Travel – Page 10 – Thimbleanna

November’s Cranes

20 Comments / November 2, 2007 February 18, 2011 / Travel

I know I don’t have to tell you this, but it’s November. Cosy, comfy November. The month where we migrate toward winter.* I love November. We start to plan our months of get-togethers for family and friends. And an added bonus in blogland, I anticipate there will be lots of sharing of fun holiday ideas. It was around this time of year last year when I found blogs, and all that warm, fuzzy sharing is what sucked me in! I can’t wait to see what unfolds this year.

Anyway, back to that migrating thing. The other morning, I looked out of my office window as the sun was coming up to see a big crane swoop over the parking lot and land on top of a light pole. It’s the first time in many years that I’ve seen a crane in our parking lot and it reminded me to tell you about the migration of the Sandhill Cranes. Every year in November, they fly from their summer home in Canada to their winter home in Georgia and Florida. It’s an awesome sight to behold, and if you live in the midwest, a great place to see the migration up close and personal is at Jasper-Pulaski Fish and Wildlife Area in northwestern Indiana (about an hour southeast of Chicago.)

We went to see the cranes for the first time last year. It was a 2 hour drive for us and we arrived about an hour before sundown. You have to go to the wildlife area at either dusk or dawn, as the birds fly in to the fields to spend the night, and then in the morning, they are on their way again. When we first got there, there weren’t very many birds and I thought to myself, “We just spent two hours in the car for this?” Ah, patience! Before long, birds were flying in from all directions. Can you see them as they put their landing gear down? It was so cool to watch them drop their legs as they got closer to the ground.

The wildlife area has a great viewing platform which allows you a great view of the birds as they land in the fields. You can’t get real close to the birds, so binoculars are a great idea. (I took these pictures with a 200 mm lens, to give you a little perspective. It’s hard to get good pictures ’cause the light is so low. You can click on the pictures to make them bigger.) I think the migration actually starts in late October and runs through early December, but November is the best viewing month. According to the website, on October 30, 2007 they counted almost 12,000 cranes. It really is amazing that all those birds just suddenly appear. And they seem to come from all directions, not just from the north. You can come from all directions too! I hope, especially if you are in the midwest, that you get the opportunity sometime to view these beautiful birds during their migration.

Viewing time: 45 minutes
Driving time: 4 hours
Experience: Priceless!
XOXO,
Anna

*Sorry, for those of you down under, I know this winter stuff doesn’t apply!

Martha!

29 Comments / October 18, 2007 February 12, 2012 / Peep Days, Travel

I realize that there are some of you out there that don’t like Martha. So, you’ll probably be surprised when I tell you that, in spite of ALL the NYC has to offer, the main reason we went to NYC was to see Martha. The quilty peeps and I joke that Jewels is THE original Martha fan. Considering that, Jewels, you were amazingly well behaved!

Martha was Amazing! Awesome! Absolutely Fabulous! I wasn’t terribly excited about going when I found out the focus of the show would be about aging. I really don’t need aging reminders these days. But, I needn’t have worried — it wouldn’t matter who the guests were, it was just fascinating to watch Martha and her staff at work. I probably sat with my mouth wide open the whole time. And the set is more beautiful that it appears on tv. More beautiful than people say it is. Jaw droppingly beautiful.

We had incredible seats (thanks Gurney!.) On the floor, second row. Right. In. Front. Of. Martha. During the first segment, they showed a long video about the new center that Martha has opened at Mt. Sinai hospital and it was really fun to watch Martha watch the video. She was just as attentive as if she were seeing it for the first time. Every once in awhile she’d glance up and scan the audience — but never with any acknowledgement — just a brief glance, then back to the video. And I was actually proud of her as she interviewed her guests that day — none of the classic Martha-interrupt-the-guest behavior.

Between segments, of course, we had Joey to entertain us. He’s very funny and kept the audience pumped up. One thing that really annoyed me though, was that between segments, they play music. High energy music to keep everyone motivated, but also, I suspect to keep the audience from hearing any comments that might be made by the staff as they prepared for the next segment. Ob. Nox. Ious.

