Orange Month for the RSC

Orange is the colour for June for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge so I dug into my 2.5" squares bin and pulled out all of the orange squares.  I cut a few from my orange fat quarter bin to add some variety before making 6 orange hollow nine patch blocks. I am getting quite a stack of these blocks!  When I run out of the centre squares, I will put the blocks together to make a quilt. 

I continue to knit away on my scarf when the mood hits me...Maybe it will be done in time to wear it next winter.  It is now 51" long. 

Ten years ago, I bought myself a Sashiko kit and completed the hand stitching.  Since then, it has been sitting on a shelf, waiting to be finished.  I recently purchased some Japanese woven fabric to use for borders and binding.  I added one border this week and would like to quilt this to make a small wall hanging.  My question--do I just machine quilt the border or should I quilt the hand stitched part too?  The hand stitched part is 12" by 12".  

I finished off the last two selvage strips for a scrappy flannel baby quilt this week. I will work on getting my scraps sewn this week to fill in the middle of the diamond and the corners.  This will be a square baby quilt.  Of course, the flannel scrap and the flannel selvage bins don't even look like a dent has been made in them.  

My husband's birthday was in April.  His gift from me was a three night getaway at a bed and breakfast near Orangeville.  There are several places to hike in the area and we chose two ...Mono Cliffs Provincial Park and Island Lake Conservation area. Mono Cliffs is a popular hiking spot and can be quite busy on the weekends and during the summer.  Since we are retired, we were there on a Monday and there were very few other people around.  Such a beautiful spot and the breeze kept the mosquitoes at bay.  Island Lake was formed by damming the Credit River to control flooding downstream.  There is an accessible 8 km trail all the way around the lake which we hiked on Tuesday morning.  Here are some pictures from our hiking adventures.  The highlight was a close encounter with a porcupine beside the trail at Mono Cliffs.  He quickly climbed a nearby tree when he saw us. 

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The next few pictures are from Island Lake.

Don't you just love the spring green colours this time of year?

We found some interesting local restaurants for dinner after our hikes and indulged in these decadent desserts at Mrs. Mitchell's restaurant in Violet Hill. My husband had carrot cake and I had tartufo.  Both well worth the splurge. 

When wandering around Orangeville, we came across their library and went in to check it out.  It is in an older building--a Carnegie library--which has been completely gutted and renovated into a beautiful, accessible hub for bibliophiles.  The local theatre created some giant books to create an entrance to the story room in the children's department.  We were very impressed!

Speaking of bibliophiles, here are our daughter's crocheted book squares and books for the month of May. 

Finn and our daughter had some great weather for being outside this past week.  

I will link up with Kathy, Frederique and the RSC folks this weekend.