Lasagne

Which we had last night for supper, and will again tonight in the form of leftovers.  Vegetarian (not as good as the one Liz made for us in May) and a meat one for MacGyver to keep up his strength for all the macgyvering that he's been doing these past few weeks.  This post is a bit like that lasagne:  a variety of ingredients that end up creating goodness.

Incredible sunset behind the silhouetted massive trees

Kingsville 3rd annual Folk Fest:  a variety of 'ingredients' as in bands and genres of music, all-over wonderful goodness.  I spent the entire weekend either volunteering at or attending the folk fest.  IMHO it was not as good as far as bands go as the two previous years, but still worthwhile attending.  I love live music. Period.  Buffy Ste-Marie was the headliner, and I wish she'd brought her band, and I wish she'd played 'Power in the Blood' from her latest album.  She's not everyone's cup of tea, not exactly mine, but at 75 years old, she impressed the hell out of me with her physique, her memory (all those lyrics to all the songs she played!), and her musical abilities (plays guitar, the mouth bow, the keyboards and sings).

I am so proud to be a Canadian: the multi-cultural aspect of our country evident at this festival, from Canadian-born to Canadian immigrant music.  Hearing musicians belt their hearts out, openly of Mexican heritage, or Iranian, Irish, even Tanzanian, gay, young or old, brown, white or black-skinned, and be genuinely appreciated and applauded for their songs made me know deep in my heart there IS tolerance for all peoples, as there should be.

Another sky, this one to the east, setting sun behind me, coming home from teaching yoga in Windsor.  Can you spot the moon rising, partially hidden by thready clouds?

Spotted this incredible flowering tree (look how tall she is!) in Windsor

Just WHAT is this tree please?  It looks so tropical; in fact I am sure I've seen these in Florida.  Rose flowers adorn the fernish fronds.  I zoomed in to try to show the flowers better.

Isn't it just gorgeous? Here you can see pea pods...is it a Locust or Honey Locust (we have lots of those here) of some sort?

A tree of a different kind being built:

Bella getting right in there again, had to be summarily dumped onto the floor and off the block more than once! She felt it would make a great cat cushion (obvi, Sandra, she says, eyes rolling)

I'm pattern testing an appliqué block for Cindy of Stitchin at Home, a block that has tried my patience I'll admit...but I persevered.  Those of you on Instagram have seen Cindy's blocks coming together, a block of the month she is doing for her guild.

Port Dover Lighthouse built around 1850

I'll admit to not being totally pleased with the final result (it is destined to be sewn into sashing which is why I have got the beach and tree in 3/8" from the sides).  Port Dover Lighthouse, on Lake Erie, is close to Cindy's home.  She lives about 2 hours north and east of me, half way to Toronto.  Yes, Lake Erie is that big...actually twice that big.  If you drove 100kph (60mph), it would take you about 4 hours to drive (it's just shy of 400 km, 241 miles, in length) from my end by the Detroit River, to the eastern end, at Buffalo up by Lara of Buzzin' Bumble.  Thus, this block brings we three 'ingredients' together:  Cindy's design, my efforts, and Lara's Crafted Appliqué technique.  The fabric I used for the water is a Nancy Crow I've had forever (found a couple more Nancy Crow gems in my stash thanks to pattern-testing this past couple of weeks) and the sky is a Maywood Studio.

Back to Bella, one of my three fur-kid ingredients in creating a balanced happy life, you've probably heard that it's that time of the summer!  Pets on Quilts is happening right now at Lilypad Quilting!  This has to be one of, if not my favourite linky party of the year.  Six more days to enter, and there are already 26 entries!  Bella will for sure be one, so come back tomorrow and read all about her contributions to my quilting life.  Okay, okay, she's nudging me, as she is wont to do when I spend too much time with a phone in my hand or wiggling my fingers to make clickety-clack sounds on the laptop, make that her contributions to my life.  Period.

Lots of terrific prizes to be won, did I mention that?!

Also I will let you know that (shh! don't tell) tomorrow you can grab some lasagne Craftsy style: many of their 'ingredients' to equal a pretty sweet sale.  Come back for deets on that and Bella tomorrow!

Two other heads-up, that you will see create a lovely 2-layer lasagne :-)
First up is Bernie at Needle and Foot.  She wrote a great article on something I had never heard of: Flipboard.  Even the intrepid Internet traveller, MacGyver, had not.  This reminds me of Pinterest, but it is a place to make personalized 'magazines' of articles on any topic that interests you, not just photos you like.  Sounds cool, right?  But Bernie takes it one step further by showing you how you can 'publish' your own articles into your own magazines, and make those magazines public.  This way, others on Flipboard who also like yoga or quilting for example, may find an 'article' (aka post) you wrote on a subject that also interests them.  This can help to bring traffic in the form of new readers to your blog!  More deets on this by clicking the link.  I've created a few magazines and added two posts to my Yin Yoga magazine, spending a grand total of maybe 30 minutes all told from downloading the app to setting it up to creating and finally adding two posts.  That's not bad.

Second is my friend Karen of Tu-Na Quilts.  She wanted to start a blog over a year ago, and would visit mine and comment from time to time. Some personal events brought us closer together, and I was able to finally encourage her to just DO IT!  She wrote her first post here, and she has just finished a terrific, informational, humorous series on her Minnesota shop hop adventure.  It is well worth a read, and hey, I just realized I could flip those articles into a Quilt Shops magazine I could set up!  Ha, didn't plan this, but there's my over-arching (cannot kill the English teacher in me) lasagne theme again: two 'ingredients' (Bernie's post on Flipboard and Karen's shop hop posts) creating goodness, as in a great idea for a personalized magazine.

Here's my infant-stage Flipboard link (need to add the social media button for this--going to see Tish about making these look prettier on my sidebar).

And remember to tell me the name of that tree if you know it!

Linking up with
Sew Fresh Quilts