there must be something to blog about.....

I went through pictures on my phone to figure out what I have been doing and working on...

Yesterday was pi day, 3-14-15. If you found a puzzle cache, you would get a fun souvenir badge for your geocaching profile. So while out about yesterday, we found a few. My favorite one had you shine a flashlight into a hole in the box. Numbers appeared on a mirror and these were used to open a lock so you could sign the logbook. 

I also found a dead raccoon. Ick. No logbook to sign with that.

March BLOCK LOTTO blocks! 

I have figured out what I am going to do with the sunrise blocks I won last summer!

I want to make a large sun for the center. Using what Sophie said and did [HERE]

I started making a pattern...and that is as far as I got.

At least I know what I will be doing, It will be fun when I actually do it!

I tried machine quilting. I just eyeballed it, so my curves aren't uniform. My question is....what is the best way to mark the lines for nice uniform stitching?

girls weekend......

Last summer Jane (my sister) and Max (my cousin) thought it would be a really fun to go to Winterset, Iowa. So much to see there!

Karen and I said we would go too.

Last weekend we made the road trip.

Planners in the front seat, tag alongs in the back seat.

We saw all the bridges, John Waynes birthplace, Fon's & Porter quilt shop, a local winery, and ate at the Northside Cafe and other stuff!

Along the road to Roseman Bridge. Characters from the movie, 

The Bridges of Madison County.

The quilt shop. It is small, but we all found one thing to buy.

Window decor for a yarn shop. Maybe it should have been Robert still waiting for Fancesca to get herself out of her truck and join him as he headed out of town in the movie.

Every bridge had a geocache (or two) nearby. I did not always find it, but was sure to look.

This is my kind of cache. Nice and big.

 It is hidden at the History Museum in Adel, Iowa.

I love my geocaching app. When we stopped, 

I would open it and hit...

"find nearby caches"

Now, this weekend I will stay home and sew!

Austin, Minnesota, home of Hormel and Spam....

Last weekend, Karen's baby was married up in Austin, MN. It was also the weekend for the Quilt Show here in town. Karen left me three of her quilts. I took a picture of them before taking them over to the show. We missed the show on Saturday, but I did help set it up Friday night. The lighting in the gym is awful, so I have no pictures. 

The reception was at the Hormel Historic Home. We were in the banquet hall behind the house, but the house was open for us to go roam around. Beautiful old wood work.

I love Spam, so that is what I had for breakfast Sunday morning...

Scrambled eggs and Spam. We talked about going to the Spam Museum.

But only stopped long enough to find a geocache and take a picture. 

I want to go back, it looks like a fun place to visit!!!

There is a cache at the rest stop on I-90 headed west. We stopped and I went walking in the woods. There was no clear path, just heading in the right direction with the GPS. Bushwhacking through bushes and fallen trees. I went alone, tractor joe stood on the edge and waited for me to come back out.

Cache found, we got back in the car to continue our ride home.

It was cold and rainy outside. The windows were all up and the heat was on. It took about 15 seconds for tractor joe to accuse ME of stepping in dog poo.

Right about then, I started to smell it. It was a horrible, gagging smell.

I needed to roll down the window for fresh air.

Even COLD fresh air was welcome at that point.

AND....it wasn't me! He had stepped in it himself. If he had gone into the woods with me, this might not have happened. We pulled off at the next exit and he did some major scraping. The rest of the ride home was much more pleasant.

I made 16 more of these string blocks. I have no idea how I will use them. I added them to the stack. 

camping over the weekend.....

We (as in 3 sisters, with various spouses, grown kids, boyfriends and girlfriends) 

were at Marble Beach State Park on Spirit Lake in Iowa. We were in a quiet area of the campground with our tents. I brought along my geocaching quilt. 

A couple weeks ago I received a surprise package.

Inside were a couple of pink flamingos.

Mrs. Browndirt sent them.

She thought I would think they were ridiculous and silly.

BUT, I loved them. 

They came camping and so did the doll mrs. browndirt. 

We went geocaching

We went painting at Creative Spirit Okoboji

They were doing owls that evening in the studio.

We made wood block signs. I have all kinds of scrap wood. We put some of it to use. It was only me and Jane doing this. Others would come over to check out our mess, but no one else wanted to do one. I gave the glamping sign to my sister Jenny.

She is always a glamour girl, even when camping.

Today seems like a good day to go work on some backing and get a quilt in to be quilted. 

Not the cow quilt. He needs to be worked on yet too.

All in good time.

Mrs. Browndirt goes camping and geocaching.....

When I mentioned that I was going camping, a comment came in from Brown Dirt Cottage....

she said she could start a fire with one match and no paper.

I thought,

It sure would be nice to have her along to start the campfires.

Then I thought some more....

She could go with!

I could make a Mrs. Browndirt, she could do everything we did.

Mrs. Browndirt arrived safe and sound at the campground with us. She sat nice and still on the trip over. She didn't even get into the graham crackers and leave crumbs all over.

Mrs. Browndirt wasn't able to start the fire like she said, 

BUT 

I got all kinds of encouragement while I started the fire. I used paper. Mrs. Browndirt said that was okay, I still only used one match like she does. 

Always the prankster, she played with the flashlight. When it got dark, she stuck it under her chin and tried to scare us. 

