Knitting Is The Perfect Travel Activity

What does the passenger do when they ride for 30 hours?  There are a few duties, like finding good radio channels, checking in with the map app to be sure we are on the right road, giving the driver food but for the most part, there’s not much to do but look out the window and enjoy the scenery.  This is at time when knitting skills come in handy.  I started a sock on this trip.  The socks have a fun little cable in the pattern but while we were on the drive, I decided it would be easy to make mistakes in the cable because I was also looking at the scenery and I’d forget my place.  So, I decided to take out all of the cable pattern stitches and knit a rib pattern instead. The cuff was K1, P1, K3, P1 and I just extended this pattern for the sock body.

There were several rows of cable so I couldn’t just unknit them.  I took the needles out and unraveled the cables, eek. 

Then I picked up all of the stitches with three of the needles.  The first pick-up was to get the stitches on the needle and check for any missed stitches.

   Once the stitches were on the needle, I picked each stitch off the needle to straighten them out, pick up any missed stitches and make sure all stitches were complete.

 As we drove, the sock grew.  You can do a of knitting in 30 hours of driving.  This is a simple pattern too so there isn’t any room for mistakes when you stop look out the window, or change the radio station. Maybe I can complete a pair while we are on this road trip.

Linking To:  Slow Sunday Stitching

Where Should We Go?

After our visit with family and friends, we start our drive south.  We are always flexible at this stage of the game because we aren’t quite sure how long it will take to get over the Siskiyous at the beginning of January.  Over the years we have had all kinds of weather for the drive and we know that we may need to stop and wait for a storm to pass.  There is a great RV park called 7 Feathers just North of the mountains where we could wait if we needed to.  We haven’t needed to yet, but we know it’s there.  I will review this park later.   We usually stay there on our way home and it is one of the best parks we’ve found in our travels.  

This year’s road travels are a good example of how we plan our trip to the sun.  When we left Portland at about 10:30 AM we planned to stop in 7 Feathers for the night because the weather forecast was for high winds and rain in the Siskiyous.  As we got closer to our destination, we decided that the wind wasn’t that bad and we’d soldier on.  We cleared the mountains at about 5:00 PM and entered California.  We decided to just keep driving and stay in a rest stop when we were tired of driving.  At about 8PM we pulled into a rest stop, had some dinner and went to bed.  

The next day, we planned to drive to the Orange Grove Campground in Bakersfield and spend a couple of days.  When we were about a mile from the off ramp to Bakersfield I suggested we just keep driving and stay in another rest stop and head to Arizona the following day.  So on we went into the night.  We stopped at a rest stop to cook a meal around 7PM and decided to drive to the next rest stop to sleep.  The next rest stop was filled to the brim with trailer trucks parked nose to nose on the off and on ramps and in all of the parking slots.  We drove on to a large parking lot in Videl Junction and pulled in at about 11PM.  There were a few trucks and trailers parked in the lot. so lots of room for us.

We have a reservation at the Cave Creek Campground just northeast of Phoenix on January 15th so we needed a place to stay until then.  On the second driving day, I perused our Allstays App and found a few campgrounds in the Phoenix area. The first one didn’t have availability and the second one did.  The Cotton Lane Campground, located in Goodyear, just west of Phoenix became our destination. We pulled in at about 3PM on our third day of driving.  Overall, we drove for 30 hours and spent a couple of nights on the road.  

We love the flexibility of traveling with our home attached.  We can go where the mood and weather takes us.  If we find an area we love, we can stay longer or if we end up in an area we hate, we can leave.  When we started doing our trailer traveling 11 years ago, we left Petersburg with no itinerary.  Now we have some favorite spots we want to revisit and we have new areas we want to explore so we have some planned destinations but we leave most of the travel unplanned so we can go where our spirit takes us. 

Coasters for Christmas

We have a new annual stop in our travels.  Snowhomish, Washington.  My forever friend Shirley retired from teaching in Juneau, Alaska and moved to Snohomish to be close to her kids and sister who live in Everett, Washington. She lives in a perfect condo right over the town’s main street so she can sit on her balcony and watch parades and activities just below her.  There are lots of cute shops and restaurants along Snowhomish’s main street.  It is an adorable little town.  Best of all, there is a giant fabric shop two blocks from Shirley’s house.  They have classes, a long arm quilt machine to rent, they sell and service Bernina’s and they have giant selection of fabric.  

When we get together, we exchange little Christmas gift bags, generally filled with homemade goodies and this year, these fun coasters were in my bag.  Shirley loves scraps.  When we lived in Juneau, we would participated in a quilt retreat in a cabin at the Shrine of St. Therese with friends a couple of times a year. After our first retreat, Shirley was nicknamed ‘dumpster diver’ because she would rummage through the fabric ‘trash’ and pick out little bits of this and that and make something fun with the scraps.  One year, she made us all little mug mats with the scraps she collected.  

Don’t you love the modern look of these coasters.  I love the colors she chose for the cups and the backs.  They fit my coffee cup perfectly.  Don't you love them.

