The Art of a Travel Story

  Hi everyone.   Happy weekend to you. I hope if you're in the US you had a nice Independence Day yesterday and are  enjoying the holiday weekend. 250 years...Wow. I remember the 200th anniversary clearly so I must be getting old. Ha ha! 😉

  I hope everyone, no matter where you live, had a nice weekend so far also. 

  I wrote this post several weeks ago, and I kept pushing it into the future. I figured it was time to share it, and with this being a holiday weekend, I thought a little bit of US history would work. If you're interested in US history you might enjoy this post. And if not, then I'll catch you another time.

 I never did finish my trip blog posts from when I went to Charleston, South Carolina back in April, so I thought this history inspired post would be a good choice for this weekend.

  I'm also joining Gillena for her Sunday Smiles  and Nicole for her Sunday in the Art Room (Sitar) which is canceled this week.   

  Today I'm taking you to Fort Sumter and on an adventure my husband and I took out into Charleston Harbor. I like the challenge of writing a travel post that tells a story, but it's always a little tricky when you're writing about history unless that's your expertise.I'm not even close to being a Civil War history expert, but I do find it interesting.  It's  tough because I want to tell a complete story, but not write a novel. I don't know if I succeeded today or not, but I'm sure if you read this you'll have something to say. 😉

   Our last day in Charleston was a history military-style day for us after a couple of nature days, and our visit to Fort Sumter takes us back into American history. This fort played a pivotal role during the American Civil War. The fort really started becoming a pivot point during the late autumn and early winter of 1860, right after Abraham Lincoln was elected into the office of president. It really became a pivot point after his inauguration on March 4, 1861.

  In this above photo you can see the fort as it looks now in 2026.  Forts Sumter was an American fort. It was under construction in the 1820's, and  when 1860 rolled around there were still construction workers there. The fort sits in Charleston Harbor on a man-made island, and its original purpose was to help protect the harbor from foreign invaders.  In the above photo you can see what is left to the fort. It was originally a 3 story building. In the flag photo below, if you look for the line on the flagpole (which is a bit deceiving from the angle I took the photo), you can see how tall the fort originally was.

   In 1860, the United States had a presidential election, and Abraham Lincoln was elected. Many people believed he would immediately free the slaves once he became president. This was especially true in the south where a lot of the economy was tied up in cotton and having slaves to work the fields. This made many southern states want to leave the United States, and South Carolina was the first state to do so in December of 1860. In fact Charleston was the heart of the secessionist movement. In the next few months, several other states would leave the United States and join South Carolina, forming what was called the Confederate States of America.

  However in 1860, Fort Sumter was an American (also known as the Union) fort, and it was manned by the American military. It  (along with 2 other forts) sat in what was  now  not the United States since South Carolina had left the country  The other 2 forts were connected to the mainland, but Sumter was not. 

   The military commander of these 3 forts was Major Robert Anderson. Since he was stationed with his men at Fort Moultrie, one of the forts connected by a bridge  to the mainland, he worried that staying there would lead to security risks. On Christmas night (after midnight so it was December 26, 1860), under the cover of darkness, he moved the entire garrison out across the bay to Fort Sumter and raised the American flag. The next morning when daylight arrived,  the people of Charleston were surprised that Fort Moultrie had been abandoned and that the American flag was flying high at Fort Sumter.

   Although this now meant that for the South Carolina military to capture Fort Sumter it would need to either bomb or attack  by ship, it also meant that the Sumter could not be easily resupplied. Between when the men moved onto this island up until the time it was attacked, food supplies would run very low. Several attempts to resupply the fort lead to those American supply ships being chased out of the harbor by various means. 

   Many negotiations went on between December 1860 and April of 1861 between the United States and the new Confederate States. None reached any real positive conclusions. Some of this was because President Lincoln, in his inaugural speech, said that all American military bases would stay in Union/American hands. He did not want to look weak after that and give up the fort. 

   Since none of these negotiations worked, and since the Confederate States wanted the Union military out of Charleston Harbor, tensions rose quite high.

