Quilt Show

Good morning, my friends. Well...we did it. We saw the quilts at the show. It was a pretty easy day. We found on-street parking, and avoided the $10 charge that was right across the street. Our tickets were at the "will call" booth, just as expected. We were in and out in a couple of hours. After the show, we finished up our grocery shopping at the nearest Kroger store, and we were back at the RV by lunch time.

Smitty was champing at the bit to get outside, and so I took him out after lunch.

He actually walked some distance. He likes it here. There aren't many people around, and only the occasional woofie. It gave us an opportunity to enjoy some more of the wildflowers growing around our site. These first ones were eensy-weensy...about as big as the head of a pin. My phone tells me they are Field Madder.

I happen to know this next one is Vetch. It grows where I live.

This is ranunculus. We've seen this growing all over.

My phone says this is Butterweed.

And you can see how far away we are from the RV. It was about this time a monster started chasing Smitty...in his mind, at least. And we hurried our way back to the RV and inside to safety. Phew! Close call.

But you're not interested in any of that, are you? You want to know about the quilt show! Here's my ticket. Yes, we really went. After waiting so many years, and really not believing I'd get an opportunity, it was great fun.

I'll say I enjoyed the quilt show very much. Mainly, I just enjoyed the opportunity to see it. The quilts were fantastic, as expected. It was disappointing how they had them hung, however. Imagine a small room with quilts hung on three walls, and then a rope across the fourth side, and you'll know how it looked. It was impossible to get close to any of them or to get very good pictures. Also, the venue was so crowded, I found myself running for my life once I'd seen them all. Mike gave up early on. We both hate crowds, and he decided to sit in a chair in the hallway while I looked at the quilts. There was no whining or whimpering, and I didn't blame him one bit. If I hadn't wanted to see the quilts so much, I would have joined him.

So I was able to get some pictures of my favorites. In fairness to the quilter, I'll post the name of the maker first, and then I'll show the quilt. I'll only write something if I have something to add. Otherwise, I'll just let you look.

You'll notice a lot of the pictures are a bit cattywampus. That's because I had to stand to the side. Sometimes I was holding the phone over my head to get above the crowd.

Monterey has a kelp forest growing in the ocean offshore. I always want to scuba dive in one of the kelp forests, but I'm afraid our diving days are over.

Sorry for the blur in some of these. The quilts were around 10 feet away, and so I was zooming in for the names of the quilters. Sometimes they weren't very well focused. (See crowds and holding the phone over my head above.)

It seems completely appropriate to our political climate right now.

The quilting was really pretty on this one. I wish I could have gotten closer.

I overheard some women talking, saying they'd seen other quilts from this quilter. She does all kinds of flowers, apparently.

This one gave me some ideas about more uses for my grandmother's doilies. I've used some of them, but I still have lots more. It looks as if some of these were dyed before being used in the quilt. I hadn't thought of that, but it's a good idea.

Having just finished the French Roses flannel rag quilt not to long ago, I liked this one. The flowers appear three dimensional.

I really wish I could have gotten closer to this one.

I liked this one for the colors. Sometimes I use an app called VectorQ when I'm making my art quilts. It has different settings that will change colors like this. Now that I've seen this one, it makes me want to give it a try.

Okay, so that's all I have for you today. I have more pictures, but I'll split them up over a couple of days of posting. 

I have just one more thing to tell you about yesterday. This was a new recipe I tried last night for Spiced Salmon with Sugar Snap Peas and Red Onion. It was very tasty and a great camping recipe. The only problem I had with it was finding sugar snap peas. I couldn't get them a few days ago at the small grocery store here in Eddyville. We did the remainder of our grocery shopping in Paducah and I found them there. We liked this.

Also, we're used to finding salmon in abundance in the Pacific Northwest. Here in Kentucky...not so much. I was able to find some frozen Atlantic salmon, and that worked just fine. The recipe is from the NYTimes, and so I've linked to it up there. But if you can't open the link, I've taken a screenshot from my Paprika database. I've figured out that if I convert these to black and white, and then bump up the contrast, they post more legibly. Just the same, if this doesn't work for you, email me, and I can give it to you in a different format.

On today's agenda is a visit to the National Quilt Museum in Paducah. We drove past it yesterday, and so we know right where to go. Also, we want to take a walk on Paducah's riverfront. Many of you have told me there are murals, and indeed, Paducah mentions it on their website. There's even a downloadable visitor's guide, and I've added it to my phone. The weather could be a little more cooperative. It rained last night, but it seems as if the sky is brightening this morning. I think we're going to be okay.

And this is our last day here in Eddyville. We'll be on to Bardstown, Kentucky, next. There, we'll tour the bourbon distilleries. Also, I have written a note to consider visits to the Kentucky Railway Museum and the Louisville Slugger Factory. We haven't decided on all the to-do's there. It usually comes down to time, distance, price, and interest. 

