Abbey of Gethsemani

My husband has been trying to get me out of the house more often.
When we had a lovely warm sunny day earlier this week (sandwiched between endless days of rain and more rain), he said we should go for a drive...but with a destination where we could get outside and walk around as well.

I scrounged up a "Kentucky Visitors Guide" and started looking through it.    In the first few pages I noticed the listing for the Abbey of Gethsemani in Bardstown KY.
Neither of us had been there before and it was just far enough away to make a nice day trip.

Here is their website if you are interested....http://www.monks.org/

More info on Wikipedia... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbey_of_Our_Lady_of_Gethsemani

They have a visitors center where a film was shown about the daily routine of the Trappist Monks who live there.  There was also a small room with lots of photos and plaques to read about the history of the monastery. It is the oldest monastery in the US that is still operating.

The photo below is the entrance to the church, which is long and narrow and very plain looking.

We were allowed inside the gated-off visitors area as the monks filed in for one of their several daily services.

We walked around the grounds a bit.  There are two cemeteries, one for the monks, with plain small cross markers (public not allowed in that one) and this cemetery...both men and women...stones dated in the 1800s.

There are miles of walking trails on the property but there had been so much rain the ground was muddy and slippery. 

We did walk up a hill to a statue on top.   Somehow in the photo below I have a tree right in line with the statue on the hill so it's hard to make out.

They had some chairs up there so one could collapse and catch their breath enjoy the view.

We couldn't find any info about who the statue represents.  More than likely one of the saints.

It was very windy up there. It blew my ponytail apart!

Easier going back down than it was going up!

And there was a gift shop.  We had enjoyed our visit so Lonnie felt like we should buy a box of fudge to help the monks in their fund raising efforts. There were several flavors but they were handing out samples of the Bourbon Butter Walnut fudge...it was good so that's what we bought.

The monks actually make fruitcakes and fudge at that location.  The gift shop had jams, honey and more, made by Trappist monks at other monasteries as well.

They also bring in income by selling books by well known author and theologian Thomas Merton who became a Trappist Monk there in 1941 and lived there until his death.

Guest houses and dormitories for those who wish to make a retreat are offered at the monastery as well.

We left with more questions than we had when we started out...leading to a lot of discussion and looking up things on the internet.

Overall, it is a beautiful and peaceful place to visit.

a finished quilt

Well, I finished this nearly a month ago. My camera has the photos dated Jan 17th and I'm pretty sure that's correct.
I remember the snow was beginning to melt that day and I hurried to finish sewing down the binding so I could get some pictures before things got wet and slushy outside.

I had intended to have it finished months ago - because it was a gift for my lovely and talented younger sister, who was celebrating her 50th birthday.

I don't think she noticed it was late though - she was in Hawaii to celebrate the day. 

As she said...Hawaii five-oh  (50 -get it? - 50th birthday?)

It was a challenging quilt to put together. The actual piecing of the blocks was easy, but the hard part was trying to get the colors distributed evenly...and really just making decisions about which color to use where. 

 I did change a couple of things from the original pattern.  One thing was the border.

As you can see below - the pattern had a saw tooth border but I thought instead I'd like to go ahead and use up some of the leftovers of fabrics used in the quilt to make a checkerboard border.

Another change...see that large section of green and gold squares at the bottom of the quilt in the pattern photo below?   It's supposed to look like plowed/planted fields.
As I was putting the quilt together this section kept bugging me.  The rest of the quilt is made from much smaller pieces and I felt like these giant squares looked like an afterthought just to make the quilt longer...so I cut half of them off.

I also pieced some triangles for the mountains so they wouldn't look so much like pyramids. But then the snow covered tops nearly disappeared in the clouds.

The blue floral backing is not the best match but I wanted to use this fabric because it had such a soft and smooth hand (feel).

I tried something different when pin basting this quilt. It's a method I read about on the internet.

  I rolled the top on to a pool "noodle", then after smoothing out the backing and batting, I lined it all up and pinned as I unrolled the top.  It's a good system - everything stayed smooth and flat.

Here is one last photo that I snagged from Joy's facebook page.  I think she likes it!

One of these days, when she gets tired of building and piloting airplanes, parasailing, stand-up paddle boarding, zip lining, snorkeling, river tubing and all of that kind of stuff...I am going to see if she would like to come over sometime and sew quilts with me.