Quilting in the Cabin: Year 11!

Last weekend was our 11th Annual Quilting in the Cabin. Eleven years of spending time with good friends, fabric, and food in Dotty's cabin,just outside Yosemite National Park.
This was the view of the inside. We have sewing station set-up down to a science. Seriously. We had stuff unloaded from the car, food into the refrigerator and our sewing gear set up in about thirty minutes.

Years ago we decided that three meals a day was way too much food. So we cut it down to two meals a day, and a midday snack. Breakfast was typically nice and hearty: bacon, eggs, and fruit. For dinner we would have something like this: lettuce wedge all dressed up with cherry tomatoes, bacon and bleu cheese, cheesy potatoes and steak, a nice bottle of wine. And traditionally, Dotty makes the most amazing lemon pie in a meringue crust (and next year maybe I'll remember to take a picture of it...). Last year we nearly forgot it. We drove back to her house to get it--it is that good!

So no lunch. Just a nice light midday snack:

We hate to overeat. Which is why we stopped having lunch and went instead with a midday boatload of food light snack instead. Because it takes nourishment to do all that sewing...

It is always a cause for celebration when someone completes a quilt top. We stop whatever we're doing and take pictures.

It has taken us eleven years to figure out that we can take our completed projects outside and hang them over the deck railing. We may be a little slow on figuring out good photo-ops but we are not slow when it comes to having things to photograph!

And then one of Dotty's neighbors wandered by and agreed to take a picture of us. I wish I would have taken a picture of him, holding four digital cameras! Have we not figured out yet that one picture could be emailed among the four of us? Um. Guess not.

(Dotty, me, Maggie, Ruth)

I even surprised Ruth with this little pincushion made with selvages everyone contributed (Dotty contributed the one called Cozy Cabin Flannels--perfect!!)

I snatched a piece of this uber-cute batik that Ruth was working with and used it for the back of the pincushion (it's much brighter than the picture--bright limey green with purple, hot pink and blue, and the cutest little stick people).

During the weekend, whenever we finish anything, we hang it over the staircase railing. Such a pretty site by the end of the weekend. So sad when we have to pack things away to leave.

Thanks, Dotty, for one of the best weekends of the year!

And for those of you who have been following along with our efforts to get the cabins open at Lakeview Cottages: I think we have become, thanks to Mother Nature, a nonprofit organization this year (boo!).  The first two rental weeks were canceled and we are still waiting for water (which seems ironic since we have had record amounts of snow, but one is not related to the other). We're hoping all the problems will be fixed and the water will be running by Saturday so our third-week guests can arrive.

We're trying to maintain a positive outlook, but here is a picture of Mark last Saturday:

*sigh*