  On the 12th April of 1861, the fort was bombarded by the South Carolinian military, setting the fort on fire and causing Anderson  (after a few days) to surrender in order to save his men. That military event is why the fort looks much like it does today. This event also started the American Civil War, also called the War Between the States, that lasted from April of 1861- April of 1865 and killed more Americans than any other war to date.  But because it was the Confederacy that attacked the fort, it can be said they started the war, not Lincoln.

   OK enough background. Here's some photos for you, starting with this model of how the fort looked in 1860. This model was inside the modern museum added to the fort . I think that was my husband's hand reflected in the glass on the top.

    Now you can see the present condition of the fort. This next photo is taken inside the fort, looking back to Charleston, which is where the bridge ( that you can see in the distance) is located.

   This next view is  also inside the fort, and it is mostly  the modern portion added by the National Park Service with the museum, store and offices.

    Every star on the US flag stands for one of the states. Another bit of history I learned at the fort was that when new states were added to the Union, new stars would be added on July 4 of the following year. This flag has 33 states, even though by the time the war started Kansas had been added to the Union. However, since the war started in April, its star would not be added until July so it was not on the flag flying at Fort Sumpter.

     I also learned that there was no set star pattern at this point in time, so the star pattern that flew at Fort Sumter was Major Anderson's preference.   

    To get to Fort Sumter you have to take a National Park Service boat tour.  On the tour you get a history lesson, and once you land, you get an hour to explore the fort. An hour may not seem like much, but it really was enough time since the fort and the island it is on is not very large.

   In this next photo you see some more ruins of the fort, and below that, where the tan twine circle is, you can see an original Civil War artillery shell that is still embedded in the wall. 

    If you look at this next photo, you can see some finger impressions from when the bricks were made. The bricks were made in the general local area, and as it was explained to us, made by slave children. One of them pushed a little too hard and left an imprint. It makes me wonder about the life this person had...and this unknown person is (sadly) only remembered by some imprints in a brick.

   More ruins.

   And finally, our hour passed and it was time for us to leave. There's my husband on the walkway out to the boat that would take us back to Charleston Harbor. The weather had changed while we were at the fort, with the wind picking up and the clouds coming in. It was even chilly.

   I hope you enjoyed this little bit of US history. And I also that you have a great rest of  your weekend and start to the new week.

   

Random Recent Friday Faces

   Hi everyone. Happy first Friday in July. Today I'm joining Nicole for  Friday Face Off and Gillena for Friday Lunch Break. I found some recent faces in my photos and thought I would share them today.

   My husband came across this fun sock monkey while cleaning some bins in the garage. He was a gift that a teaching friend made back when I was pregnant with my daughter  34 years ago. I threw him in the washing machine, and I must say he looks pretty good. The last time I saw my daughter, I returned him to his rightful owner.

   A few weeks back the dock needed to go into the water at my mother-in-law's house. Here's 3 of the 4 guys who were putting it in. From left to right is my sister-in-law's husband, their son-in-law and then my husband. The fourth guy was my son-in-law who was doing the on-land part. I also can't forget Mr. Pete's face. He was waiting  impatiently for them to finish and put the steps in so he could go swimming.

  Tomorrow is the July 4th Independence Day holiday as you might know. Tomorrow's plan is to rebuild the deck that connects into this dock, and these 4 guys will be back to work again.

   While having an off-work moment, my husband looked my way. I was lucky and captured a good photo.

   Also a few weeks back some friends our ours were up in our area from their home in North Carolina. We all met up for dinner at a restaurant in Manchester (New Hampshire) and posed for a photo. I've known my friend for 48 years, longer than I've ever known my husband. It's too bad she and her husband  moved south (although they love it down there) because the 4 of us really meshed, and I miss having them around.

   I can't forget my favorite canine faces either.

 For several weeks my husband's boat sat in the back yard while he cleaned it. He loves his boat, and he babies it.  Now it is back at the marina , not in the water, but we park it in a field at the marina for the summer. We put it in and then pull it out of the ocean every time we go to use it, which is not any trouble at all. Paying to leave the boating in the field is considerably less than paying for a slip or a mooring, and a lot of people do that.

