Still silly brothers. Rick is the oldest of five and John is the youngest and it’s been a blast to hear all the stories that John tells from when they were kids. Funny how Rick’s never told us these stories!

We headed out to the beach and got one afternoon of sun. John and Spencer are from Miami and get sun all the time, so they thought the cold and clouds were pretty nice.

Father and son at Multnomah Falls. Look at those beautiful curls!

And can’t you tell that Liza looks like the LePage side of the family?

I really love when family comes to visit. We’ve lived far away from both sides of our family almost our entire marriage, so it’s such a joy to spend time with them. I love the eating and laughing and sharing stories. It’s the best.

I got home yesterday and am finally rested and unpacked and am ready to get back in the swing of things. Here are a couple more projects from the week.

For these pajamas, I used an old McCalls pattern for the pants and a pattern from  Amy Butlers’ In Stitches book for the kimono. The fabric for the kimono is an Alexander Henry that is at least five or six years old. I’ve been saving it for just the right project. I think I picked well. They are very comfortable and I wore them every night.

Linda spent the last two days working on this clothesline tote. She got the wonderful handles from A Common Thread. It’s not finished but you can tell it’s going to be gorgeous.

Jennifer spent the week working on album blocks. She is making two matching twin size quilts for her extra room. Here are some of the blocks.

There was lots of knitting going on all week. Nothing got finished so I didn’t take any pictures. I also spent a lot of time working on a new summer dress. It was such a project that I’ll give it a special blog post in a few days. We did do a bunch of sewing but it was also a wonderfully relaxing week. These were taken out at our friend Bettys’ house in Black Butte. It was bliss.

Last night we went to hear Sue Spargo’s lecture.   It was wonderful to see her quilts and hear her personal life journey. She is so inspirational. Sue’s style is very different from my own so although I have long admired her work, I’ve never tried to make one of her patterns. Last night’s lecture made me realize that I don’t need to make one of Sue’s quilts, I need to make my OWN quilt. Her quilts are very personal and all the applique elements on them have an emotional connection to her life. It set me to thinking………….

Today we did the garden tour and saw some lovely homes and gardens.

Of course we’ve been sewing too. Many things have been completed or are in progress. Here are our machines at the ready.

Here is a messenger bag that Lynda is almost finished with:

And here is a lap quilt top that Lynda finished yesterday. She has been super productive.

The rest of us have been sewing too, really we have. I’ll try to get some pictures up tomorrow.

Susan and I drove up yesterday and arrived at Jennifer’s house around 1:30. We started our vacation by attending a yoga class and getting totally blissed out and ready to embrace the week. The rest of the day was spent eating and knitting and watching the Tour de France. We took a walk after a wonderful dinner of wild trout cooked expertly by Susan, our resident chef for the week. Our local buddy Sue stopped in for a glass of wine and a chat and brought this adorable gnome that she had made.

Silly Susan

Sitting outside on Jennifer’s deck is a wonderful thing. Blissful. Her house backs up to Wychus Creek and the sound of the babbling water is heavenly.

I haven’t seen any deer yet but I’m sure I will. I plan to spend several hours lounging in this hammock soaking up the sights and sounds. Ahhhh……. I’m loving it.

But first I have to say what an incredible landscape is out there. The land opens up and becomes so vast. Coming from the forests here in Portland, I found it beautiful, although somewhat unnerving. Just miles and miles of wheat as far as you could see. After getting off the freeway, I drove about 50 miles and only saw about 8 cars.  And no cell service.

The value workshop was a lot of fun. I really enjoy teaching this class because the students get a lot out of it and leave with some good information to use in their future quilts. One of the exercises that we do is “trip around the world.”

These two pictures show Lise’s project with several different arrangements of the fabrics.

This is such a good visual on how a project changes depending on where you place your lights and darks.

Here are a couple of other projects from the class.

I’ll work on getting up some pictures of the other two projects. I was very pleased with what all the students accomplished. I really work them hard in this class and they rose to the challenge!

In the afternoon, we took highway 350 towards Imnaha. It’s 30 miles from Joseph and the landscape changes drastically.

We took the dirt road past Imnaha towards Hell’s Canyon. It was too far to go that day and I can’t wait to go back and get all the way to the Hell’s Canyon Overlook. We saw this beautiful quail on the way home. It was posing so perfectly on this fence post.

Our last morning there, we took the walk at the beginning of the Nez Perce trail and saw this beautiful little lake.

It was so pretty that day but for me the most exciting part of the walk was happening upon three adorable little foxes. They were playing near the entrance to their den and we got this picture of one of them before they disappeared. I was so excited, I was about to pop.

They were about the size of our cat Jasper. I don’t know how young that makes them but they sure was cute. I get such a thrill seeing animals in their natural habitat, as long as they’re smaller than me that is!

When you drive out that way along I-84, first you pass through the Columbia Gorge with all it’s waterfalls and woods and then you hit a more open, drier landscape.