Martha was so impressive, I can’t possibly describe it to you. After our morning live segment, they asked the audience to remain seated while Martha did a 4-5 minute taping for something. They explained that what she said would all be gibberish to most of us. She was taping a highly technical blurb describing the inner workings of the Martha Stewart website. I was stunned that she could read through all those technical words — only stopping one time to check on the correct pronunciation of an acronym. She practically read it like she was reading a first grade storybook. For all I know, she rehearsed the blurb for hours, but I doubt it. Wow — there’s a reason she’s at the top.

After the show, they announced that they had a few extra tickets for the afternoon taping. We briefly debated what to do — NYC shopping beckoned and it was a tough call. We felt a little gyped at the audience gifts — pomegranate juice and a ticket to a yoga class weren’t far off from our joking predictions that we’d probably get prune juice and a month’s discount at a nursing home. We decided to go for it, and we were lucky that we were the first section to be excused. We rushed to the desk and got the last two tickets and positions 1 and 2 for standby for the afternoon show. Then we went to City Quilter and grabbed some lunch before our return to the studio at 1 p.m.

The first hint that we’d made the right decision was in the warm-up room when Joey told us that we’d be getting a few nice prizes and that the morning guests got nothing. (It warmed my heart to see that they considered pomegranate juice a cop-out gift!) The second show (to be aired today or tomorrow in the states, depending on your market) was a lot more fun and exciting. Sherry Sheppard (the new host on The View) and Martha made children’s halloween costumes. (Sherry was pretty funny — Junie pointed out that she made a funny joke about jail which I missed, so I’m anxious to see the show this week.) We snagged a nice beginner sewing book from those segments. Then, Martha cooked two different chicken dishes with two Itialian chefs. Those segments bagged us a beautiful Italian cookbook! But more than the prizes, I was really glad we went to the second show because that experience was so different from the morning session. A taped show vs. a live show, we sat on the complete opposite side of the studio, and it was just a lot more fun! And during the taping, a cameraman made a mistake and there was a tense moment — would Martha yell “Off with his head”??? Everything remained calm and after a brief embarrassing moment to identify the culprit, taping resumed.

At the end of the second show, Martha hung around for three or four audience questions. I got to ask one of them. I’ve always loved the big jars that she has on her set (pictured in the middle picture of the top row in the collage above) so I asked her if they’d be available in her Macy’s line. She said all of the products (including those jars) that were in her old Martha Stewart catalog will be available at Macy’s around the fall of ’08. Yipee!

Thanks for a fabulous trip Quilty Peeps! Jewels, thanks for the inspiration to go in the first place; Joni, thanks for making all the arrangements; and Gurney, thanks for getting those awesome Martha tickets. You are all THE VERY BEST EVER Quilty Peeps!!!

XOXO,
Anna

P.S. Vallen is hosting a potluck today! I hope you’ll all join us. I plan to attend, although I have a rather full day, so I’ll probably do an after-potluck report! ;-)

The Quilty Peeps Go To NYC

22 Comments / October 15, 2007 February 12, 2012 / Peep Days, Travel

Whew! First of all, thank you for all your lovely comments on my last post. The Quilty Peeps and I made it back from NYC and I’m happy to say, none of us needed a wheelchair to get around! We had a fabulous time — we all get along so well, it’s hard not to have fun with the girls. We spent our first day with Martha Stewart — which deserves a post of its own later.

Before we left, the ever-so-sweet Vallen directed me to her very kind friend Rebecca, who gave us some great food recommendations. Thanks for all your great suggestions Rebecca! We made it to Juniors, but the other places eluded us on this trip and were we ever sorry. I can recommend one place NOT to go — and that’s the revolving restaurant at the top of the Marriot at Times Square. Yucky Buffet. Bad Service. Expensive drinks. That said, they were effective drinks and a certain someone was very friendly with the Times Square policemen. We kept hearing “something about men in uniform”??? Don’t worry, certain someone, what happens in NYC, stays in NYC. LOL.

The rest of our time was spent shopping and double decker bus sight-seeing. We originally thought what a great deal the bus tour would be — a hop-on-hop-off tour, so we could use it to double as transportation around the city. Wrong. It was too slow and inconvenient. Oh well, the tour part was fun, although we ran out of time and missed many of the major sites.

Our best shopping was at all the blogger favorite places in the fashion district and Soho. (The links to all of these places can be found in the wonderful NYC shopping guide by disdressed.) Tinsel Trading was all decked out for the season with their Halloween stuff on display. Lots of glittery goodness.

We all loved MJ Trim, The Store Across the Street, and City Quilter. Junie and I had fun in Grey Line Linen and Gurney went a little nuts over all the ric rac at Daytona. We took pictures of all of our loot:

Junie got the most beautiful brown, orange and aqua linens — it’s hard to tell from the picture, but they are really gorgeous! We also shopped a bit in Soho. Of course, we visited both Purl and Purl Patchwork and loved them both.

Purl has these adorable little sweaters strung across their door:

And of course, being in NYC, we had to partake of the current cupcake obsession. Magnolia came first and by now it had started to rain. We sat in the little park across the street and had a yummy cupcake.

The next day, we checked out Billy’s.

It was a scientific experiement, you understand. It was a tough call, but I think we decided that Magnolia edged out Billy’s by a hair. Not that it matters — we’ll gladly take either kind! Our trip went by way too fast. Next time I’ll tell you all about our visit with Martha!
XOXO,
Anna

Catching Up

22 Comments / October 1, 2007 February 18, 2011 / Chat, Travel

I’ve been busy trying to catch up on what all of you have been doing. Maybe blogland should have designated posting days so that I don’t get so far behind everytime I take a break! We had a great weekend visiting TheSecondChild for Parent’s Weekend. It’s always fun to check up on him and his friends. There were dinners out (big treat for college child — away from cafeteria food), a tailgate party and a football game. And some re-arranging of the apartment furniture. The boys don’t seem to have the decorating gene. Furniture just gets placed awkwardly. Now, the tv is visible from all seating locations. ;-)

On the way there, I decided we’d take a 10 minute detour off of the freeway and visit a new little quilt/yarn shop I’d been reading about on this blog. The shop is Clementine’s and I sort of snuck up on Camilla as she didn’t know who I was.

It was my first blog meet and it really made my day! (I didn’t take any pictures of the inside of the shop because Camilla has some really nice pictures on her blog.) I introduced myself and we had a nice time visiting. She was even kind enough to entertain TheManoftheHouse while I browsed the fabrics. She has a great collection of Westminster fabrics — a VERY needed addition to Indiana as they’re so hard to find here. I browsed, we talked, I browsed, I selected a fabric, we talked, her 2-yr. old Eli wandered by (so cute!), we talked, I selected another fabric, we talked, I selected 2 more fabrics, she and TheManoftheHouse talked, I selected another fabric (someone please stop me!), we talked, she helped me select a Kaffe Fassett print for Magoo, I ended up in the knitting books, she chatted more with TheManoftheHouse, I selected knitting book, we talked about her AGA (which I didn’t even know you could get here in the states), I browsed, ….you get the picture! Ms. Cami — your shop is going to be a great success — you have mastered the fine art of making the customer feel at home — we browse, we chat, we buy!!! LOL!

I was VERY impressed! Supposedly, all five children were lurking somewhere. They must be very well behaved as we didn’t hear a peep out of them. Speaking of the children, what happened to that cute little Eli? Hey — here he is:

Is that TOO CUTE or what? He fell asleep right by the front door. No wonder we didn’t hear him anywhere! After we were done, we quietly left and once outside I had to take another picture of sleeping little Eli — you can see what it looked like if you went walking by the outside of the shop:

Thank you Ms. Cami for a very delightful visit. I’ll definitely be back — hopefully next time with Quilty Peeps in tow.

I did manage to get a little sewing done on the trip. I usually do most of the driving when we travel, but this time I made an obvious discovery — if I don’t drive, I can sew or knit! Duh. I always thought it would make me car sick, but no! I did forget to look up often though, so I sort of feel like I missed part of the trip. I’ll have to work on the fine art of sewing AND paying attention next time.

