Tough on the Home Front

We have lost our dog, Forrest. We are searching for him like crazy and doing everything we can think of. We lost him in a rural area so he may be facing some wildlife dangers. Hopefully he headed toward people. You just never know with Berners. They are shy around strangers. As a result there isn't much else going on around the household. 

Sleep is the toughest commodity to come by right now so I have been doing some cross stitch to keep my mind from going crazy.

Mandolin Santa Ornament

Works in Progress Wednesday

I am so indecisive sometimes.

I have been trying to decide for a month whether to add the fish appliques to a quilt top and how to do it. It's a king-sized quilt and my biggest problem is not having a design wall large enough to accommodate the layout so I could ponder it fully. Then I had the idea to lay it on my bed and look at it.

It was so helpful! I kept making the fish swim into each other but seeing it on the bed I realized the quilt already had a "direction" to it so it made sense to make all the fish swim upstream. Now I can move onto fusing my appliques in place and top-stitching. 

Tomorrow, I meet with the ladies of my favorite quilting group, Breakfast Club, which is really a day-long event. We are tackling a Disappearing Nine Patch. Should be fun. Since prep time is limited for me, I have opted to stick with three fabrics. But of course there are more decisions to make. I am pulling from my stash which is mainly earth tones but somehow both my options involve basically the same colors...

Purple

or purple.

It's so hard to decide!

And I've been waiting for the Connecting Threads website to have a sale on thread. I need a stash for some top-stitching and for binding. Sew fun!

Into the Raging Water - Jesus, Take The Wheel

I hadn't heard of Carrie Underwood's song, "Jesus Take The Wheel," until this trip. (I get all my music from Jazzercise routines.) Riding rapids on the Colorado River can intensify your relationship with God. I wasn't the only one in our party who felt that way. 

Meet the two, ten-year-old's on the trip. In the Bailey family we called them Huck and Tom because they sure reminded us of two other great adventurers,  Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer. Zman on the left, Huck in the middle, T.S. on the right. (I like the initials for Tom Sawyer better, a little modern twist to the story.)

T.S.'s family boat was right behind ours on the Crystal rapid ride. His dad, our fearless leader, started this whole expedition by winning a permit to raft a private trip on the Colorado River. His sister is Ballerina Girl. His mom, trip photographer...she earns her call sign a few days later. 

First, we have to get through Crystal. This is when T.S. asks for a little divine help as his family enters Crystal Rapid. I found out after they made it to the bottom, still riding in their boat, that this phrase, "Jesus take the wheel," concluded the family prayer as they entered the rapid. T.S. felt moved by the moment.

It's those spontaneous sayings that stick with you in life's journey. Thanks T.S. I'll try and tell that story at your rehearsal dinner someday. (I hope I get an invite...please don't get married at a Colorado River location. There are lots of other great locations to have a wedding. Hawaii is really lovely anytime.)

Into the Raging Water - Bigger Rapids

We made it through our most challenging rapids so far. Day 4 ended with all our boats intact. It was the 4th of July and we had a lovely celebration at camp that night. Our trip leader read a portion of the "Declaration of Independence." A few adult beverages were drunk. A little light show for the kids of all ages. It was a good ending to a challenging day.

My rotation started again for kitchen duty that night with clean up. We had a big meal, grilled chicken breasts and steak with baked potatoes plus a green salad. For dessert, a poppy seed cake baked in a dutch oven in the coals from our steak dinner. It took a long time to make this meal so it was a late night. One good thing about camp chores is my mind was kept busy because tomorrow we would tackle our first "nine" rapid - Crystal.

But first up on Day 5 was a stop in civilization. Just a mile down the river from our camp was Phantom Ranch, a national park facility. It's the only lodge below the Grand Canyon Rim. It's a drive-to point that folks can access for hikes into the canyon. It could have been a way out for me but I didn't know that until we were there.

