Posts Tagged ‘Family’

The day after we visited the penguins I drove us down to Hermanus, a small town on the coast, where we spent the night and searched (mostly unsuccessfully) for the whales which are supposed to be plentiful there.

Our trusty rental car

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We had a pretty easy flight from Madrid and were SO, SO, SO excited to arrive safely in Africa.  We quickly met up with my mother, Maggie, who was joining us for our whirlwind, month-long, tour of southern Africa.  She had already been in Jo’burg for a week teaching quilting, so she arranged for us to have a bit of a tour of Pretoria (a city near Jo’burg) in between the flight in from Madrid and our next flight out to Cape Town.

We had about 5 hours so it was a pretty brief trip, but we got to see some sights and we had absolutely delicious savory pancakes at Harrie’s (Highly Recommended).  Here’s a few photos.  At this point I was feeling pretty jetlagged and to be honest wasn’t that impressed with Pretoria.  But it was nice to get out of the airport and it gave us our first taste of Africa and it was really wonderful to see my mom.

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Not so much to note about this one.  In our walking around Sofia we passed by a fabric shop.  There were very few bits of fabric that were suitable for quilting, but we managed to buy one we liked from a very nice lady who spoke no English whatsoever.  Thank goodness for sign language!

It's one piece of fabric, but has several different designs

Our second day in Prague was laundry day.  The hostel told us about two possible laundromats, so we set off for the closest one first.  Could not find it.  We found the address, but there was definitely not a laundromat there.  So we headed on to the second one.  Also could not find it.  Went to a hotel and asked them if they knew of a close place to do laundry.  They gave us directions to the one we were looking for, and we headed over.  Out of business.  BUT, there was a fabric shop right across the street – which was closed.

We were about an hour and a half into this project by now and had no other leads.  So we went and had cake.

Delicious cake

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We were lucky in Finland, since we had a local guide and she was able to take us directly to a fabric shop!  Actually, it wasn’t quite that simple.  We thought it would be nice to get some Marimekko fabric, since it is a well known Finnish designer and I really like a lot of the patterns.  However, when we arrived at the shop we found out that for a tiny little piece of this fabric we would be paying almost 20 Euros and we just couldn’t bring ourselves to do that.

So we set off again and found a different fabric shop and there we found this beauty.

Finland fabric

The colors seem especially appropriate to me since blue and white are the colors of the Finnish flag, but also it really strikes me as a place of water and ice.  Another fabric success!

As we were out and about doing our chores to get ready for dance camp, we happened to walk right by a fabric shop.  And inside we found this little beauty!

Swedish Fabric

So not much of a story to this one…but we love, love, love the design!

We had another lucky fabric find in Amsterdam. The person we stayed with, Joel, happened to live just across the canal from a very big market. As we were waiting for our laundry to finish we thought we’d take a little walk, sit by the canal and write some postcards, and wander through the market. This proved to be an awesome idea. We got our postcards written and then set off through the market.

There were all types of stalls in the market. Clothing, food, and fabric! Justin was able to get some things he needed for our upcoming dance camp and then we took a look in the fabric shop. There weren’t too many choices of fabric suitable for quilt-making, but we were really happy with the one we selected. It’s a little whimsical, just like Amsterdam.

We also had success finding a post office and mailing our recent fabric purchases (and the postcards)!

Fabric from the Netherlands

See previous editions starting here!

In our post on Strasbourg I mentioned that we had bought some fancy cheese to have for dinner one night.  This turned out to be a giant stroke of luck since on our way to find some bread for the cheese we happened to walk right past a shop with little bits of fabric in the window!  We took a look and the designs in this shop were really awesome.  There were many of the fabrics which I would have liked to take and include!  However, we wanted one that was at least plausibly French and there was a clear winner:

France Fabric

This may be one of my favorite bits collected so far.  I absolutely love the colors, the daisy pattern reminds me of a different Daisy, and every time I look at it I will get to think about delicious cheese!

I just have to start this post by saying that I completely neglected my camera for this part of the trip. I think it was because we were staying with friends and family and were so busy enjoying their company that I didn’t even think to get it out! So this post will be light on the photos. I’ll try to make the writing extra descriptive, but I’m not sure that will make up for it!

We had an easy bus trip from Durham to Oxford and even though it was raining when we arrived we had no trouble finding another bus to my aunt’s house. She has always been very encouraging to me and on several occasions has had chats with me that have very much helped me figure things out or see things more clearly, so I was really, really happy to see her.

She took us to a high table dinner at Brasenose College (Oxford University) and we had a wonderful time! Before she mentioned it to us, I did not even know what this event was, or even that it existed, so I’ll try to explain and people can chime in on the comments if I have it wrong. The colleges at the university serve dinners for the students and staff and it is an opportunity for everyone to meet up and share a meal. The high table is at the end of the hall and is where the professors and lecturers and their guests get to sit. There is a formal seating arrangement and they serve you amazing food and wine and you get to meet all kinds of people who you might not otherwise meet.

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It really seems as though we’re honing our fabric gathering skills because, in my opinion, we just keep getting better and better fabric!

There wasn’t much question about what kind of fabric we should try to get from Scotland.  It had to be a tartan.  I wasn’t sure how easy it would be to find, but we were lucky.  As we walked down the street in Edinburgh we noticed a little kilt shop, and right outside there was a large basket of odd bits of tartan which were left over from making the kilts!  This was perfect since we just wanted a little piece and we could pick colors we liked.  This isn’t a pattern related to our family or anything, but we thought it was pretty sweet.

Scotland Fabric

And the England fabric is even better!!!  My aunt, who I will speak about in the post about Oxford, allowed us to pick through her fabric and take a piece that we like.  I’m so pleased about this because when I see it in the quilt I will think of her.  The design seems to fit what I think of when I think about English designs as well, so this is one of my favorite bits collected so far!

England Fabric