But first, here is more info on “the turtle”–learned from my family who live nearby. The turtle is likely VERY old. Three generations of the family who own her have taken care of this turtle: the grandmother passed the turtle to her daughter, who passed the turtle eventually to her daughter, the current owner. The turtle IS… VERY BIG. And, obviously, long-lived.
“Happy” is now basted and ready for hand quilting. Here she is on the longarm.
Below you can see the big basting stitches I can do on the longarm. And, this time I covered the quilt more densely than I did on Traverse. It is very easy to clip these threads when I need to do that.
The backing is this lovely Ruby Star Society fabric–which is in keeping with the Cotton+Steel/Ruby Star Society fabrics I used in the centers of the blocks on the front.
And here she is all done.
It is really hard to get enough light on a quilt in this room. But my longarm light bar gives me plenty of light.
I’m thinking I’ll need a dark solid for binding. I had wondered about the backing fabric for binding, but… I don’t think so. But I’m not sure about that yet.
Now I’ll put Big Red on the longarm. Meanwhile, I think I’ve stopped moving around blocks on the “Summer Camp” mystery quilt from the Modern. Quilt Studio. Maybe it needs to be called “Summer Camp.”
On Saturday Granddaughter Mina sent me a picture of this turtle, which was next door. She identified it as a “pet,” and I thought she was joking.
My first question: what kind of turtle is it?
She thought it a tortoise.
I could not find such a large tortoise in the list or images of native South Carolina turtles.
Along the google way I found this verbiage on identifying types of turtles: “If you know what to look for, you can spot the differences between freshwater, land, and sea turtles. Freshwater turtles are often small with flat feet. Land turtles, called tortoises, have big, round shells and flat feet. Sea turtles that have smooth, flat shells and flippers for swimming.” So tortoise is a category. But what kind of tortoise. Seems larger than the ones I looked at online.
And I found that the carapace pattern is called “rings.”
Aha! On Monday, I tried again and GOT IT. It’s a Sulcata Tortoise.
It’s finally cooler–so I went with son Bryan, Corinne, and two of the three girls to the Isle of Palms beach around 11:30. We arrived with chairs, lunches, water, and all the beach toys–which involves a ride to an access path on the golf cart, which also pulls a little blue cloth wagon filled with all one would need at the beach.
It was a wonderful outing, and I swam with Corinne and granddaughters. We all like to body surf, which I had not done for 30+ years. It was so much fun. It was full high tide with very little current, and the waves were perfect. Here I am with the granddaughters, just out of the surf.
Here are Bryan and Corinne–both of whom spent some time looking for shark’s teeth in the wake of the falling tide. But, more on shark teeth in another post. Note they wear sun-protective tops, which means that part of one’s body does not need sun screen. I have a good top too.
Corinne packs an awesome lunch for her family. Each has an individual Bento box filled with healthy food, and there are other snacks as well. (I bring my own lunch given my food issues.)
Here is Corinne unpacking the lunches. Her wide-brimmed hat protects her face, ears, and neck.
After lunch, the tide had dropped enough for Bryan to dig a hole that reached water, so he could make a sand castle. He loves doing that and has not had time this summer to make one, given all their summer trips away. This one is small compared to his usual sand castle efforts that are better started at a lower tide.
Building the sand castle becomes a family effort eventually. Those chairs in the background are ours, and you can see the blue wagon that carries everything but the surf boards, which go on top of the golf cart. I have a wagon like this one that I used for quilt retreats. They fold up and store so easily in a small space.
We swam again, we three wave riders, while Bryan built his sand castle.
I left them when I felt my Maine-white skin starting to get burned. My tan is better now, but not anywhere it needs to be for sun protection here. Once home I showered, washed all the beach clothing/towel, made a big espresso, and settled in to rest and read.
Idalia roared into Florida as a Category 4 hurricane last Tuesday and Wednesday. She was BIG and moved really fast. But, when she got to us here on the Charleston coast, sooner than predicted with the leading edge starting in earnest in the early afternoon Wednesday, she was a tropical storm.
We lucked out. The worst of Idalia, the center, was just to our west. Still, we got lots of bands that were “red” and “yellow”–denoting severe weather. And the local weather people were very wary of tornados developing. She did NOT depart land here at Charleston as predicted, and when we got the last of the bands in the early morning Thursday, her leading edge had reached Virginia Beach.
I have a little rain gauge out front–and the sheets of water filled its five inches in no time at all. So, in total, we got something north of 6 inches at my house. And, yes, the wind was bad, but not, according to son Bryan who lives on Isle of Palms, at hurricane force. He said they actually got a good night’s sleep.
One of the fun things for me, sometime in the mid-afternoon, was hearing local children playing outside. They were riding their bikes in the steady rain and with the wind diminished for that moment. They were whooping and laughing and careening their bikes through the sheet of steady rain. It was a moment of pure joy to see them having such fun.
I had defrosted a soup to have on hand–thinking I could eat it cold if I lost power. Fortunately, I was able to have a nice hot bowl of soup for dinner and supper. I augmented what I had frozen with 4 more chicken thighs I also had frozen. I threw in the handful of organic mixed salad greens I had left in the refrigerator, which included hearty baby greens like spinach, kale, and chard.
Later in the afternoon, my phone started what can only be called a siren. It was a tornado warning, and I was advised to take shelter immediately in an interior room. Later, there were reports and a video of a tornado picking up a car and hurling it off a local freeway.
At 7:30, the power went out for two hours. My little lantern, about which I blogged recently, was wonderful company. And neighbors called to check up on me and offered refuge in their houses. This picture is from the blog. I actually used the more expensive lantern as it is larger, more powerful, has a rechargeable battery that can work also with installed batteries, and can recharge a phone if needed.
When the power returned, everything came back online just fine–unlike the power outage some months back that caused the refrigerator breaker to trip. Fortunately I found it not on fairly quickly.
Basically, I spent the day in my little tv sitting room reading SWIMMING LESSONS, by Mary Alice Monroe. It was a sweet story about a young woman who lives on Isle of Palms and who gets involved with caring for the big loggerhead turtles that nest on these barrier islands each year. She goes on to pioneer the turtle rescue hospital at the Charleston Aquarium–with lots of help of course.
Today, there are many volunteers who work in this turtle arena, and it was fun to read what all they do in this fictional tale. They walk the beaches in the early morning to find turtle tracks and to locate and mark a nest of eggs that is buried around 2-feet deep. When it is time for that nest to hatch, volunteers sit up all night to wait for the eruption of baby turtles from the nest and to make sure they get to the water–which must be done on their own. Beach side houses do not turn on outside lights at this time of year as those lights can make the turtles turn toward the houses and not the water.
It turns out that Mary Alice Monroe, affectionally known as MAM, lives on Isle of Palms and, herself, has helped pioneer these turtle efforts. Today, the Charleston Aquarium is world famous for its turtle hospital.
My new little crape myrtle tree was whipped around in the wind like crazy. Here’s a picture I took a day or so before the storm. Look at all those blooms.
The branches are very pliable and bend easily in the wind, which we all have to do to survive life, right? Some of the blossoms got stripped, but the tree is fine and probably loved all the rain going down to her roots.
Hurricanes that hit this coast mostly develop off the coast of North Africa. There is one the weather people are watching now: Katia. I am holding my breath.
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