Thread Tales From A Scrappy Quilter

Bob & Mickey at 110 ft during a SCUBA Diving trip to a 1946 F4 Corsair WWII plane wreck. Garden Eels 110 ft down in the Hawaiian waters next to the F4 Corsair plan wreck.  The Garden eels look like 1/2 inch plants coming out of the sand.  There were thousands about 6 inches apart.  As you approach them, they retract into the sand 1 row at a time.  Extremely cool to witness! Our dive trip was cut short when the rudder bolts sheared!  The 40 ft boat was drifting  toward shore and the BIG waves.  Capt. threw out an anchor very quickly! Then with the help of a stout screw driver we were under way.  BUT, Bob and one of the Dive Masters had to manually steer the the boat with a 8 ft long steering bar.  We did not accomplish any of the 3 boat wreck dives we set out to do, but got to dive the WWII plane wreck.  That was worth all the turmoil!  Plus this dive day was free!  The dive shop recheduled the 3 tank wreck dive day ...

Furlough Friday and Bob was able to take the day off too!   We packed a lunch, rented kayaks from Hickam and off for a day full of adventure.   As you can see, we don't have those brilliant blue skies yet, but a beautiful day, warm temps and definately warmer water. That is "flat island" to your left behind us and the little peak in the distance to the right is Molokua.   Molokua is the island was in the million dollar view house that we looked at renting.

I have a finish and finally something that we can use for a lap quilt here.   Has been very hard on this quilty family to be quiltless (except for a small quilt Mick brought) for this long......     The front fabrics all came from a Connecting Threads kit called "Sassy Pinwheels" that I ordered and got in just before Christmas.  I had been stashless prior to that order arriving.  Meanwhile, I ran across a small quilt done in this pattern with bright white background and vibrant jewel tones and thought it was so pretty.  Determined I could do similar with my sherbet prints and that it might work up OK.  I like it!   The backing was made from a collection of F4's that I bought downtown @ The Calico Cat, just sewn together almost in the sizes they were cut.  It is rather cute and bright.  One focal fabric reminds me more of Florida.  It has monkeys, manatees (?), dolphins, flying fish.... and flamingos.  ...

We finally worked in the organized walking tour of Honolulu's historic China Town.   Our tour guide gave us a fast and entertaining tour of the district and we learned so much.   We all look forward to going back with a more leisure pace and sample lots more.  The evening was topped off by one of the restaurants grand opening ceremony where we live.  Hawaiian BBQ but is Chinese.  Fantastic celebration that I did not have my camera for.  Beautiful costumes of dragons, dancing and leaping about.  The lead person jumps into the air and lands on the rear person so that the dragons stand up tall.  Drummers keep a beat going and the dragons entertain in the street.  Children feed the dragons dollars.  I wish I had had my camera, costumes and entertainment was excellent.  So was the food! This is the east gate into China Town.  The male lion is always on your right, the female on the left.  The way we know this is a m...