Rock Show

This is the weekend of the annual Three Rivers Rock, Mineral and Gem club show. My older son loves rocks and we joined the club after visiting this show a few years ago. I just want you to know, people are nuts about rocks. And the people in this club are very dedicated to educating themselves about the subject. I like gems and minerals because of the beautiful colors. My son loves fossils and "cool stuff" like dinosaur bones and meteorites and mammoth hair, all of which could be bought at the show. He also got to sell some neat specimens from our field trips this year.



My "Rays of Sunshine" top is together, and I thought I would put a white border on it, but I'm not loving it as I thought I would. I may not border it at all. My backpack is officially in use now, as I took it to the rock show yesterday. I haven't got the drawcord the way I like it yet, but it's functional and I love it.








I got a chance to visit with more of the club members yesterday. Marie Z. teaches a technique for making little gem trees with twisted wire and bits of gemstones glued on as "leaves". But she is a true artist and draws and does all kinds of creative things. Her husband makes cabochons and bits of polished stone. I think I would love to do that too, but how many things can a woman do and still have a house and home?

Here is a closeup of one of her trees:

It was a fun event and educational for the kids as well.

This morning I decided I would just cut fabric because I have orange thread in the bobbin and I didn't feel like changing it out today. I'm doing a Christmas quilt with a set of panels I bought recently. I also am doing a quilt called Venetian Tile from the most recent issue of F&P's Easy Quilts with fabrics from my stash in light blue and greens. Originally, I was going to do it as a scrappy quilt with as many fabrics as I could find from my stash. But when I realized I could do it with only 6 fabrics, and hardly make a dent in my pile of fabric, I decided it would be good enough. The pattern would be a good one to whip up in several colors. It uses squares in sizes from 2 1/2" to 9 1/2 " so I can just save bits as I go along and cut the squares as I go to make a scrappy version.

Well, this post is my first one with pics, which I've been promising for some time now. I'll get a few more taken to bring everyone up to speed.