If it's summer, it's time for quilt camp! For the 9th year, Sue and Elizabeth are at Elizabeth's lake house in New Hampshire for a few weeks of crafting and creativity. We arrived at the lake around dinner time on Monday after a 2 day trip from Virginia. We would have gotten here sooner except for making a few stops in New England. One was at Shelburne Falls, MA, to see the Bridge of Flowers. Elizabeth had seen it before, but Sue had not.
Built as a trolley bridge in 1908, it connected 2 towns on either side of the Deerfield River, but was abandoned in 1928 when the trolley fell out of use. In 1929, Antoinette and Walter Burnham had the vision of transforming it into a flower bridge, and the Shelburne Falls Woman's Club led the effort to make it a reality.
Over 500 varieties of perennials and annuals are planted and tended by volunteers to ensure continuous blooming throughout the seasons. It is a lovely spot and well worth the 8 mile drive off the interstate.
Another site to see in Shelburne Falls is Salmon Falls, where a section of the river is damned off, exposing granite with "potholes" worn into the rock over time.
Some of the potholes are visible in the photo above (the two dark spots in the lower right).
From Massachusetts we drove on into Vermont for a short while before heading east into New Hampshire. In Keene, NH, we stopped off at New England Fabrics.
This is a large store in an old mill building that is at least half or more home decorating fabrics and an upholstery shop. They have a nice variety of quilting fabrics as well as fabrics for garment sewing, and more notions similar to a generic sewing store. After making our purchases we had lunch at a nearby restaurant and then continued on to the lake.
On Tuesday, Sue needed to make a trip to a CVS - the closest was half way around the lake. Since we were making the drive, we decided a stop off at Keepsake Quilting in Centre Harbor was in order.
Just small purchases here, but it's always fun to stop in and look. They have recently been bought by the family that owns Pineapple Fabrics, so now there is a Pineapple Fabrics store next door in what used to be a yarn shop.
After returning to the house, we started the process of setting up the garage "studio", which meant cleaning up and organizing a bunch of stuff to reclaim the work space. Not quite finished, but almost there.
Since the rain seems to have moved on, Sue decided it was time to get back to her morning walk routine. Here is the view from the dock this morning.
This afternoon we did a program on thermofax printing for a local guild - more on that tomorrow!
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