside attractions from all over the United States.  There were quite a few on the Outer Banks, and I think we saw every one of them listed for the southern islands, including this weird ufo house, complete with odd yard art.  What makes someone decide to build something like this, lol?

We also spent an afternoon exploring the dunes around this abandoned life saving station on Pea Island.  It's boarded up, and they've removed the stairs to the porch, so you can't go inside.  It was interesting to walk around it though.  And from there you can walk up to the mouth of the Oregon Inlet.  We stood on a beach that was entirely empty, but you could see that a massive number of birds had occupied the beach in recent days.  The sand was covered in bird footprints, and, um, bird poo.  Must have been a sight to see when the sands were covered by the birds themselves.

Well, I guess that's enough sharing for today.  We left the Outer Banks the day after an impressive spring storm.  The surf had come up amazingly high that night, and the road off the island was covered with patches of sand.  Nature's power is awe inspiring at times like that!  Til next time (which will hopefully be sooner rather than later), enjoy your days and stay safe!

Exploring the Alabama Coast

WARNING!!!  THERE ARE SOME FABULOUS SNAKE PHOTOS AT THE END OF THIS POST.  IF YOU ARE A SNAKE HATER, PLEASE DO NOT SCROLL DOWN PAST THE EIGHTH PHOTO!!!

There Dad, you have been warned.  And I'm sticking lots of photos in so that no one will be taken by surprise.  That said, I thought I'd share a few images from a trip Mom and I took to Mississippi and Alabama last month.  It was beautiful, cool and sunny weather for one day on our trip, and we took full advantage of the gorgeous weather to get out and explore the Gulf Coast.

We rented a car in Biloxi, and intended to drive to Mobile and check out some of the historic houses and museums in that city.  The day started off with a bang.  The rental agency had no cars of the class that I had reserved and offered us an alternative vehicle....  a sweet little black Ford Mustang.  No problem!  We cruised down the coast in our fabulous ride, but on the way decided to take advantage of the nice weather and detoured to Bellingrath Home and Gardens.  Since that's where the snakes were, we'll get to that later.

As we left Bellingrath, we saw signs for Fort Gaines on Dauphin Island, a mere 15 minutes from our location.  So we ditched the idea of going to Mobile and drove over a fabulously long bridge onto Dauphin Island.  We toured Fort Gaines, a Civil War Fort, and then explored the rest of the small island.  I have to admit, I was more excited to discover that Dauphin Island was a major bird refuge currently swarming with migrating birds than I was about seeing the old fort.  This is probably evidenced by the fact that I have no pictures of the fort itself.  But there were tons and tons of bird and beach photos on my camera.

I thought this old log right outside of the fort looked really cool.

And instead of taking pictures of the ruined boat hull outside of the Fort, I took a photo of this mockingbird? sitting on top of it.

By the time we finished exploring the fort, Mom had reached her walking quota for the day.  So she sat in a shady spot in the Dauphin Island bird sanctuary while I took a whirlwind hike through the area.  It had rained VERY heavily during the week leading up to our visit, so much of the paths were muddy, or completely flooded and impassible.  I did, however, find a low boardwalk over the swampy water that turned out to be absolutely fascinating.

I stood just a few feet away from this Green Heron and watched him fish.

 Meanwhile, above him in the trees, this brightly colored Prothonotary Warbler (I think) was flitting around.

There were lots of other birds that I did not get decent photos of.  Just a little bit away from the heron, I could see a otter/beaver/marine mammal gliding around in the water.  But by the time I was able to walk over to get a closer look, a group of LOUD people had arrived, and the little critter had disappeared.  I don't understand why people would walk into a bird sanctuary talking at the top of their lungs and crashing around like bigfoot.  You're not going to see anything if you're making that much noise, so why are you there?

Flashing back to Bellingrath: This place had acres and acres of beautiful gardens that are open to the public.  One of the prettiest areas was the rose garden.

I love roses.  I would love to have a garden just swimming with beautiful roses.

