Fun in Kansas City

Kansas City has some wonderful things to see, eat and visit.  So far we've done a lot of eating!  Last night we had a wonderful meal of Tapas.  What a wonderful variety of flavors and textures, and a great way to sample many different dishes.

Our plane trip was quite an adventure.  Everything was fine until we were ready to leave Denver for KC.  Before we took off, a tornado warning and storm came in.  All of a sudden we were asked to deplane as quickly as possible, leaving everything behind.  Once inside, the alarms kept going off, and announcements to go to safe areas and away from the windows.  Did anyone listen?  Of course not!  After more than an hour we finally re-boarded and took off for KC.  During the flight, the weather channel came on and Denver got at least six inches of hail....golf ball to baseball size!  They showed pictures of front end loaders clearing streets!

The weather here is pretty warm and a bit humid, but beautiful.  Had to share a few pictures from today.

Rain, snow, cold, and mud

We've had a lot of rain the past few days and even a little snow yesterday.  Water and dirt equals mud. Loose dirt on a hillside along with lots of rain equals mud slides.  Yes, there was mud sliding down where the new road is going.  The crew brought in gravel and stones this morning to try to fill the hole a bit.  But....this afternoon they dug it all back out because of all the water pooling at the bottom.  They dug down to the drainage pipe that was put in some time ago.  I'm not sure what is going on at this point.  We are going to Kansas City for a week, so it will be interesting to see what has happened while we are gone.

Hole in the Hill

This photo was one of several that I took on May 19th. Yep, they had to stop working....again. After a big conference with about 10 guys, they concentrated on a different part of the road. At least nothing fell in and no one was hurt this time.

Bloggers Quilt Show Entry - click here

This quilt was made during a class on Ricky Tims "Convergence Quilts".  We were able to put the whole top - background and borders - together during the two hour class.  The appliques and embellishments were added after class.  The fish and starfish are fussy cut, and the seaweed were free form cut and fused.  I added bead "bubbles" and machine quilted it using metallic thread, outlining some of the background images.  You never know just what your finished quilt will look like, so there is a lot of anticipation while sewing all of the strips together.

Click on the title of this post for all the links to all of the quilts

Bloggers Quilt Show

It's time for the Blogger's Quilt Festival! Visit Amy's Creative Side to either enter a quilt or follow all the links to see all the eye candy created by so many talented quilters.
Just click on the above button to read all about it.

Road Progress?

These are some pictures taken Wednesday. The first one is the end of the road at this point. You can see the end of the retaining wall. Second picture, things look pretty good. They made a lot of progress during the time I was away. It's even beginning to look like a road!

O-0-0-p-p s! Spoke too soon! Looks like a cave in the side of the hill! We know there is a lot of water draining down the mountain and it looks like it wants to join the creek below. This hole is only about 10 feet higher than where the front end loader fell in.

Teton Patchworks Quilters Retreat

I can't believe how long it has been since my last post!  Lots of things have been going on during the past few weeks, so I will be posting pictures, etc. out of order, but that's normal for me, too!
Nine of us lucky quilters just got back from a wonderful weekend retreat at Teton Patchworks located in Tetonia ID, which is also the home of Lea and Jim Hardy.  Lea taught us Ruth McDowell's technique of curved piecing to make these wonderful roses, and Jim was our chef!  What a treat to be able to sew to our hearts content, learn a new technique, have brunch and dinner cooked by someone else, AND not have to clean up the kitchen!!

Anne's Purple Rose, Kaye's Orange Rose




Pat's Whimsical Orange, Cathie's Red Velvet

 Bev's Red, Marilyn's Pretty Pink






Sue's Retro B&W, Laurel's Peach

Anna's Pink





and finally, Lea's class sample

  





We had two days of intense sewing, unsewing, re-sewing, and a lot of muttering trying to put some of these puzzle pieces together, but we had a good teacher and we all helped each other.  Some got their top completed, while some of us still have a few more seams to finish.
We also had alot of laughter along with some clowns......or should I say Elmer Fudd?

Sorry, Cathie.  Way too tempting not to post this!  (She was really cold and took all the extra blankets).  Yes, it is her hat and she did bring it with her.  No, it wasn't really cold for the rest of us.

Here's the whole group.....Pat, Anne, Cathie, Lea, Kaye, Laurel, Bev (me), Marilyn, Anna, and Sue in front.

Road Construction Update

We now have three big shovels digging up the rest of the hill.  In addition to big blue, there are two big yellows happily moving dirt from one spot to another.  When all of this began last fall, there were trees and brush, deer, raccoons, pheasants, and lots of birds and other wildlife.  Then all of the trees were cut and everything else was removed.  Nothing else happened for quite some time, until the big equipment finally started to reconfigure the natural landscape.  Since then, dirt has been taken out, dirt brought in, more dirt taken out or moved from one spot to another, gravel brought in, drainage pipe laid and then taken back out.  Retaining walls started being put up and then back to the drawing board.  Since the "near disaster", there have been many (that we have seen) meetings with drawings and plans laid out, along with many surveys, new markers, and on and on.  There are now four, yes, four tiers of ground.  Pictures just don't show the depth of these, but it starts with our lawn, then the first drop-off which is a good ten feet, where we thought the actual road would be, now another lower tier with at least another ten foot drop-off.  Not finished yet!  One more drop-off to the bottom.

Why?  No one can really give us a good explanation as to why all of this is being done.  Now all we see when we are on our deck is dirt, and the junkyard left behind by the former landowner who lived right beside the creek.  What would almost make all of this worth while would be a nice little park / green space beside the creek, maybe a couple of picnic tables and benches.  I know, I know.  Just dreaming a little of what could be done.  Something to suggest to the city.

This guy had to use his shovel to pull himself back up.

Big blue is way-y-y down on the third tier.

 





Another survey and check the plans.

If you click on the picture you can see some of the junk that's all over the area beside the creek.  Yes, there was a house (kind of) there.  The garage is still standing, bulging with more stuff.