Wandering Wednesday: Bear Creek Redwoods Preserve

 

On the way home from a family lunch, we missed being able to go to the gym, so we stopped off at Bear Creek Redwoods Preserve for a little hike. I was at first reluctant to do it as I was full from lunch, but we were happy to find there was an easy trail on the other side of the road from the very steep trails.

Turns out it's the site of a former Jesuit school.

They've done a great job with planting out new native plants.

It was fun walking through this, we drive by this so often, all without ever knowing that it was even there!

This was the site of the old mansion, which burned down and was knocked down by the 1906 earthquake. There was a picture of it, and the boulder in front made a lot more sense.

A former parking garage/living area for the Jesuit students. 

Looks like they built around an enormous oak tree, you can see the trunk remains in the cutout, and on the corner of the wall, there's a piece of one of the trunks surrounded by bricks. It grew into the wall!

I don't know why, but this cracked me up, the different bunches and types of grass growing on the top of each brick column.

A plant possibly related to Jasmine.

The clouds were super pretty looking out over the Lexington Reservoir hills.

The top of the trail we hiked on came out on an overlook over Highway 17.

It got very cloudy and muggy as we hit the halfway point. The sun was going too, and the park gates lock at dusk (which is when exactly?)

Surprise daffodils (narcissus) along one of the "ruins" brick walls. This was far away from the rest of the buildings on the Radio Hill trail.

Might oak roots vs. brick wall.

More oak root action on walls.

A teeny tiny lizard in the crevice.

Story of my life, beautiful poison oak, absolutely everywhere, and even growing out of a brick wall!

There are so many more trails for us to try out, I think we'll be stopping by many more times.

Halfway Pink Flying Geese

 

First thing that I got sewn in March is the pink and white Flying Geese for the Lupine (no longer a) Mystery quilt.

I really have a large variety of pinks going on here, from very pale all the way to very dark. I really hope it works!

A closeup of the action, using the back of the black polka dot. 

So far I've gotten through all of them, but only on one of the sides.

March To-Do

Here's how my design wall is looking on the first day of this new month of March. Pretty un-busy and un-crowded compared to last month. That's because I had to take everything down in order take the picture of the enormous City Sampler quilt. The Patchwork Palooza blocks are now a top awaiting a border (maybe?).  The untouched blocks for the BAMQ Creative Play project are on the right.

Note: the use of 🥏👽  by a project name indicates that it's on the 2026 UFO Finishes challenge list of six projects that I committed to finishing at the beginning of the year (more on that list later). Note, this is not the same list as the UFO Challenge for BAMQ, that UFO will have this next to it on the list:🌀🌐

QUILTS

Design & Begin

Design and make a quilt for the BAMQ Challenge Modern Art to Modern Quilt display at the SMCF - No picture yet

Design and make a quilt for the BAMQ library display for The Wizard of Oz - No picture yet

Work on and finish my addition to the Creative Play for BAMQ before Sew Day so I can pass it on.

Pantone Project - work on an overall design, either in EQ8 or up on the design wall.

Lupine & Laughter Mystery Quilt - keep making units following the clue instructions

BAMQ BOM - make monthly blocks of varying sizes through the year.

Continue Assembly

Patchwork Palooza - Decide on borders, make backing & binding

Keep working on Sour Grass Grace from Jane Sassaman class.

Old Town Mystery Quilt - make a backing & binding, decide on whether to have it quilted

AG Stamp Quilt - continue to make more blocks using the final group of fussy-cut stamp block centers from Tula Pink fabrics.

Continue the piecing of Selvedge Candy (maybe the name) quilt originally designed for the 2025 MQG challenge.

🥏👽 Sew the last 6 columns and sashing together of the 2023 Temperature Quilt together to make the quilt top.

🥏👽 Bohemian Wife -  Sandwich this and start quilting it

                                      

Quilting

leaving this category right here so I don't forget to use it next time

Final Steps 

HANDWORK/BAG/CLOTHING PROJECTS 

Make a Cotton Candy pouch for myself.

Make a Charlie's Aunt wool purse for myself, first felt the wool from Pendleton Mill.

Toned-Down Circle Sampler - now that I have the appropriately sized grey background felt, arrange and appliqué the circles, start embroidering.