Time to go geocaching!! It was me, my sister Jane, and Mrs. Browndirt.

First up was a cache inside a library.....

We needed to search the card catalog for John Sculley. This was the wrong drawer. It was the next drawer we tried. We found what we needed and went searching for the book.

Mrs. Browndirt helps sign the logbook...

There were kids playing video games at the library. 

A bunch of them kept staring at us.

Watching us.

What the heck?

Was it because we actually used the old card catalog to find a book? 

I can't imagine what else would cause anyone to take a second look at us. I thought the three of us blended right in at the library. Good geocacher use stealth. Doesn't do anything to call attention to themselves. I think we were okay.

The next cache was in a small wooded area, in the middle of no where. There was no clear path to it. We had to fight our way through the trees to find it. It is called bushwhacking. The next problem was getting the lock open. It took a couple attempts before we got it right.

I opened the door...

and looked inside.

I screamed my fool head off and slammed the door!

Jane's eyes bugged out, "whaat?"

Then I started laughing and couldn't stop.

Jane wanted to know if there was a mirror in there?

NO! Go look!

Jane refused to look, 

and Mrs Browndirt just sat there with that amused look of hers, wondering what all the fuss was about.

I finally calmed down enough to re-open the door. Jane came over slowly to see what made me scream so much.

It was just a fake chicken with real feathers and beady little eyes watching for anyone who might open the door. The cache was in the drawer. We did a few more caches that were pretty tame, then headed back to the campground.

After a few hours of geocaching, Mrs. Browndirt needed to lay back and relax. 

We had lots of fun while camping. Our only complaint was how HOT and miserable we were every afternoon. 

The body for Mrs. Browndirt came from (HERE)

we kame and konquered

We were out geocaching yesterday.

One of the caches was (Ocheyedan Mound Earthcache)

There is no actual cache container up there. 

To get the find we had to walk up to the top.

Time for a little exercise!

We needed to take a picture up there and figure out what area was the highest.

Here I am on the highest area, bracing myself against the wind.

At least it wasn't cold, just a nice warm WINDY day.

Most of the others were micros (film canister size)

I stuck my finger up the black hose and the whole thing came off the wall.

Ahh....a fake water faucet! It was held there with a magnet.

When you twisted off the hose, you find the tiny cache container.

This one is called Rainbow Bridge. I don't know how old the bridge is, but it's in the middle of nowhere. The locals have been marking it up for years.

I wasn't very impressed with the graffiti.

The cache was simple enough to spot.

It was hanging there, in plain site. That made it easy!

We went for 7 and found all of them!

I need to work on some triangles for the block lotto. This month is going by way to fast.

baby quilt and the quilt show....

I bought a scrap bag of cherrywood fabrics last year at the quilt show. It was time to cut it up and start a baby quilt. The block is called Northwind and these finish at 6 inches. I want 36 blocks. 

Not quite half way there yet. I am supplementing it with other fabrics to make it go further, the orange, light  blue and pink. 

Nothing was reaching out and grabbing us at the quilt show. It seemed like there were less vendors.

Both Karen and I found some fabric though.

Skeletons, tractors and animals for me.

Karen was in a beer and music mood.

We were also looking at fabric with circles....for zombie eyeballs. I debated about all these circles and decided I didn't need them. But Karen liked them enough to get them.

  Outside, down these steps is a geocache. This is the third year that I have ventured down there to look for the cache. I could never find it.

that changed this year....

Me with two of my favorite finds this year, the book and cache.

Actually it was Karen who found it!!! If I had known she would be such a good geocacher, I would have dragged her out there 2 years ago! (maybe I have, I don't remember for sure)
She didn't do any happy dances,
 but there was excitement in her voice when she announced that she had it found it.
It was a good day in Des Moines at the quilt show.

Target Stadium, baseball & geocaching.....

If you click on the collage it gets bigger.  One picture says, Our turn at the love. I guess that works too....the "g" was cut off for glove. 

geocaching....

tractor joe says to me: "want to go to a tractor action?"

me: "why would I want to go?"

him: "because there is an Oliver there, and we could go geocaching"

me: "okay, let's go!"

We went and watched this baby go for $3,800.00. That was that.

We, of course, did not buy it. So much for tractor joe's dream of...

"maybe it will go for $500.00"

Off we went in search of caches. It wasn't a very nice day as far as the weather went.

It was cold and windy. I wore my snow pants and boots and big old coat. For a small town there were a lot of caches.....many were micros, those teeny tiny ones.

Others were "small"....hidden in a tree that hung over the water. 

I found it, so I had to replace the cache. Back up the trunk of the tree.

Then reach over and put it back in the hiding spot.

Success....and I didn't fall into the water!

Here the cache was hanging under a bridge. It was a cute little thing.....

We were able to find 9 of them in a few hours. Some were easy, some were hard, and some were so hard we left without finding it.....OR, it was missing. 

As we were driving home, we went through Sac City. 

Out of the corner of my eye I saw something so unbelievable.

We had to turn around and go back to get a closer look!

Actually, tractor joe would have kept on driving, but I said,

 we really need a picture, you just don't see this everyday.

There in a little shed, right on main street, 

was....

The WORLD'S biggest......

POPCORN BALL!

a quick story here

You just never know what treasures you will find when you go out geocaching!