Linking to:  MCM, Monday Making,  Linky Tuesday

Jelly Girl Finish

I've gotten a lot of mileage out of this quilt, really...I made it last year while on our winter travel vacation.  I fell in love with it and decided to teach it as a class at home in Petersburg.  I then used this quilt to practice quilting on my new Q20.  When I made it, I knew it would be the quilt for our bed in our 5th wheel, so there was an incentive to get it done.  I finished hand sewing the binding on our first day in the trailer and here it is on the bed.  I made the pillows several years ago and they go with the quilt.  I need blue or white pillowcases I think.  

Linking to:  Finished or Not Friday, TGIFF, Off The Wall Friday, Beauties Pageant, Let's Bee Social,

First Stop, Anacortes, Washington

The ferry arrived in Bellingham at 8 AM Pacific time.  Our first stop on our way to the sun is Anacortes, Washington, where our 5th wheel is stored.  We pick up the 5th wheel and bring it to the first campground of our trip, the Fidalgo Bay Resort.  This is our staging park.  We start and end our trip here.  Our truck goes to the Dr. in Burlington and I get the trailer ready for travel.  

The Fidalgo Bay Resort is tops.  It is owned by the Samish Nation, the people who have lived in the Fidalgo Bay area for centuries.  The Samish are members of the Costal Salish culture, which is made up of at least 56,590 people.  

The highlights of this park are the view of Fidalgo Bay, the Tommy Thompson Trail, very clean grounds, good water, good internet and more.  It’s close to Anacortes, which offers shopping, antiques and cultural events.  Across Fidalgo Bay is an oil refinery, where many of the residents of the area work.  It isn't very pretty during the day but is lit up at night and it looks pretty.

Linking to:  Saturday Sharefest, Our World Tuesday

It's Time To Go

We've reached the time of year when our muscles and joints need heat and our brain needs sunlight.  We are packing for our 2 month adventure 'down south', which is a term we Alaskan's use to describe the lower '48.'

 
This is the 11th year we've dropped everything and packed to go so we have the routine down.  The hardest part is cleaning up after Christmas and putting our home to bed for the winter.  Luckily, my mom and daughter live just down the street and they water the plants and keep an eye on the house.  My son checks our mail so that is taken care of too.  It is very nice to have my entire extended family in Petersburg, and I do miss them when I'm away.

I also spend a day or two planning my sewing projects and getting them ready for the trip.  The first leg of the trip is aboard Alaska Marine Highway ferry MV Columbia.  We leave Tuesday night late and arrive in Bellingham, Washington the Friday morning at 7am.  That is two days and three nights of relaxing, eating and sewing.  We bring some food for meals and snacks and I also bring my sewing machine and a few projects to my stateroom, which really helps to pass the time.  Of course we bring our dog Cessna.  She is a 12 year old chocolate lab and she has made this trip for most of her life.

This year, I am bringing aprons.  I wholesale aprons to shops around Southeast Alaska and I have orders for the summer tourist season that I need to start working on.  I will be working on aprons on the ferry.  I also brought lots of Kona solid 10" square half stacks, which I plan to play with as well.  I generally bring way more than I can use and I buy fabric during my travels too, so I'm never at a loss for something to do.  

This is our little stateroom.  We barely fit but I am still able to make room for sewing a pile of straps and pockets.  

It will be fun to put the pieces together when we get to our 5th wheel in Washington.  

What, Another Machine?! My new Bernina 700

Here is a photo of my little Bernina harem before my machine tragedy this holiday season.

I had a sewing tragedy while I was making my Christmas presents this year, a tragedy that lead to the purchase of another machine.  I never though I'd be that lady with many sewing machines but so it goes.  About 4 years ago purchased a used Bernina 830 I found on Craig's list.  I fell in love with it because it has a larger neck so it was the perfect quilting machine.  It also has an embroidery module and hoops.  I had never been interested in machine embroidery so the embroidery module languished in storage for about 4 years. 

This year,  I decided to pull it out and learn to use it.  Purchasing patterns satisfied my need for instant gratification, and they were reasonably priced. I purchased all of my patterns on Etsy and they were instantly downloaded to my computer and then transferred to a memory stick, which was plugged into my machine.  Easy-peasy.

I found that it was really fun and I embroidered dish towels for friends and family and this wall hanging for my special friend.  The machine hummed away for awhile and most of my towels were finished and ready to be put in Christmas bags  along with my handmade jellies and liqueurs.  Unfortunately, the darn machine stopped humming near the end of one of the patterns and I found the thread was jammed in the bobbin case and my needle wouldn't move up or down.  I put on my surgical gloves and began extracting wads and wads thread from all parts of the bobbin case.  This thread had been packed so tightly between the case and it's holder that the case came out of the holder.  In a Bernina 830, that's a problem.  Only the technician could fix the machine with a special tool.  I would have to send my machine to Juneau, AK on Alaska Airlines for this relatively minor repair.

To make a long story short, after several long conversations with Jody and Amy at Raintree Quilting in Juneau, I decided to buy a Bernina 700.  Did I mention  I am a sucker for a good sales pitch. This machine looks just like a regular machine and it is as easy to use as a regular machine but it only does embroidery.  I was able to finish my Christmas gift bags in time.

I fell in love this Christmas.  I am now a passionate embroiderer.  I can get a project started on my 700 and sew a project on my 430 or quilt a project on my Q20.  I am the woman with many machines and am loving it!!

Linking to:  MCM, Moving It Forward Monday, Linky Tuesday