Y.E.S. Coat - continue making pieces/blocks. assemble on foundation, cut out lining pieces from the fabric that I dyed

Snake In The Garden - Finish hand stitching

Kawandii - Finish hand stitching/assembly

Hey! This Is All Finished!

🌀🌐May You Ever Return - Finished for the BAMQ UFO Challenge

🥏👽City Sampler- Wow! It's so big and beautiful and done!

Oxbow Tote - all done, I love it!

Actual finishing happened...again, that makes two months in a row. Feels like a good start to the year.

Fleeting February

Well, February certainly has passed me right on by. Sure, it's a short month, but it just felt like whoosh! And talk about apricity, (the word I learned at the beginning of February- it means the warmth of the sun in winter), the last few days of this month have been Very Hot! Like 84F all of a sudden, when last week there was snow on the surrounding mountaintops. 

The monthly marker is a combination of two photos, the first is my recently completed quilt, City Sampler.

I used the app, Percolator to manipulate that picture.

Then I used the app, SnapSeed to overlay this picture of the completed quilt, May You Ever Return and add the MARCH label.

Here's my One Second Every Day video for February, all 31 (why not 28?!) seconds of it! 

Monthly I-Did List for February

1. I did the BAM BOM Flying Geese blocks at Sew Day.
2. I trimmed the teeny tiny HSTs™from the Flying Geese in #1
3. I added the sashing/cornerstones to the blocks, then chunked and assembled the Patchwork Palooza quilt top
4. I wrote out and illustrated my two UFO projects this year, UFO Finishes 2026 and BAM UFO Challenge
5. I worked on the next steps of the Oxbow Tote, and then finished it.
6. I began sewing down the binding on City Sampler and then finished it and photographed it too.
7. I made the rest of the purple Flying Geese blocks for the 2nd clue of the Lupine Mystery Quilt.
8. I stitched a lot of green water on Snake in The Garden.
9. I embroidered on May You Ever Return and finished it just in time for the BAM UFO challenge.
10. I cut out the rest of the Flying Geese pieces for Clue 2 of the Lupine Mystery

Turns out for a short month that whizzed by, I got quite a bit done. In February I only traveled to going up and back to Spokane once again for the medical study. I went hiking with family twice, both were new hikes, a great one in a new place and the one closer to home in a part of the park we'd never seen. And DH and I re-joined our local gym. So a lot more of my energy is going towards getting more fit. I kept on being pretty active on social media, posted here on le blogue 26 times,...over on BlueSky 26 times, on Flashes 7 times, and on Instagram 8 times. March is going to be a busier travel month so we'll see if I can continue at close to the same rate.

February Cornucopia

 

February is always disorienting to me, after the busy start to a new year, winter is still here on some days, but on others not so much. And still the Magnolias bloom. Here's the February Cornucopia post, a collection of links to things online that I've noticed, enjoyed, found useful or entertaining.

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Spineless Feathers is a great free motion quilting design demonstrated in another well-done ChristaQuilts video. Definitely going to try this one!

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This image really cracked me up, the longest sock monkey in the world. Fifty feet!

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In case you need an excuse to hang out on Pinterest, I thought some of the things on the official Janome Pinterest boards were interesting.

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It's Oscars season, so that means trying to watch many of the movies nominated before the awards are given. I want to recommend a watch of these two short films that are nominated, A Friend of Dorothy, available here on YouTube, and The Singers which is available on Netflix, here's a preview of it on Youtube. Both are just so human, very moving and just plain lovely.

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I listened to several audiobooks this month, all thanks to the app, Libby and my local libraries. I'll recommend two of them here:

The Family Roe - a deeply reported book about the woman who was the Roe plaintiff in the famous Supreme Court decision, a surprisingly moving family portrait. 

The Winter Goddess - a great new version of the story of Cailleach, the goddess of winter in Irish mythology.

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In one of my college email newsletters I learned about a UC Santa Cruz alumnus who made a documentary film about a surfboard created out of 10,000+ cigarettes picked up on the local beaches.

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Pink Lupine Geese

 

So much pink all of a sudden!

Because I was cutting out all of the pink base triangles (the geese?) of the Flying Geese units I'm going to make for Clue #2 of the Lupine Mystery quilt.

Here they are, all ready to go with their white side triangles. Now to get sewing on these,