So what do you think?  Is this a nice friendly lion, or his he about to turn someone into a snack?

There was also a small area of the property that is considered a wildlife sanctuary.  It was interesting to walk through, but we didn't see any birds, or fish, or turtles.  But we did see....

A big old water moccasin!!!!  Don't worry, this closeup is due to my zoom lens.  I wasn't going to get to close this guy.  We were on an elevated footpath, and he was many feet below us, basking in the sun.  There was a lady next to us who really wanted to bonk him in the head with her empty drink bottle.  Thankfully, her husband talked her out of it.

At yet another location, I saw this tiny guy swimming through a pond.  Based on the shape of his head, I'm thinking he is also a poisonous snake (again, I was on a bridge, he was far away down below).  Maybe a baby water moccasin?

It was at this point that I invented a new game called "Snake!"  You walk through the woods and suddenly shout "SNAKE!" at your companion.  Their job is to guess whether you really saw a snake, or you're just kidding.  Mom really hates this game.  I guess it's a good thing she loves me so much.

That's all for now.  Hope you weren't too bored looking at more of my travel photos. I'm off to stitch a little.

A needlework road trip

Back in mid-March, Mom and I loaded up my car and headed to Delaware for several days of cross-stitching fun.  Sadly, I took very few pictures of most of our excursion (what was I thinking?!?!?), so I shall bore you with words instead.

On our way north, we first stopped at the Woodlawn Needlework Exhibit in Alexandria, Virginia.  Woodlawn is a pretty colonial era home that houses a juried exhibit of needlework from around the country every year.  The house was full of beautiful works, and this year it included a special exhibit of items stitched by former First Ladies (and their daughters).  Talk about an inspiring exhibit!  There were so many amazing pieces of stitching on display there.  But no pictures allowed inside, so you'll just have to find the time to visit the exhibit next spring and see for yourself!

Just a few blocks away from Woodlawn was our next stop, In Stitches, the local needlework shop.  This was second visit to the store, and what a wonderful place it is!  Mom and I both picked up some 52/60 count linen thread.  I have a very specific use for that linen which I will share at a later date.  Of course, I also picked up a new pattern or two (even though I have my hands full with my own designs!).

We left the DC area and made it to Dover, Delaware not too long after sunset.  I had found our hotel online, and what a stunner it was.  It's a boutique hotel, with only 8 rooms, called the Dover Garden Suites.  The placed is lavishly decorated and very comfortable.  Mom and I were absolutely thrilled to have discovered this place.  It didn't hurt that it was less than a mile from the museum!

The next day we headed over to the Biggs Museum of American Art in downtown Dover for the first of our classes.  We learned a lot about antique sampler preservation that we intend to put to use on our own collections.  The class didn't take up the full day, so I headed over to Bombay Hook National Wildlife Preserve, while Mom chose to relax back at our hotel suite.

And here's where the pictures finally come in.  I had an absolute blast in the very short time I was able to spend in the Preserve.  The scenery there was beautiful, and there were so many birds:

 Great Blue Herons

 some sort of Swallow?

huge flocks of Snow Geese 

Mallards and many other ducks

There was also an 18th century home called Allee House at the end of one lonely road.  It was in sad shape, as were the outbuildings:

I really wish I could have spent more time in this beautiful space:

Sadly, I missed most of the lectures the second day due to a stupid migraine, but I hear they were great.  I was able to spend some time walking around the exhibit.  There were many beautiful samplers.  I got to see Susan Rambo's sampler in person (I know several of you have stitched a reproduction of it).  Although pictures were allowed, most of the photos I took were really crappy (surprise, surprise).  Here's the best of the worst:

And there was even a sampler with a possible North Carolina connection:

On Sunday, we drove to Philly and visited M. Finkel & Daughter for an open house.  What a wonderful shop!  It was like visiting another museum full of lovely treasures.  So many beautiful samplers for sale, and such interesting histories behind some of them.

