My family and I were invited to go with some friends up the river on their boat and hike in to a lake where they have gone moose hunting. Of course, we said yes! We rode a couple miles up the river and then hiked inland to the meadow and lake. It was really gorgeous! Here is a great photo of my dear husband.


This is the lake we went to see. We saw a moose on the way there but it was too far away to get a good photo.


The boat goes pretty fast and I enjoyed watching my daughter's hair blow all around. Even though it was warm out, about 70 degrees, we were all wearing two jackets/sweatshirts in the boat.


The wild roses are blooming now, well maybe not now after the hail/rainstorm we had, but they were then. Last year we were traveling when the roses were out and I missed them all. I just love the way they smell, like cheap little girl perfume.

Both kids caught frogs, this little tiny one was so cute!

And what IS this? What a weird thing to happen in a photo!?!


There was an enormous beaver house in the lake we were at but we saw this beaver along the river. He was really big and was walking slow. They chewed down some huge trees!


This photo was taken from the river a few nights before, just after a rain storm. Wow, Alaska is just beautiful, all you have to do is open your eyes!


And today I did some sewing for the first time in a long while! I quickly put the binding on this quilt. I even have someone in mind to give it to.


And I mentioned I was working on a hand piecing project. Well, I believe if you are going to take the time to hand piece something, it should be hard to take advantage of what you can do hand piecing that you can't do easily by machine. I think this pattern is called Coat of Many Colors. It is for my daughter when she gets married. Being that she turns 12 this summer, I think I have enough time to finish it. *grin*

I really enjoy hand piecing. Here are some photos of some other hand pieced projects.

The star below is done by hand, the borders and quilting are done by machine.


This whole quilt is done by hand, piecing and quilting.


Some of these blocks are hand pieced. I was spending a lot of time in the car and pieced then. If you look closely at the blocks, the ones that are hand pieced are the hard ones. There are about 8 hand pieced ones in this quilt.


I think the top star and bottom stars here are hand pieced.