So I'll be back tomorrow to tell you about the museum and the riverfront, and I'll have more pictures from the quilt show.

A Day of Rest

Good morning, my friends. We had a day off yesterday. It was a day off except for going to the grocery store. Fortunately our list was short. The grocery store here was so small we were only able to get about half of the items on our list. They didn't have "exotic" things like radishes, and so we'll do a little more grocery shopping in Paducah today. Oh yes, and did I say Paducah? Yes, today is quilt show day. I've been looking forward to attending the quilt show in Paducah for about 16 years...as long as I've been a quilter. 

So aside from grocery shopping, a few things were accomplished. I did some slow-stitching in the morning and finished off the audiobook I was listening to. It wasn't a great book, but it was entertaining enough for me to finish it. I had a plan to try a recipe for Apple Cobbler for Two, but I needed two Gala apples for that. When we got back to the RV, I went straight to work. The apples were cut into quarter-inch pieces, mixed with some flour, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and butter, and then piled into two ramekins.

From there, they baked for 35 minutes in a 400°F oven. When they were finished baking, they looked like this. Next, I was to stir them a little bit and press the apples down into their juices.

And then I made a simple biscuit dough to be flattened into a disk and placed on top. The dough was very elastic, and so I used my fingers to stretch it out to cover the top as best I could. Then it was sprinkled with a little sugar.

Then they baked for another 15 minutes, and Voila!

And these were so yummy. It was like eating a piece of apple pie. If I were going to do this again (and I will), I'd bake them in those wide soup mugs I have. Since they filled the entire ramekin to the tippy-top, there was no room for ice cream. I was able to carefully remove them from the ramekins so that the biscuit stayed on the top, and we ate them from bowls with the ice cream. Dee-lish. And pretty darned easy too.

Of course, we waited until after dinner for those. And Mike got a bee in his bonnet to go out for dinner after sitting around the RV all day. We ended up going to Kentucky Dam Village, just down the road from us. It's a "resort park."

The restaurant was inside and down some stairs. This was the view from our table.

The whiteboard at the entrance advertised their drink special which was a "Dam Smash." I looked for a recipe for this. If you Google "Dam Smash Cocktail," you'll find all kinds of recipes using different kinds of spirits. This one happened to have vodka, cranberry juice, lime juice, and a little soda for some fizz. It was pretty and tasty.

We didn't realize it until we got there, but dinner was a buffet. I prefer ordering from a menu, but this one was pretty good. It gave me a chance to try and learn something new. The soup you see below is Burgoo. It's a traditional Kentucky Stew.

It tasted good, and so I inquired of our server whether it was a traditional Kentucky dish. Her response, "I don't know...I'm from New York." Okay, so The Google never lets me down. And sure enough...

Traditionally, it's made with different meats, like squirrel or opossum or raccoon. And I doubt I'm going to find any of that in my grocery store, and so the recipes I found online used different combinations of chicken, pork, beef, and lamb. America's Test Kitchens also has a recipe, and so I'll try that one eventually. For now, you can Google it and see which one looks good to you. Just type in "Kentucky Burgoo," and you'll find lots of options.

After dinner, our shadow selves wanted to get out for a walk. We wouldn't ordinarily take them when we go out for a meal, but they didn't eat much. They were feeling tall and lean.

The grounds here were beautiful. I've taken a picture of the map to give you a sense of where we were. The resort is located where I've circled in red below. The dam is just a little up from there. You can see it with a short solid black line. It's the Kentucky Dam, and it dams the Tennessee River. In this part of the world, dams are under the purview of the Tennessee Valley Authority. But what I really wanted you to see on the map is the area known as the Land Between The Lakes National Recreation Area. I'm hoping we'll have a little time while we're here to explore this more. 

For last night, we left the restaurant via the back door and took a little walk along this pretty walkway.

Looking to the right, we could see the Kentucky Dam Marina.

Here, we could walk out on a breakwater. There were people fishing below.

Looking to our left, we could see the Kentucky Dam.

Looking more to the right, we could see another marina across the way.

It was lovely here. Peaceful.

Heading back, this is where the restaurant is located, on the lower floor.

The grounds were beautifully landscaped.

On our way back, we drove past the Kentucky Dam.

There is a lock here, and another one under construction.

And that was the end of our day. We headed back to the RV to enjoy our apple cobbler.

So today we'll be heading off to the quilt show. I want to try to get there fairly early, and so it's time for me to make breakfast and get us on our way. My friend Robin wasn't able to make it to the quilt show, and so Mike is coming with me. I'd be perfectly happy going alone, but he wants to come. I've promised him some fantastic quilts. Fingers crossed they'll let me take pictures.