We ended the trip as we had ended so many the first part of this year, fleeing ahead of a snow storm.  We drove down to Ocean City, Maryland, and paid a visit to Salty Yarns.  Once again, a fabulous cross stitching store that was a delight to explore.  

So there you have it, a short summary of a truly wonderful trip!

I hope I haven't bored you too much.  Stay safe my friends, and I wish you lots of stitching and crafting time in the coming days!

Snowy Williamsburg

Good morning, strangers!  I came on here to blog about my trip to Delaware this weekend, and realized that I hadn't shared about our trip to Colonial Williamsburg two weeks ago yet.  I guess I posted so many pictures on Facebook that it just felt like I'd already blogged about it.  Soooo...

Continuing the trend we started with our Nashville trip, our travel plans were disrupted by snow.  Instead of leaving for Virginia on Monday, as originally planned, we left Sunday evening, ahead of the predicted snow.  Monday was spent mostly hanging out in our hotel room, although I could not resist bundling up for a two hour walk around the colonial site (which was around the corner from our hotel).  I basically had the place to myself.  It was a beautiful, if rather uncomfortable, walk around the snowy colonial capital city:

I always love seeing the palace, although the snow obscures this photo a bit:

This is apparently a permanent sign, and it really made me laugh:

It's a good thing this poor little guy had a nice wool coat to keep him warm!

We were in Williamsburg to work on the jacket that will be worn for the celebration of the 400th anniversary of the marriage of Pocahontas and John Rolfe.  You can read about it here.  Tuesday through Thursday mornings, we got up and headed over to the Costuming department for Colonial Williamsburg.  There were always several ladies there working, with several pieces laid out on various frames for us to work on.  Mom and I sat at the same piece every day, and it was like magic watching the piece come alive.  Here's some of what I stitched:

All of the motifs on the jacket represent animals or plants native to North America.  Mom worked on a tobacco plant for most of our time there.  Some of my favorite motifs included cats, dogs, owls, a big turkey, and a possum.  My least favorite was probably the mosquito.  It was cleverly done, but, you know, mosquito.  I thought I had some more photos taken, and I'll have to dig around and see if I can find them to share later.

Our wonderful week of 'volunteer' stitching came to a rather rushed end when we discovered that the forecast called for ice and sleet back home on Thursday evening.  So we cut our stitching short on Thursday morning, did not detour for one of our usual side trips on the way home, and rolled into Durham just as the sleet was starting.  Mom still had another hour to go to make it home, but thankfully did not have any problems.  My brother and sister both lost power for a few days thanks to that storm.  :(

That's all for now.  I will be back on in a day or two to share some of my personal stitching progress, and I also want to tell you all about our visit to the symposium and needlework exhibit in Dover, Delaware this week.  (I am writing from our hotel room before we head back home today, just ahead of .... another snow storm).  Take care and stay safe and warm, my friends!

New Year's start and the first trip of the year

Wow!  Has it really been almost 3 weeks since I last posted?  Where does the time go!  I guess I will start by sharing some stitching progress.  Like many of my fellow stitchers, I like to start on a brand new project on January 1st, as a sort of New Year's celebration.  This year, I chose to work on "Heaven and Nature Sing" by With Thy Needle and Thread.  The following picture shows one day's worth of stitching, and only one day's worth of stitching, since I haven't had time to work on the piece since the 1st.  Not too bad for one day's work, I think:

Since the first, I've been devoting my stitching time to a model piece for Mom, which I can't share yet, of course.  There actually hasn't been all that much time for stitching though.  Among other things, Alton and I spent a week in California cleaning out his uncle's condo in order to make some progress on his estate (Alton is the executor).  It was hard work, and sad work too.  I won't bore you with the details, but I will say that it truly boggled my mind to see how many different documents used to be generated containing a person's social security number: bank statements, pay stubs, loan documents, etc, etc.  Shred, shred, shred.

