Showing posts with label Swan Island Dahlia Festival. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Swan Island Dahlia Festival. Show all posts

20 September, 2015

Keep Calm


  Very calm at dawn this morning.



 My friend in Japan sent me a wee present in the mail recently.
See those tiny airplanes. ;-)

A little Budgie sticker decorating the package.




 Yesterday, another friend and I drove out to the Dahlia fields of Swan Island Dahlias.
They are in full bloom.




Bumble Rumble


 One of my dahlias at dawn. I got this bulb from my mom & dad's place.

I was feeling a bit sluggish today. After cleaning up a couple of flower beds by the house. No wonder!

After taking a shower, I lay down and read and then decided to read until I finished my book, "The Dressmaker"   by Kate Alcott.



 This afternoon, I thought I'd finish my foray into pocket tissue covers.
I thought this dotted red went well with my wee airplane fabric totally disregarding the fact that the red showed very clearly through the the white background fabric.
The red peeking through turns the white into dirty white. Not good.

I'd only sewn three seams in a continuous row of eight covers when I thought about it. Then I switched to the blue background and came up one lining short having sewn two linings onto an outer blue fabric.
God - where's the seam ripper?




 After tossing my house, I found it by the laptop and while totally broken in (lol), it worked well enough to rip stitches out.

There's a cap that goes to this seam ripper which pops onto the end to extend the handle. It always came off at a crucial moment, so it was retired first. I think I've had this seam ripper for at east a dozen years.

In all the sewing supplies I find at garage sales, I never, ever, find seam rippers. Because they break.
Looks like a trip to the fabric store is in order....


I put my sewing away because it's obviously not in the works today.


My daughter re-arranged the guest room opening up some floor space where I am now seriously contemplating the IKEA Button Rug that I saw on a recent trip there a few weeks ago.


Only $49


03 September, 2011

Surprise! Looking for an Estate Sale

Work interfered with my  plan to garage sale  Friday so after work today- before it got to be 90 thousand degrees, I set off on the hunt for sale addresses and extreme bargains.
Winding my way through the streets looking for neon signs, I stumbled into a tourist trap - in my hometown.
The Swan Island Dahlia Festival (and a biking thing).  Add in narrow roads and you can easily get trapped in a traffic nightmare.
Thanks to living here for over 25 years, I know my way around- AND I found my estate sale.

Picture heavy, as usual:

  


 

The Swan Island Dahlia Festival runs all this weekend. Well - you can go out there anytime. There's no admission, free parking, AND a stunning catalog order form that you wander the fields with --checking off your favorites. Sometime next Spring (possibly before you have paid off the visa bill) you will receive your dahlia tubers. With our late spring/summer season, I think you will see the dahlias blooming until late September (en masse)


 Dahlias come in all sizes and shapes -
from tiny quarter-sized blossoms to huge dinner-plate sizes.
Bigger-Than-My-Face Dahlias

(You could pop this off and)  Stick-It-On-Your-Nose Dahlia

Curly-Q Dahlia

An endless row of Curly-Q's

Spiky Sea Urchin Dahlias

Sunshine Water Lily Dahlia

Dinner-Size Lotus Blossom Dahlia

The-Next-Rain-We're-History Dahlia

Fluted Dahlia


At-Least-We-Have-Some-Foliage-To-Protect-Us-From-The-Rain 
Dinner Plate Dahlia

The Sun!-The Sun!   Dahlia

Attitude Dahlia

Pinwheel Dahlia

Looking-For-Airplanes Dahlia

Might-Be-My-Favorite Dahlia

Quarter-Size Dahlia
All names were made up by me - couldn't you tell?

Unfortunately, my rechargeable batteries drained themselves of power in the fields and I had no juice left to show off my estate sale prowess.

Now - if you want to learn a bit more about Dahlia farming - I stole this cool video from the Swan Island site just for you: