14th Annual Hummingbird Stitchers Guild Quilt Show, Sierra Vista, AZ March 5

My friend Judy Olson, fellow volunteer from Hospice Alliance, Kenosha is a sister (Wendy) who is part of this very talented and active quilt club.   We make the 2 hour mountain filled vista trip down to see the lovely works of fabric art.

 There are many booths outside the exhibit hall.  Loved this minion who became a snugly pillow.

 Every year, the group launches a "challenge topic" for quilted wall hangings.  This year was "Sew You think You Can Dance."

 "Midnight Waltz"

 "Cosmic Square Dance"

 "I Could Have Danced All Night"

 "Dancing Lights"

 "Lord of the Dance"

 "Jitterbug"  This won First Place and Best in Show - no small accomplishment in a competition with some very talented quilters.  There were many quilts with beads and buttons adornments this year.  but this was incredibly beautifully done.  See the close ups below.  

 The background is as beautiful as the appliques on top

 Loved the leaves.  Sooooo much work

Always been partial to ladybugs!!!

 Alaskan Memories

 French Braid plus embroidery

 "When Science Meets Creativity"

Each Square is labeled.  So cute and truly creative!!!

 "Petals of My Heart"  Wish my flower patch could look like this.  Love the Owl in the right upper corner.

 This year even the borders of the quilts were decorated.

 "Indigo"

 Humming Bird I and II

 "Huachuca Mountain Sunset"  Amazing to see fabric replicate nature.

 This was simply labeled "Nine Years"  This picture does not do justice to the intricate background fabric design and the geometric cutouts.  It won 2nd Prize.

 "San Blas Moles"  "My Nicaraguan roots love these art pieces made in Panama."

 "Quaking Aspens"

 Flip Flopping on the Beach.

 "Traditions".  The story behind this quilt explains the name.  This  quilter bought 30 old quilt squares on the internet.  They were in rough shape.  She washed and repaired them to make this quilt.  It shows the deep respect quilters have for those hands long ago worked the vintage fabric and the dedication to preserve it.

 "Halloween Baltimore"  Must record all owls!

 "Asian Spring"

 From the Vintage Quilt Display.  "Stamp Quilt"

Imagine cutting all these stamp size pieces of fabric AND THEN getting them to line up and stitching then together.  Many hours of work.  I have some quilts like this from my grandmothers of both sides of the family.

 My Mother called this design "Grandmothers Flower Garden"

   Jenne got 2 of these baby quilts - "Sunbonnet Girl"

 An Eagle Scout's history quilt.

 "Audubon's Christmas"

 The fabric looks like real seeds in he bird feeder.  How did they do that???

 "Night Cactus"

 "Flowers and Buds"  Beads in every square, around the flowers and the border!!!

 "Chinese Beads"

 "Bright Stars"

 "Friends and Flowers"  Gorgeous detail even on the border

 The road home through the Santa Rita Mountains

 Grassland

This is a metal statue of a cow and calf.  I could not get a good picture of the herds along side the road.  Lots of black cattle. 

 We passed many ranches with names like Fellows Ranch, Double D Ranch, Flying Star Ranch.

 Border Patrol Inspection

We're a little higher now.

 The land just folds over and over into ravines

 

 Heading down into the valley again.

 The blue sky looks like it could be an ocean over there between the mountains

 This straight road leads to Green Valley.  We've left the Santa Rita's far behind.

 No more grassland

 Prickly pear cacti

 The Green Valley Pecan Farm has thousands of acres full of trees all around Green Valley  The irrigation maybe why Green Valley is named..

 Sunset

Our side of the Santa Rita Mountains.

Tohono Chul Feb 2016

Lunch at Tohono Chul with Al and Carol.  The grounds are expanding again with new planting and paths.

 Unnamed but very distinctive.  Perhaps next time we come the name tag will be in place.

 New vibrant magenta flowers.

 Old faithful agave bloom, but no less beautiful orange.

 A banana yucca in bloom.

One of my favorite flower "patches" to track while we're here.  Those plain old drab cacti will light up later in March.

 My favorite purple blossoms on the large Texas Mountain Laurel

Smaller version on the Texas Mountain Laurel

 Another new unnamed blooming "jack in the bean stalk" type of plant.

 Pink fairy duster bush

 Rare Mother of Millions plant so named because of the uncountable number of blossoms

Red bottle brush bush

Natural desert landscape

No snakes this year, Jan

Must have a desert oasis represented

Tohono Chul has an exhibit hall that features a variety of art.  This is called "In Full Bloom,"

 Mary Vaneecke is the artist who completed this incredible masterpiece of stitching, quilting, applique.  This picture does not do it justice.  The lacy doilies are re purposed as giant flower blossoms.  It is titled "Abuela's Garden." ( Abuela is Spanish for grandmother.)

"vintage hand worked textiles, window screen, re cycled sari ribbon, which are dyed, layered, and stitched to represent flowers. "

A lovely botanical garden is never THAT far from civilization.  Arizonians and snow birds still drink coffee and those fancy iced drinks.

 Good night, moon

Steward Mirror Lab Feb 2016

Al and Carol, friends from Illinois are visiting for a week.  Al is a photography buff, so we attended the Steward mirror lab tour in Tuscon.  The lab makes mirrors for the largest telescopes on the planet.
From their web site:
The Mirror Lab team has also developed a revolutionary new method to polish the honeycomb mirrors with a deeply curved, parabolic surface that results in much shorter focal lengths than conventional mirrors. The pioneering work being done today at the Mirror Lab had its beginning around 1980 with a backyard experiment by Dr. Roger Angel, the lab's founder and scientific director. Curious about the suitability of borosilicate glass (the kind used in glass ovenware) for making honeycomb structures, he tested the idea by fusing together two custard cups in an improvised kiln. The experiment was a success and led to a series of bigger kilns and small furnaces and, eventually, the spin casting of three 1.8 meter mirrors.
The Mirror Lab continues its impressive history of successful, ground breaking mirror castings with the Giant Magellan Telescope.  This telescope will be the largest and most advanced earth-based telescope in the world when complete.  Currently, three of the seven, 8.4 meter segmented mirrors have been cast.  The first mirror is complete and the other two are in various stages of production.  On September 18, 2015 the fourth center-primary mirror was cast at the mirror lab.


This display case shows the chucks of glass that are melted in the honeycomb mold.




The oven that melts the glass is huge - no picture this time.  They were at the polishing phase. 

This mirror is ready to be lifted and moved to the polishing station.  It is huge and very heavy.  Note the many suction cups that will lift it.

This crane will lift the mirror to a vertical position.

This is the fourth mirror, just beginning the polishing process.

LSST (Large Synoptic Survey Telescope)

Particular scientific goals of the LSST include:

• Measuring weak gravitational lensing in the deep sky to detect signatures of dark energy and dark matter.
• Mapping small objects in the Solar System, particularly near-Earth asteroids and Kuiper belt objects.
• Detecting transient optical events such as novae and supernovae.
• Mapping the Milky Way.

Allowing for maintenance, bad weather and other contingencies, the camera is expected to take over 200,000 pictures (1.28 petabytes uncompressed) per year, far more than can be reviewed by humans. Managing and effectively data mining the enormous output of the telescope is expected to be the most technically difficult part of the project.^[21][22]Initial computer requirements are estimated at 100 teraflops of computing power and 15 petabytes of storage, rising as the project collects data.^[23]

It is also hoped that the vast volume of data produced will lead to additional serendipitous discoveries.  Our tour guide explained that eventually, amateur star gazers can use this to study and data mine specific regions of the sky.  It will work sort of like google mapping for navigation works now.  So it may be possible for regular folks to discover something new in the cosmos!!  Not till 2020 though...........Stay tuned.

Tumacacori Mission

We returned to Tumacacori Mission on Thursday with friends, Norma and Joe.  We followed the self tour that explains the incredible history of this site beginning in 1691 with Jesuit priest missionaries.  I borrowed a summary from the web site.

Always Changing - Forever the Same

More than just adobe, plaster, and wood, these ruins evoke tales of life and land transformed by cultures meeting and mixing. Father Kino’s 1691 landmark visit to an O’odham village when he established Mission Tumacácori was just one event among many. Wave after wave of change has swept or crept across this realm - this land and its people are not static. Come visit and experience this heritage. 

This must have been a very busy place.  The building on the right was a storehouse for grain, dried fruit from the orchards and other food stuffs that would sustain the village when the growing season was over.

What must the Indians thought about the "white" man who brought worshiping the One God in a building like this.

This is a miniature replica of the inside of the church.  Very little of the decorative painting is left now.  The sense of history is very strong.

Every Weds, Thurs, and Fri this volunteer makes free tortillas with refried beans and salsa on an open wood fire.  They were delicious.

This is just one of the life like displays in the museum, a priest working in the mission library.  We always take note of libraries wherever we are!

The required gift shop.  Lots of books, so much history...

Very strange cloud formation.  We stopped in Tubac which is only 10 minutes from the mission.  No rain and no noticeable wind at ground level, but the wind sculpted those clouds.

Back to Green Valley for supper at the Arizona Family Restaurant.  Norma can't handle Mexican food, so we opted for the generic fare.  A great day visiting with friends from Kenosha who now live in Mesa. AZ