Hello From Norway

This week and next week I am on a cruise in Norway. The International Quilt Museum has a fundraiser cruise on board, so you could say that I am adjacent to the IQM group. Several friends from the quilting world are on this trip.

Before leaving my new home in Port Ludlow Washington, we managed to get my new studio 90% unpacked and set up. When I return home November 1st, it will be time to finish organizing, and get back to work on my next few projects.

While I’ve been gone, a coyote showed up on our back patio. Paul posted a photo on Next Door, and I shared on Facebook. A few days later we heard from someone on the other side of Port Ludlow, that this coyote had been born in their back yard and they were glad to know she had survived the last year. These new friends are retired from the Forest Service, and share our love of the forest and the wild creatures there.

This reminded me of my trip to Guatemala many years ago, with Kathy Price and Mission of Love. We traveled with a group of surgeons who were there to perform cleft lip and cleft palate surgeries. I was the official photographer for the trip, on the road, in the community, and in the operating room. On the last day we visited 5000 year old Mayan ruins. A Mayan shaman came with us, and she offered to give me a Mayan astrology reading. She told me that my spirit animal is the coyote! So this coyote on our back porch let me know that my spirit animal was watching over things while I am gone.

This trip was billed as a Northern Lights adventure, and it has not disappointed!  I have had a couple nights where I just take photos from my verandah. I took these photos with my cell phone, on the Night photo setting. You can see them with your naked eye, but the phone captures the colors with even more vibrance.

A month ago I was very worried that my recovery from my knee injury would not progress enough for me to go on the trip, but fortunately I’ve continued to heal each week and so was able to make the journey. I am still a little stiff and wobbly, and I brought a cane for when I am out and about (or when the ship is rocking and rolling!) but I’ve managed to make it work as long as I rest my knee after a walkabout.

At the start of my trip I flew from Seattle to Amsterdam (a nonstop flight on Delta) and then had a car take me to my hotel in Rotterdam across from the Cruiseport. My friend Marijke van Welzen came to visit on my ‘rest’ day. We had a chatty lunch, and then visited the Fenix Museum of Immigrants.

One of the friends in the IQM group is Susanne Miller Jones (and her husband Todd) – who has organized several exhibits that I’ve participated in over the years. My art quilts in her “Fly me to the Moon” and “Her Story” projects traveled extensively. My astronaut quilt was exhibited at NASA which is where I first met ISS astronaut Karen Nyberg. My portrait of Rosalynn Carter now hangs in the Carter Center, in Atlanta. Thanks for those opportunities, Susanne!