Portland Art Museum's Tuileries Garden Exhibit

In early July I was able to make it to the Portland Art Museum to see the exhibit "The Art of the Louvre's Tuileries Garden." I wanted to see this since I visited the Louvre in Paris many years ago, but hadn't had the chance to explore the gardens. Inside the Portland Art Museum's exhibit are many full size statues and scupltures (some replicas and some not). It was an interesting exhibit and I wasn't aware of the story of the Tuileries Palace, and it having been set on fire in 1871.

Portland Art Museum has asked its visitors to help them capture "Parklandia" by sharing photos of favorite Portland parks on Instagram (#captureParklandia). Although this is a very bad photo, I have a picture of my favorite sculpture, Theodore Roosevelt, Rough Rider, which is actually located in the South Park Blocks, right in front of the museum.
The Tuileries Garden exhibit runs through September 21.

Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show 2014

I made it to the Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show this past Saturday in Sisters, Oregon. There were quilts lining the storefronts on three streets (each stretching about six or seven blocks long). It was a super hot day and the quilts were great. Here are a few pictures...

This quilt titled Tile Works III is by Mary Kay Price. The description reads "Hand dyed cotton fabrics brushed with Shiva Oil sticks to suggest tiles." I think it looks like stained glass too.

"What Does the Fox Say?" After close examination of the photo I could see that this quilt was made by Elizabeth Hartman and is titled Fancy Fox. This is a nice coincidence since I am currently finishing up a baby quilt for a relative and I based it on Hartman's instructions for her Small Plates quilt from her book "The Practical Guide to Patchwork."

The Central Oregon Modern Quilt Guild's theme was the Ohio Star.

 Some quilting detail.

 Ric rac embellishes this quilt and also outlines.

 Landscape quilts.

 Whimsical quilting.

 This reminds me of glass mosaic tiles.

 The Portland Modern Quilt Guild's exhibit area.

A Spider!

We found this yesterday. We believe it is a folding trapdoor spider. From what I have found out, they are not dangerous. We would have put something next to it to show how big it is, but neither one of us wanted to get anywhere near it. You can see the ants in this photo for an idea of how big it is.

Happy 4th of July!

Enjoy your 4th of July festivities!

Ahh, Sweet cherries

Cherries are now at the farmers market and so I bought 6 pints (4 of dark red cherries and 2 Royal Anne) over the weekend.
I washed and pitted 2 quarts to get them ready to can. I used a light sugar syrup and ended up with 3 full pints from the boiling water bath and a half pint for freezing. The canned cherries come in hand somewhere around February when we always seem to get in the mood to eat chocolate cake topped with some vanilla yogurt and canned cherries.
After canning I had about a quarter cup left over of yummy cherry syrup that I added to some plain Greek yogurt for breakfast!