Thanks to all of you for visiting my blog and for all the great comments about the lavender!  I hope your week-end is going well and you are enjoying the Olympics.  That was quite an opening ceremony. Yesterday afternoon we visited the Dungeness Spit.  This is another place where I fell in love with Washington before we moved here.  The summer before we retired, we spent a week out here in Sequim.  We visited this spit everyday when we could find the time. We now go up there every so often.  We were lucky enough to find our Lighthouse Beach-Point No-Point- so we don't have to go this far to be near the water.  This is about 1 1/2 hours from our house. It is still beautiful and closer to the mountains than the beach at Point No Point.  I hope you enjoy seeing this lovely part of our state. 

 Here we are!

 You walk this heavily wooded path of about 1/2 mile to get to the beach.

Isn't this an amazing tree?  The SBA is taking a brief break so I can take his picture.

 We are still high above the spit. This is the beginning of a 5 mile sand spit.

 Far across the water is Vancouver Island.

This lighthouse is at the very end.  If you are up to a 5 mile walk (5 miles each way that is)  the lighthouse is open to the public. 

 We were up there for the first few photos.

 The beach is full of amazing drift wood.  They ask you not to take any from this beach. This whole area is a National Wildlife Reserve. 

Isn't he cute!!! and what a great sport!

If there weren't so many clouds, you would see the Olympics coming down to the shore.

Thanks so much for joining me.  Enjoy your Sunday!

Lavender!

Thank you to all of you who basically said , "Finish the Pillows!"  You said nice things about the designs so I am committed to finishing them.  Well, the weather man said Thurs. and Fri. would both be great weather days.  We had things to do on Thurs. so  we decided to make the trip to Sequim(pronounced Skwim) on Fri.  This town has a huge Lavender festival every summer.  We have gone many times. It is quite full of people so we decided to go the week after the festival to avoid huge crowds.  Thurs. was warm and sunny.  Today(suppose to be like yesterday) was very cool and cloudy.  We decided to go anyway. There were no crowds.  We took lots of pictures.  Today I'm showing the lavender photos. Tomorrow, I'll show you some pictures of the amazing and beautiful Dungeness Spit.

This is the first lavender farm in Sequim.

Purple Haze also has a pretty country garden.

 This was another farm.  I wonder what the honey tastes like when the bees get the pollen from lavender?

 This is the front porch of the Port Williams Lavender Farm.

 This is the way they distill  lavender essential oil.

Thanks for taking a look! I hope you enjoyed seeing the beautiful lavender.  As you can imagine, the smell was wonderful!!!

Procrastination Champ!!!

Thank you so much for all your kind comments about Salem Village and my garden.  Our weather is warm and sunny so the garden just grows prettier by the day.  It does keep the SBA and me busy dead-heading! As you can see from the title of this blog , I have given myself  a new name.  In the last post I showed you a design I had stitched 17 years ago and done nothing with it.  Thanks for all your wonderful suggestions for finishing that piece.  I'm determined to finish it in a nice way!! While I was looking for that ornament, look what else I found! As you can see from the date, it has been awhile.  Now, I had great plans for these.  I have basically neutral upholstery in my family room.  I like to change the accessories with the season.  In the winter, I like the warm barn red for throws and pillows.  In the spring and summer, I like this soft blue.  Well, these were to be made into pillows for my sofa. I even went as far as picking out and ordering my fabric.  I have a new goal- this is the summer!!!!!

 The color looks different but it is not, just the camera.

 Do you see that year??!!!!!

See how great the fabric goes with the finish!!

It is no wonder I gave myself  that title!

Thanks so much for taking a look.  Tomorrow it is road trip time.  We are headed up to Sequim.  All the lavender fields are blooming .  I hope you will enjoy seeing those beautiful fields!

Cross Stitch and the Garden(again)

I'm so glad some of you enjoyed the canoes and the activities that went with the journey.  I read in the paper that even the huge ferries between Seattle and Bainbridge Island altered their routes a bit so the canoes didn't have to deal with such a big wake.  They have to travel the entire length of Puget Sound to reach their final destination at the South end.  The wonderful design on the canoes reminded me of a cross stitch I did many years ago.  We didn't even live here at the time.  I bought the kit in a small knitting shop in a delightful little town north of Seattle called La Connor.  I think this represents an orca.  It is fairly small so all of you wonderful finishers have inspired me to make it into an ornament.  It's just been laying in the chest where I keep my linen for probably about 17 years!! That's way too long, this needs to become an ornament!! The other cross stitch picture show all the finished houses of Salem Village.  What do you think I should do with this when it is done?  It's about 6x6. I have two rows of border and it's finished! I also added a few pretty garden pictures! Thanks so much for joining me today!  I hope it is a good week for all of you!

This blue isn't quite right, but the bushes are just full of these beautiful blue flowers.

The Canoes

Thanks so much for your comments on the Canoe Journey.  I'm so glad many of you found it interesting.  Just a bit of information.  The Suquamish Tribe hosted this stop on the journey.  Chief Sealth was a member of this tribe.  Seattle is named for him.  Over the years, he was criticized by some for cooperating with the Europeans when they came to this area.  A book I read put it this way,(I'm paraphrasing) perhaps he did cooperate but his tribe is one of the few in this nation that still live on the land where they have lived for thousands of years! Today's post shows a few of the highly decorated canoes. I hope you will enjoy seeing them.  Tomorrow , it's back to cross stitch and gardens!

 I believe this represents the wolf.

 The red cedar is a sacred tree to the NW natives.  Many canoes had cedar wreaths on the bows.

 Are those turkey feathers?? No just canoe paddles.

 

Thanks for taking a look! Have a wonderful week!