By now I was skeptical about all hikes...even one to Phantom Ranch. Some of the hikes we had taken were lovely but sometimes they were challenging. Supposedly there was a place to fill up our five, camp water jugs (each holding five gallons), but again, we would have to hike them up to get to the water. HA. No one wanted to do that. We would just pull out the water filter and pump water from the river at camp later that night.

It was a nice surprise to see a real trail and other humans. I enjoyed my brief time with modern amenities. We got the best lemonade with ice! We used restrooms with running water and flushing toilets! Then it was time to get back to reality. Time to hit the river.

We had three, "eight" rapids to hit before Crystal. Those rapids all proved to be pretty challenging. It's a funny thing. The river seemed to be set up to give us on-the-job training. It was a confidence builder. Something else contributing in mostly a good way, was the high water level of the river. To my inexperienced eye, the higher water level gave us more options when it came to figuring out routes through the rapids. On the down side...it made the big rapids...even bigger.

We pulled over to scout Crystal. There was quite a crowd scouting it with us. We watched a couple of huge commercial boats just skirt the huge holes. Their customers got very wet. We were hoping to avoid getting as close as they did to the big holes since our little boats might not fare so well.

This is a photo I found on the internet of one of the boats we were renting being rowed through Crystal on another party's trip. It's a little easier to get a perspective of the waves we were going to tackle. Our video from the boat just shows the tops of the waves. 

This time it was AK Santini's turn to row. Zman would run the video camera. My job was to hold on tightly. In this video you can hear a little family discussion...I'm sure you have those too. It comes from having so many leaders/pilots in the family. Zman and I are urging AK Santini to "pull," quite often in the video. We wanted him to pull away from the center where the water was craziest. Mostly, you try and enter the rapid at an ideal spot and hope for the best outcome from there! I mean really...what good are little oars against such large amounts of churning waters?

We were the second boat of our party of four to enter the rapid. Would the rest of our party make it without flipping? We would watch from the bottom, holding our breaths.

Design Wall Monday - Short and Sweet

Working away on my paper piecing units for my original quilt. I am sew loving this process. Learning more all the time!

Into the Raging Water -Warning, Major Rapids Ahead

I think Bugs Bunny cartoons have had a large impact on my thinking process. During this trip I really did expect to see a few warning signs on the canyon walls but I guess those are only in cartoons. Big Sigh.

Wrong attitude. This is what we came for...rafting rapids. Bring it on.

The Grand Canyon has its own grading system for rapids, one through ten. Up to this point the most difficult we had encountered were sixes. Day 4, we would have our first level eight and two at a level seven with a few twos, threes, fours, fives and sixes mixed in. 

A little more about the rating system. There are no tens listed in the river guide we were using. I think those are rapids people are not expected to survive. Nines, eights and sevens, you are expected to survive if you take the right path and are lucky. Your boat my be flipped, you may take an unexpected swim...but you should...God willing...survive.

The first eight rapid...Hance. I was familiar with the name of this rapid before arriving on the river. An acquaintance had mentioned the week before our trip that Hance in particular could mess with people. Lots of boulders to navigate.

We pulled over to scout the rapid. This is when all the boat captains decided the route to take. I looked at it ahead of time just in case I thought I should walk it. What? Walk? No way! We're going as a family.

Seventeen-year-old Zman at the oars.

Fabric Therapy

To recover from my great excursion of rafting through the Grand Canyon I have enrolled in Fabric Therapy. Here's the outcome of my first session.

The two greens are batik wide backs. I love them. I feel like I should buy these by the bolt. The mottled purple and blue? It makes me happy so it must join my other friends in the studio.

I'm trying to find the video card from the camera to continue my river saga. I'm sure everyone would like to see what it's like to ride through a rapid on the Colorado River. As I predicted, no one else in the family has taken the time to edit the videos from the trip which is why I never opted to own a video camera. (We just got the video camera before the trip). I already know I do not have enough time in the day to become an amateur editor. What good does it do to shoot video that no one will edit? 

I think I need more fabric therapy because I'm starting to feel anxious.