We are back for a couple of days before our next adventure. The trip to New England was fabulous. We timed it perfectly for the weather and had a great time seeing family and friends.
Roger and Kit with Camp Penowee quilt
First we visited our friends, Roger and Kit, at their cabin on Squam Lake in New Hampshire. This is the lake where On Golden Pond was filmed and it is beautiful! These wonderful people are the very surprised recipients of the Piney Woods quilt. In the photo you can see the appliqued panel in the middle which says, "Camp Penowee". That's the name given to the camp by Kit's grandfather in the early 1900's. It's taken directly from the sign over the door which is made with birch bark strips nailed to a wooden board. Roger was Mark's boss way back about 17 years ago and ever since then we've been visiting them at Squam. The kids have come to see their place as a summer tradition. The quilt was made to honor those wonderful memories and thank them for their hospitality.
While at Squam I got to make the annual trek to Keepsake Quilting and Patternworks in Center Harbor. This mecca for stitchers takes up this whole building and actually has Keepsake Needlearts in it too. If you are ever in the Lakes Region of NH this is the place to go! I made a commitment to my family that I would be gone only 2 hours total including drive time, so I had to be quick. I did come away with several treasures.
At Keepsake Quilting I got some Halloween and Christmas fabric, plus a new book about folk art quilts. I got some books, yarn and needles at Patternworks.
We left Squam and drove directly to Hyannis, MA, on the Cape, to take the high speed ferry to Nantucket. It was a gray and humid day, but the next day dawned bright and sunny, the humidity lessened and we had a flawless 2 days to explore the island. On the first day we rented scooters and had a great time checking out the far flung areas, the beaches and lighthouse. Our last stop was Sheep to Shore which was closed as it was Wednesday. I was glad we were there for another day, but it meant I had to walk from town about a mile to get there. Not too much of a problem. Mark stayed in town with the kids and had lunch and I had a nice walk among the wonderful old houses with roofwalks.
After two glorious days in Nantucket, it was back to Burlington, MA for a family party to celebrate three of the cousin's September birthdays. It was another beautiful day, though a bit cooler. In the morning I made it out to W. Concord to check out the yarn at Needle Arts of Concord.
Here's a photo of the birthday kids, Ryan is 11, Jenna is 10 and Jake is 8.
All 10 cousins
On Sunday which was Ryan's actual birthday we went into Boston to walk part of the Freedom Trail. It was an extra special day because it was the closing events for the city's 375th birthday celebration. We managed to take in the parade and saw some minutemen firing muskets. Man, those are loud in the city as it echoes off the buildings. We also did two geocaches, saw Paul Revere's house and got photos of many of the historical statues with plaster shoes. That was funny and made the whole trail (which was a walk- a four letter word in Chloe's book) all worth it! As it turns out this was a tourism campaign developed by Mayor Menino to encourage people to do more walking.
Make Way for Ducklings!