My brother, Ski, belongs to the Tri County Gun Club in Sherwood, Oregon. He bought a 22 rifle for both Greg and I and we went to the range with him. I never thought "killing paper" could be so much fun. We own a 9mm luger that we took to the range a few weeks ago. I definitely prefer the rifle.

Greg with his rifle:


Ski helping Greg sight in his rifle:



Greg with our pistol:



Here is my target at 25 yards. Annie Oakley, eat your heart out!



Here's the target that was at 50 yards. Three of those bulls eyes were mine.


Our yard is full of goldfinches. One thing they particularly enjoy is the water feature and pond. They line up in the hydrangea to the left of it. One or two will jump on the water feature, take a few drinks and a bath and fly off. Then the next one or two will hop on and repeat the procedure. Most of the time they are quite polite, but every now and then a bully comes along.


These little gluttons are eating me out of house and home. I'm going through 10 pounds of thistle a week. We have two tube feeders and two sock feeders and they are constantly covered with finches.


Our raccoons, a mom and three babies, are back living under the deck. Now I know why I have no ripe tomatoes, zucchini or beans. More gluttons!

I went out Friday morning to feed the fish and the pond was almost empty. It's about an 800 gallon pond, so couldn't have leaked that much through the bottom. Greg was sure that Aniu had gotten back by the pump and bumped a hose loose or something, but, after investigating, cut her some slack. The pump had turned itself off when the water level got too low for it to function properly. When he filled the pond halfway full and turned the pump on, he discovered that the racoons had chewed holes in the hose. He said it looked like those ribbon hoses we used to use to water the garden. Water was squirting out of the holes. Joanne said the babies were probably teething. He bought a new hose and threaded it through pvc pipe to protect it. The next morning I got up and they had pushed the water feature over. Fortunately, they pushed it towards the pond or it would have been emptied again.






We jumped up and down on the deck, Aniu barked and scratched at the deck and the racoons finally moved on again.

We just got home on Tuesday from our trip to International Quilt Festival in Long Beach, CA. It was a great show, but all of the Quilt Festivals are great. They had a lot more quilts than last year and it seemed like more vendors as well.

It was a delight to meet Carol Ireland of San Diego, who modeled the denim shirt that she had embellished using Pippa Moore's pattern JOY. She painted the clouds using Lumiere paints. After seeing our Angelina demos, she said she would use that from now on. She teaches a class in this so watch your quilt shops in San Diego and sign up!

She embellished it to the nines. All kinds of bugs, bead and baubles.

We had our usual great team helping in the booth.

Here is my cousin Dorothy Hammell demoing our foiling supplies and Paintstiks.

Here is Allyson Volkman demoing Angelina. She worked for us last year, too.

Also demoing Angelina were Marion Shimoda and Lisa Coulombe. They all did a terrific job!

We took a small detour home via Sonoma to do a little (or a lot!) wine tasting. On the way to Sonoma, we caught site of a tire flying across the freeway. It missed our windshield by about 3" and left skid marks on the side of the trailer. Whew!

When we got home, we discovered that a family of racoons had moved in under our deck. Once the dog got home, they decided to move out, fortunately.

Portland had experienced a week long heat wave of 100 degrees and higher while we were gone and my poor garden is fried!

The trip from hell

We headed out for two new shows, Minneapolis Quilters in Duluth, MN and NQA in Columbus, OH on 6/1/9. We thought it would be our normal uneventful trip. Boy, were we wrong!

It started with Greg blowing a hole in the black tank. We dripped sewage through Montana, North Dakota and Minnesota. The insulation in the underbelly was soaked and the bottom cover is destroyed. The good news is that our insurance (Safeco) will cover the repairs with only a $250 deductible. Our Safeco policy evidently has a "stupid" clause in it.

The Duluth show was downright AWFUL!! I heard they only had an attendance of 5,500 this year, as opposed to the 10-15,000 they claim to draw.

We got to Columbus, OH after skirting a few "thunderstorms that could turn into tornadoes". When we got here, Greg noticed a problem with our axle. The tires on one side were separated by 1 1/2", on the other 5 1/2". $760 later we had an axle that worked. The guy that repaired it said the axle on one side had totally separated from the trailer. An L-bracket had torn in two. The only thing holding the tires on the pavement was the weight of the trailer.

While it was in the shop, we decided to do a little sightseeing. There's a district called Short North that's filled with all kinds of highly rated restaurants and art galleries. Unfortunately, all closed on Monday. So, we went to the Franklin Conservatory which boasts 27 species of butterflies flying around freely. Closed Monday.

We did find the best Greek restaurant we've ever eaten at. The Happy Greek

During setup at Columbus, the end of the booth fell over on me! It's six steel slat grid racks. I hung one too many stencils and down she came.

Sales were disappointing in Columbus, as well, but not nearly as bad as Duluth. We had a 20' booth and had two demo stations running, demoing Angelina, foiling supplies and Paintstiks. Three Quiltart list members, Bobbie Vance, Lisa Quintana and Brenda Jennings did great jobs with the demos.

When we left Columbus, the air conditioning on the truck started acting up. It was in the 90's with godawful high humidity. We had to turn the air off 15 minutes every hour to let the fan "rest" or we got no cooling at all. Greg got it recharged. It was then blowing colder air for 45 minutes of every hour.

The next day we were cruising down I80. There is LOTS of construction going on on the interstates. On a stretch in Iowa, it was a signle lane with barrels partially in our lane, forcing Greg to have the right tires on the freeway and the left tires on the shoulder. He saw a GREAT BIG pothole coming up on the shoulder. Having just spent $760 on repairing a busted axle, he swerved to the right to miss the pothole. He caught one of the barrels with the bottom of the canopy support. Fortunately ???, our air conditioner had stopped working and we had to roll the windows down and heard it whacking the side of the trailer. Also, fortunately, there was no duct tape to be found in truck or trailer. (I would have posted a picture, but it always loads the picture at the top of the post.)

When the axle went wonky, the tires started wearing very unevenly. One tire was REALLY bad, another pretty bad. The guy who repaired the axle in Columbus replaced the REALLY bad with the spare tire. We were hoping the pretty bad would get us home. Wrong again! We blew the pretty bad tire just west of Mountain Home, Id. Good thing we have roadside assistance because Greg couldn't get the lug nuts off. He had to put the REALLY bad back on and we knew we'd never make it home with that one so we had to buy a new set of tires in Idaho. And pay sales tax on the darn things.

The next morning we went to Les Schwab Tires to buy our new set. The guy who was going to put the tires on was directing Greg backing into the bay. He didn't see the air conditioner on top. They will pay to have it replaced, of course.

We spent that night in Pendleton, OR. I woke up the next morning and saw that the vent hood over the stove had fallen off. It was STAPLED to the bottom of the microwave shelf.

We managed to drive the last 200 miles home without incident.

Whew!