While we were in California, we did take a few hours off to do a tiny bit of sight seeing.   Between Los Angeles and San Diego, there is a old Spanish Mission at the town of San Juan Capistrano.  The original church was destroyed by an earthquake in the 19th century, and the ruins of "The Great Stone Church" still stand on the site today:

The church is listed on the World Monuments Fund top 100 Most Endangered Sites because of its fragile state.  The whole mission was simply beautiful, and relaxing.

The mission is also famous for its annual "Return of the Swallows" which is celebrated every year on March 19.  Apparently, the birds return on almost the same day every year, and build their nests along the eaves of the mission's buildings.  Sadly, it was the wrong time of the year for us to see the swallows ourselves.

There were some beautiful cactus plantings around the mission.  I didn't take many photos of the gardens, so you'll just have to take my word that they were lovely.

 So that's most of what I've been up to this month.  I have two of my six patterns bagged up, and I'm working hard at getting all the others ready.  I can't believe it's less than a month til the Nashville show!

Tomorrow (assuming that we still have power), I will post a giveaway announcement, and I will start sharing photos of my designs.  I hope some of you will like them!  Til next time, stay warm, stay safe, and stay crafty!

Mountain views

So much for frequent posting, huh?  Anyways, I'm back this evening, on a sugar high, and completely delighted by all the adorableness that has visited my front porch this evening.  I wanted to share with you about a trip to the Blue Ridge Mountains that my husband and I took earlier this month.

I headed to Asheville to attend a legal conference at the Grove Park Inn.  The inn is on the National Register of Historic Places, and it was quite a lovely place to spend a little time.  I even brought some mood reading: Stephen King's "The Shining."  Alton was not able to join me until later in the weekend, so I had a little free time to myself on Friday afternoon.  And I decided to spend it exploring the area for a couple of hours.  I headed out to Flat Rock, NC.  The weather was beautiful, and I thoroughly enjoyed the drive out.

My first stop was St. John's in the Wilderness Episcopal Church.  Built in the 19th century, this church was the summer church for well-to-do Americans who left their winter homes for the cooler NC mountains in the summer season.  I wasn't able to go inside the church, but the outside is certainly pretty.  Surrounded by shady trees and a cemetery, it was a pleasant, relaxing place to walk around.  And of course, I'm always fond of pretty graveyards.   This one had lovely moss-covered tombstones to admire:

From the church, I drove on to the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site.  I can't BEGIN to tell you how happy I was that the government shutdown ended two days before this planned visit!  Mr. Sandburg certainly picked a beautiful location for his home.  For some reason, I didn't prep a photo of the actual house for this post, but here's a shot of the nice steep walk I took to get up to the house:

I was able to tour the house, which was almost wall-to-wall bookshelves.  I think Alton and I would have fit right in in that home.  Mrs. Sandberg raised prize-winning dairy goats, and the site still has an active goat farm:

I petted a few goats, and laughed at the children who were playing with the animals in the yard.  It was a pleasant way to spend a few hours.

By Saturday afternoon, Alton was with me to enjoy my free time with me.  We took a drive south on the Blue Ridge Parkway.  Although the leaves were not at their peak of fall color, the views were still pretty enough:

We stopped at quite a few lookouts as we drove along, taking in the changing views.  We also took a hike down to Graveyard Falls, which are only a short, steep hike from the road:

And this might have been the highlight of the trip for me: at one of our first pulloffs, this little fella was running around, begging for food from the tourists.  Look how he posed for me!

He reminds me of my cat Tigger, because he would approach you, but then suddenly run away after he decided he'd ventured too close.  What a funny little groundhog!

In closing, I leave you with a photo of the view from our hotel room high atop the Indigo on the edge of downtown Asheville.  The windows in our room stretched from floor to ceiling across an entire wall of our suite.  Not too shabby for a room we got using bonus points, huh?

I'm still stitching away, mostly on my designs.  I hope that all of you are finding enough time to be creative too.  Stay crafty, my friends!