Part 2 -- South Louisiana jaunt

On Tuesday Richard and I drove south to a couple of small towns. The plan was to see a bit of the landscape, perhaps a little culture, and the Vatican exhibit at St. Joseph's in Rayne. 

In Crowley, home of the rice festival, we saw this fabrication shop where swamp boats are made. We had to pull over and get a few pictures. How my husband knows about this sort of thing always amazes me, but he was able to answer all of my silly questions. 

So the way these things work is that the boat sits on top of the rice field, or crawfish pond or marsh, wherever. The big paddle wheel on the back "floats" on the bottom and pushes the boat. The hydraulic arm is long so that it can sink deeply or just roll along on top of the swampy ground, and the driver can adjust the depth as needed.

Farmers and fishermen can purchase boats in different widths, lengths, and paddle wheels, depending on their individual needs. Interesting, no? Notice the tarp on the top? That's because it's hot in Louisiana. The tarps provide some shade for the human and for the product on board. That question I did not need to ask.

As we drove through Crowley, I took a few pictures of the downtown area. We saw some beautiful old homes, but the rain and time didn't allow for pictures. Have you noticed the rain splattered windshield?

Isn't this a fabulous picture? Yes, those specks are
raindrops, but I still like it. The cross makes it perfect.

And on the way home we were enjoying the beautiful sunset when Richard realized that I was taking pictures of the sun setting from the town of Sunset. Cute, no? 

Mermantau, Crowley, and Rayne...a South Louisiana jaunt

I got a text from Meggan telling me about the special exhibit this week at St. Joseph's in Rayne. It looked interesting, so our  first open day (Tuesday), Richard and I jumped in the truck. About the same time, Rory called to say there's a little place we might want to check out. He hadn't been, but still...

So off we went in hopes of an adventure. What we got was a downpour. The interesting little place was a dud, but we saw lots of rice fields, several rice mills, and a couple of towns that we would visit again. 

Mermentau River

Not much larger than Evergreen, Mermentau is a little town on the Mermentau River. The river looks wide here, and it is, but it spills into Lake Arthur where it becomes much bigger as it travels into Grand Lake and eventually the Gulf of Mexico. 

One of many rice fields between Mermentau and Crowley

The area between Mermentau and Crowley is part of the Grand Chenier prairie, rich soil perfect for growing rice, crawfish, and sugar cane. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service notes, "The Chenier Plain is a popular destination for nature watchers, anglers and hunters, who come from around the world....With its location at the terminus of the Central and Mississippi Flyways, coastal wetlands in this focal area are extremely important for waterfowl and...up to 5.8 million ducks. The area also has productive estuaries, nearby forests and grasslands, and expansive tidal wetland systems. The coastal waters...contribute substantially to the nation’s commercial fishery landings, particularly for shrimp, blue crab, oysters and Gulf menhaden operations."

Top: Riviana rice mill; Bottom: Supreme Rice
Mill in operation (note the train cars waiting to be loaded)

From Crowley we moseyed east to Rayne along Hwy. 90 for the original reason of the trip: The Eucharistic Miracles of the World exhibit.  It was set up to explain each miracle independently. Placards give an overview, details, and photos of monstrances and tabernacles, artwork,  churches and saints. 

And that rounds up our little jaunt. There were other interesting finds along the way, but this post is plenty long already. 
Thanks for stopping by.

Pin It Weekly #251

Wow, I've posted about five years of weekly pins. Some of my own pin, some from followers, some from pinners who just happen to have great boards and ideas.

From the Audubon Society, find it at:
https://www.pinterest.com/mary_marcotte/humming-bird/

Five years! 250 posts. I'm quite happy with my stick-to-it ability. (It's a rare thing.)

From the Audubon Society, find it at:
https://www.pinterest.com/mary_marcotte/feathered-friends/

I just had to look back and see when this started. Apparently the Pinterest bug bit me hard in the summer of 2012. By the end of the year I was posting weekly Pinterest posts. I called them Pin It Wednesday until I figured out I was rarely posting on  Wednesdays.

From the Audubon Society, find it at;
https://www.pinterest.com/mary_marcotte/butterfly-flying-flowers/

To give myself a little leeway, I changed the name to Post It Weekly and was thrilled to post anytime on a weekday.

Now here we are almost six years later and I'm still going. Well, according to the dear darling the math doesn't add up, but he doesn't know Mary math, so how could he figure it out?

So, happy dance! And three cheers for six years! Plus thank yous all around to all of you for hanging in with me. Six years of Pinterest foolishness and seven with this blog. Love, hugs, and Southern squeezes to you all.

See you in a quilt,
Mary

Sunday Quilt Inspiration: Indigo

I'm sorry that this post is a day late. I'm struggling with Sunday evenings. They seem quite busier than those Sunday evenings when I knew I had to settle down and get lesson plans written then get things ready for school. I'm going to have to work on a  better Sunday evening routine.

Indigo plant -- a member of the pea family

This late SQI is supposed to be about indigo, which is a deep blue/navy color that has been around since before the Europeans discovered the New World. The indigo plant has over 750 species and can be found in the subtropic and tropics of the world. The oldest known use of indigo is from Peru, but the Crusaders brought the dye to Europe as one of the spices bought and sold during that time. 

Producing natural indigo is both expensive and time-consuming, so in the 1880's Adolf von Baeyer determined a way to make a synthetic indigo that is faster and cheaper. However, like so many other synthetic products, the byproducts of synthetic indigo are hazardous to the earth. Nevertheless, jeans and other items which use this synthetic dye are popular and used widely. 

Did you know that denim (no matter what color blue it is dyed) produces such waste products as formaldehyde, hydrogen cyanide and other hazardous chemicals? Not only are these chemicals used and produced during the making of the dye, they are also produced when the fabric is dyed and when it is finished (washed and rinsed for human use). 

The majority of information for this article came from here.

I don't know about you, but I'm truly surprised by this information. I honestly thought I'd find that farmers are raising indigo plants and those plants are processed for use in fabric. 

Regardless of how indigo is made or used, there are bound to be some beautiful quilts already made using this rich color. 

Here's hoping that you learned something about this beautiful color and also that you are inspired to create using it as well. It's been a favorite color of mine since I read about it in third or fourth grade in a book that told a story based on history or biography and illustrated both the story and the meaning of uncommon words. I'd love to find that book today. It was my first historical fiction and likely the one that hooked me on reading.

Pin It Weekly #228

Happy first Pin It Weekly of 2018!

One of my bloggy friends sent a sweet card for the holidays. What a wonderful gesture! Preeti, of SewPreetiQuilts, has been a wonderful friend in other ways, but I want to focus on her card because it's so darling. Thanks sweet Preeti!

And since Preeti is definitely on my mind, I decided to check out her Pinterest site. She has one! Yay! These are from the board that shows her quilts. Aren't they something fantastic?

She has another board of quilts that she is interesting in maybe making one day. Ah, some nice quilts...I need to pin some of those!

And now some of the things I have been pinning. Just this crazy mix-mash (is that really a word?) of things and stuff. No rhyme or reason behind my thinking. Just stuff I like.

Okay, so it turns out that I was mistaken. Everything after Preeti is from The Met. Every now and again I fall into The Met-hole and find it impossible to get out. I never pin anything because Why? It's already there. Organized by people whose job it is to curate and organize such things. Life is perfect in some corners.