Foust!, Floy's Scarecrow Quilt, Canada Day 3

Michael left for golf on Monday morning (8/6) and my day was all about FOUST!  I picked up Paula, Jerri & Pat and we headed out at 8 AM and met Floy there:    

Paula, Pat, Floy, Jerri

By the time we were done, this is what the trunk looked like:  

Certainly not as much as in previous years….but still enough to keep us quilting for awhile.  

One other really fun thing happened at FOUST.  Several (many?) months ago I followed a Facebook link to a new website (https://frommycarolinahome.com), and started corresponding with the author, Carole.  She’s a long arm-er who lives near Hendersonville, North Carolina.  We’ve been writing back and forth since…and I finally got to meet her at FOUST….what fun!!!  Her car of friends and my car of friends went to lunch together and they were just delightful….here’s hoping we get to see them twice a year at the FOUST sales!  

I missed show and tell last Thursday at quilting, so Floy brought along her scarecrow quilt:  

She makes the best appliqué quilts…..each one cuter than the last.  

I was home just after 2 PM and as usual was really tired (from spending all of that money!??!?!) so I took a nap  :~).  Michael came home from golf and said the heat was brutal, but he had a good time.  I wanted to finish up quilting the Hunter’s Star, but a lightning storm had moved in and I don’t leave Miss Scarlett plugged in while that is happening, so instead I worked on something to keep my numbered pins in an order and where I can easily use them (from scraps from my purse): 

Michael had a salad for dinner (trying to get back to his pre-Tauck body.  Tauck is the tour company who ran our vacation through the Canadian Rockies.  As our tour director indicated, many people refer to their ‘bodies by Tauck’ after eating their way through one of the tours.  I’ve been in touch with several of the people on our tour and we’re all committed to losing what we gained over the 10 days  :~).  He left for rehearsal at 5:30 and I spent the evening working on the binding for a Clinton quilt that was quilted before vacation, but didn’t get it finished by the time Michael came home at 8:30.  We watched a bit of TV and I trimmed and pressed more HST’s for the baby quilt until bedtime.

Canada

Day 3 – We spent the morning in Butchart Gardens (https://www.butchartgardens.com/).  The Butchart Gardens is a group of floral display gardens in Brentwood Bay, British Columbia, Canada, located near Victoria on Vancouver Island. The gardens receive over a million visitors each year.  Everything was absolutely spectacular….we took many, many more pictures that I show below….a wonderful young man that we met on one of the paths even showed us how to do panoramic pictures on our IPAD  :~).

part of the rose garden

We went straight from the gardens to our high tea at the Empress Hotel.  The hotel is known for its classic Victorian afternoon tea service.  During the summer months, the hotel serves tea (along with tea sandwiches, fresh scones, preserves and clotted cream known as Empress cream) in its "Tea Room" to more than 400 guests and tourists daily.  

4 different kinds of sugar, one with maple flavor, one with vanilla flavor

The clotted cream was TDF….TO DIE FOR….SO very yummy, I’m sure it added AT LEAST 1/2 a pound to our ‘bodies by Tauck’!  I generally think scones are rather dry pastries….not these….so moist and with the clotted cream and raspberry jam….heaven.  I was so full after the 1:30 PM tea that I didn’t eat again until lunchtime the next day  :~).