Wow!   A few weeks ago there was a discussion on the QuiltDesigners Group over on Yahoo, and  internet friend Diane Harman-Hoog of Quilters Keep Learning was prompted to do a quick search on me on the internet.  Diane, you see, is a maven of family genealogy (spelling?).  In just a few days, she had traced my dad’s family back to the Patrick who immigrated from Ireland in 1857, and my mother’s family back to Switzerland and Germany to 1590!!!!!!!!  She incredibly generously sent me a TON of information (and discovered that we have a common ancestor in Edward Plantagenet!) and did this extensive family tree:

Dad’s family is the little cluster on the upper left portion.  All the rest of it is my mom’s family, which has been in the US since the late 1600s.  I had NO idea I had family ties to the Netherlands, Switzerland or Alsace-Lorraine (now France, previously Germany)!  Here’s that corner of the chart:

And here:

And then there were tons of records including my dad’s 1921 passport application.  I printed out over 100 pages of history into a binder (photo at top).

THANK YOU DIANE!

In early May, Virginia Spiegel brough her multi-year campaign to raise funds for cancer research through her FiberArt for a Cause to a close with a final Collage Mania sale.  I was lucky to nab two of my favorite collages by North Carolina artist Grace Howes!   I selected them as gifts for my husband for his birthday.  One reads Faith, the other Trust…because I trust him implicity and completely, and because I have faith in him.   Happy Birthday Dear!

The collages themselves are 8 by 10 inches, and are mounted on stretcher bars covered with batting and batik (11 by 13 inches if I remember correctly).  Interestingly, despite the clear similarities in the two pieces, it was difficult to find a single fabric to use that played nicely with both collages.  In the end, I chose a black with wheat/rust/ochre from my stash. I sure hope Grace likes what I’ve done!  You can visit her web site at Red Barn Studios...

Thanks Grace for donating these wonderful collages! We’re so happy to have them in our home.

In the recent issue of Quilting Arts,

I placed my first ad!  It is in the Artists’ Marketplace section.  If you look at the two-page spread below it is on the right hand side of the page, almost in the center: the peach one (using the same basic set-up as my rack card and business card that I purchased to promote my book).  It says Artist, Author, Teacher…. and has my website and blog address, with my book cover and “coming in Fall 2009.”  Now, will anyone see it?  Will anyone follow the links?  Will I get any possible jobs??? Who knows…. anyway, here it is:

Here is a closer look at the ad:

We were a small group this time, what with Deborah in Texas and Hannah home with kids (end-of-school stuff), but we had a wonderful time!

One of the first things to greet us besides Kate (we were at her house this time), was this glorious bouquet of flowers, including a lupine which are now blooming with riotous abandon across the state:

As usual, I forgot to take a picture of lunch, but you know it was good when your friends have such wonderful smiles:

Kath and I had a good chuckle at first when we saw this:

It turns out it wasn’t (as I figured, like it would be at my house), a frazzled mom grabbing something that was knocked awry and putting it up wrong, but in fact Kate’s son’s deliberate take on art.

Kate shared with us her new chicken coop:

And we got to see her still-growing chickens…just think, your OWN fresh eggs!

Her house also happens to have an outdoor shower… wonderful for our summers.  Of course you know an artist lives here when there is  a lovely-colored drop cloth drying on the fence:

Given that it is summer and three of us here in Maine have kids, we’re likely (SOB) not to get together again until August, but finally THIS year we are going to have our dyeing fabric day in my back yard…I can’t wait!

What is an Alewife?  It’s a fish!   I’d never heard of them either until we moved to Maine.  I’d probably not ever heard of them until I discovered a gem of a quilt shop called Alewives Fabric and Gifts in Damariscotta Mills (about 45 minutes south of me).  Because they are set back a couple of miles from Route 1, and I’m always racing to somewhere, I’d never been there until my dear friend Kathy invited me along one day.  As I’ve said before, that store is a serious Visa accident waiting to happen!  (and I’ll be totally wicked and tell you that they now have batiks and Amy Butler and Kaffe Fassett and and and for sale online!)  But this is about the fish…and they run in early May (yes, I’m late writing this up!… I knew they were running because a month ago on a trip south I saw a roadside sign and truck selling smoked alewives!)

Kathy did this quilt of the Alewives, who return from the sea, travel up the Great Salt Bay and head upriver at Damariscotta Mills, telling me about the fish ladder. (Kathy blogged about the quilt, I think, but her blog doesn’t have a search box on it so couldn’t find a picture…sorry!)  A fish ladder?  yep…. as you approach the area, you see the area in the above photo.  You can tell the fish are running thanks to a generous supply of cormorants and seagulls lurking for an easy meal.

Then you see the pen used to harvest some of the fish, which are about 10 inches long I’d guess.  The fish are used for lobster trap bait and used to be used as a foodsource.  On the information plaques, it says that for over 200 years it has been a tradition to give widows alewives (salted and cured I’d think….).

The lower portion of the fish ladder…which is basically a stream 24 inches wide or less (about .65 metres) with rocky small falls, rivulets and pools progressing up the hill to the Mills pond and lake at the top of the run…..was wall-to-wall fish:

If you look carefully, you can see both the shadow of the railing (lower right) and all those dark curvy things are alewives.

The next three pictures are close-ups of the information sign.  If you click on the photo it should (?) open up larger so maybe you can read the text.

I was lucky that someone came to purchase some alewives while I was there.  The fish are plentiful, so there is no risk to the fish stocks in harvesting them, and the proceeds from the sales are used for renovations and upkeep of the fish ladder.

First, the guy who works there gets a helper, and they use a sturdy mesh frame attached to two long poles to herd/sweep the wall-to-wall fish into a pen. As you can see on the right, there is a lot of late-spring runoff water tumbling down!

Next:  you see the fish splashing up next to the screen/sweeper:

This shot shows a fair number of the soon-to-be-bait alewives:

Then, the workers crank the pen which tips up.  The fish slide down into the hopper:

Talk about a thundering roar as all those flopping fish thump and twitch their way down the metal ramp/tilt/whatever it is!

And then there are MORE:

Finally, they stop flopping, having spent too long in the air.  They are then scooped into a crate for the waiting lobsterman.

And that’s my fish tale for today!  I love living in a place where people have lived for over 200 years.  For those of you in Europe, it is no big deal, but in the US it means we are among the oldest European-origin communities around.  Cool.