We got off the freeway and read about the Blue Mountain Scenic Byway which we’re going to have to do one day. And then it was on to Pendleton where we spent the night at the Pendleton House Bed and Breakfast.

It is a lovely old home with lots of local history and Mary Jo, the owner, is a sweetheart. She fixed us a delicious breakfast in the morning. I accidentally left our fleece jackets at the B & B so we had to stop and pick them up on the way home and we had lunch at a great little cafe called the Cookie Tree Bakery and Cafe. All of there breads and sweets are homemade on the premises and they were great.

We arrived in Joseph with plenty of time to explore and went out to the Zumwalt Prairie.  The land is now owned by the Nature Conservancy and is a real gem. The landscape there is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. Very vast and open, and for me somewhat intimidating. I felt so exposed,  unlike the comforting feeling I get when I’m in the forest. But very beautiful in it’s own way.

After our walk on the prairie, we headed to the Wallowa Lake State Park to settle into our yurt. If you’ve never stayed in a yurt before, I would highly recommend it. The campground is nestled at the north end of Wallowa Lake, right up against these mountains.

I’m still sorting through pictures and will post more from the rest of the trip in a day or two.

At the Wednesday evening lecture, Judy brought this quilt for show and tell and I just loved it. I know, I know, it’s polka dots!

On Thursday, I taught my Egg Drop Soup class. This quilt is made using a “liberated” technique. No templates, no measuring, just freeform piecing. Everyone in the class was really adventurous with their color choices. It was wonderful to see.

Four gals worked on this one together for a charity quilt.

It was a great group of creative women. Yes, quilters are the nicest people!

We took the train from Paris to Bruges and arrived in this totally picturesque, amazing place. It’s so quaint and perfect that you almost feel like you’re in a movie set. There is a canal that rings the town plus other canals running through it. Belgium is known for it’s chocolates, lace and beer, so our first order of business was to sit down to lunch and have a beer.

Each beer has it’s own special glass and the restaurants can only buy the beer if they buy the glasses as well. And I must say that all the beers I had there were delicious.

We took the tour of the only brewery that is still active within the city limits. It’s called the Half Moon Brewery.

The brewery building is very old and on several different levels. There are some stairs that were so steep and narrow that you had to walk down them backwards on the way down. You did get to go all the way to the roof where we had great views of the city.

We stayed in a lovely B & B that Jeff had heard about. The house was 400 years old! Isn’t that incredible to think about? How many lives have been lived there, the joys and sorrows. It just boggles the mind. It’s called the Bed and Breakfast Absoluut Verholst.

The owners are a charming couple who have run it for 8 years now. The husband is a painter whose work is all over the house. And they served the most amazing breakfast in the morning.

On our second day, we went to the St. Johns Hospital/Memling Museum which I enjoyed. There were pictures from it’s day as a hospital for plaque victims,  religious artifacts and  paintings by Memling and  other Belguim painters. We also walked around the Beguinage, which is a courtyard surrounded by small attached buildings as well as a wall seperating it from the town. It was built as a home for nuns and is still used for that today. There were signs asking all visitors to respect the quiet and I found it very peaceful and inviting.

I would highly recommend Bruges if you’re heading to Europe. I would have liked one more day there as there were other things to see.

Here we are on the train from Bruges.

We also went in search of yarn to bring home. I had researched yarn stores in Paris and all the blogs I read agreed we had to go to La Droguerie.  And they were right, the whole experience was a real trip. You could just look at samples of all the merchandise and when you decided what you wanted, you had to wait at the counter for a clerk to help you. The clerk would go in the back and wind up the amount of grams or meters that you wanted. We watched for a quite a while to figure out what we were supposed to do. Then I managed in my limited french to ask for the yarn, pattern, trim and buttons that we wanted. We both got yarn to make a fun little summer cardigan. I managed to take this picture before seeing the sign telling people not to take pictures.

Here’s my yarn and trim from there. I can’t wait to make it. Of course, the instructions are in French so I’ve got some translating to do first.

I would have been more than happy to come home with just the one project from La Drogeurie, so we weren’t actively looking for yarn during our trip to Bruges.  We just happened upon it and of course we had to indulge.  We visited this cute shop where we both bought some antique buttons and Kristy got two skeins of yarn. They also had some scarves,  hats, and bags that were made by local artisans.

Then we found the mother lode. This cute shop was CRAMMED with yarn. You could barely walk in there for the bags and boxes on the floor along with all the stuff that was on the shelves. The owner was a very sweet woman who obviously got a kick out of us. I ended up buying some sock yarn and some gorgeous worsted weight to make the February Ladies Sweater. (also a free download on Ravelry)

Here’s the loot:

Kristy bought some sock yarn too even though she has never made socks before. But we both figured it would be wonderful to have socks made with yarn we had bought in Bruges. It will be a long lasting, fun-to-make momento of our trip.