One last thing — the sweet and innocent hysterical Isabelle has issued a “Show Us Your Jugs” challenge. Much to the dismay of TheManoftheHouse, I don’t have a jug collection. Just two reasonably small (and not the same size, I might add) jugs:

Inspired by Isabelle, I’m definitely thinking of starting a jug collection — you must go see Isabelle’s jugs — they’re very lovely! And certainly, I’d like to encourage all of you, dear readers, to “Show Us Your Jugs”!!!
Until next time, when I promise I’ll actually have sewing content,
XOXO,
Anna

Shipshewana Part II

13 Comments / September 16, 2007 February 18, 2011 / Travel

Thanks for all your wonderful comments about Shipshewana! I promised I would tell you why we really go to Shipshewana and there were some really fun guesses in your comments and e-mails.

Is it the food? No, but that’s a great guess. There are many good restaurants in Shipshewana. The two most popular are The Blue Gate, just a block away from the auction and the Essenhaus, which, technically is in Middlebury, a neighboring town. These are Amish family style restaurants — you have your choice of menu dining, or you can eat in family style rooms, where everyone orders the same food and it comes on big platters. See the little girl there eating the cookie? (Picture from the Essenhaus website.) Those frosted sugar cookies are fabulous. We used to buy those cookies by the dozens and bring them home and freeze them. But that was back when they were 40 cents each. Once they realized how popular their cookies are, the prices skyrocketed to $1.00 each, so now we only buy a few cookies whenever we visit.

Is it the quilts? No, but you can buy some wonderful hand quilted quilts in Shipshewana. Sadly, I don’t have any pictures — since it was auction day, we didn’t have time to go to any of the shops with quilts in them.

Is it for the beautiful scenery? To see all the Amish buggies? And Amish homes with their beautiful gardens? (My favorite time for garden viewing is August when the flowers are big and beautiful.) No, but that’s another great guess.

How ’bout the fabric? YES!!! That’s why we go to Shipshewana! Shipshewana has two great quilt shops: Lolly’s and Yoder’s. Ignore the pictures on the Lolly’s site. A few years ago their shop burned down and the pictures are from when they were in a temporary location. Below are two pictures from their new shop. Also, Lolly’s has a new little outlet shop in the basement of their building — all fabrics are $5.00. It’s older fabric that they’re trying to sell. There are also lots of fun other shops in the same building that Lolly’s is in — in addition to a carousel on the top floor for the kiddies. (Doesn’t that guy in the photo look like he’s having fu-u-un? LOL.)

Sadly, I didn’t get any good pictures at Yoder’s, but check out their website. Yoder’s is much more than a quilt shop. It’s like four stores under one roof — groceries, hardware, clothing and fabrics. Over half of their fabrics are non-quilt related — lots of fabric for clothing and home dec. Yoder’s prices are better than Lolly’s, sometimes as much as $2.00 less per yard for the exact same fabric. Yoder’s also seems to be more friendly, but Lolly’s is a little more trendy. You just have to visit both shops!

See the building with the red roof? (Quilty peeps, have you seen this yet?) This used to be a great little herb shop with the most beautiful gardens out back. They always had a fun Mayfest, where you could buy lots of herbs to grow in your own garden. They’ve recently sold though (the new name is D’Vine), and much to my surprise, on this last trip I discovered the building on the left is now a little yarn shop. I’ve always wondered why Shipshewana didn’t have a yarn shop, and now they do. The building on the right has the old garden-y types of items along with a little tea shop. While I like that there’s a yarn shop, I really miss that herb shop. And I really hate the cutesy name and all that new RED garishness. What’s up with that? Kind of makes me expect some stripper named D’Vine to poke her head out the door. Someone must have been smokin’ a few of the herbs out back when they came up with the new decor!
I’ve rambled on long enough — thanks for sticking with it. I’ve you’re ever in northern Indiana, I hope you’ll stop by Shipshewana — it’s well worth the visit. For some really great tourist info, you can visit their website and have a virtual tour. Hope you’re all having a great weekend!
XOXO,
Anna