   The dogs also love going for boat rides. Here's Maddie in HER seat on our first fishing trip of the season.

    My next photo is from ice cream Sunday. It's tough when you have an ice cream window only 5 minutes from the house. We decided several years ago that if we made a plan to go on Sundays, then the temptation to go other days wasn't so much because you know Sunday isn't that far off.

    This cone is a small sized one, so I would hate to see how big a large is. 

    The pups also enjoy car rides a lot. Especially on ice cream Sundays. 

   Maddie doesn't like cones, so Pete gets the end of my husband's cone. I always get my  ice cream in a cup so it doesn't end up all over my shirt, and Maddie gets to lick out the cup instead.

   Wishing everyone a wonderful start to the weekend. And if you are celebrating July 4th, I hope you have a super holiday too. 

  

Bumblebees and Second Looks

    Hi everyone. Happy July 2! Yesterday the crazy heat arrived to New Hampshire. 😧 I'm going to miss the beautiful weather we'd been having. 

    I have a few things to share on my post including stopping by Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog for Second on the Second. I also want to mention the last couple of days were busy, so I am once again going to apologize if I missed  any of your blog posts. 

   OK, I promise not to hyper focus on bees every post,😏,  but the other day David over at Travels with Birds made an important point in a comment on one of my recent honeybee posts. Since many of you enjoy a bit of bee info, I thought I would take a moment to share the general gist. (And then I won't keep going on about bees...well maybe I won't. )😉

    Honey bees do help with pollination, and they are important, however, sometimes people get so wrapped up  thinking honeybees can save our food supply that they forget about native bees. Native bees are the various species really in trouble. In fact, some of our foods cannot be pollinated by honey bees. Take tomatoes.

   OK, these are milkweed plants, not tomatoes, but you can see one native species of bumblebees.

    Honey bees evolved in Europe and Asia, and some foods, like tomatoes, that evolved in North or South America, evolved without the help of honey bees. Their flowers are not accessible to honeybees because the 2 species didn't evolve together and honeybees can't get to the pollen. The only ones that can do this are native pollinators. As native bees disappear, so might those foods they pollinate. Therefore it is important to  not to do big whole lawn sprays for insects ( all insects  breath the same way, so if you spray say for mosquitoes, it can effect bees) and to remember wild bees need habitat to live in.  I'm not trying to be the bee patrol, just passing on some information. 😁

  Today's main topic of my post is for Second on the Second  over at Altered Book Lovers Blog. I want to share some fabric art that I posted back in 2015 to go along with Halle's fabrictrim/sewing themed challenge this month at AJJ. . Here's my original post. More Quilting.

   I had a large piece of canvas that I painted, and then I did some stitching on it. Here's a few close ups.

    I'm still looking if I can find  any other photos for you to show the finished piece. It might be still folded up in a box under my sewing table because I know I never backed it, at least not yet. (Even though it's been a lot of years...too many actually.😒)

  I'll keep looking and add in a photo if I can find one.  

  With that in mind, I hope you have a super day!

It's July

   Hi everyone. I don't know what happened to June, but happy July to you.

   Before I get too far into my post,  happy Canada Day to my friends north of the border. 🍁

   Thank you Matilde for hosting over at Art Journal Journey last month. And thank you everyone who shared some Houses and Buildings. It was fun to see all the various houses and buildings people created. I can see it was a very creative month.

   But since it's now July it's time for a new challenge and a new host. This month I want to welcome Halle back. She's been with us for several summers now, and we love having you. Halle always has a great theme related to sewing ❤, and you can see some of her fantastic quilting and art pieces over at her blog Halle's Hobbies.

   This month Halle's theme is Fabric, Lace and Trims, Oh My!

   My first page is all paper and rubber stamps, but I do have some sewn pages coming as the month goes on. 

   I started with an 8x8 (inch) sheet of sewing themed paper. It had a pink vibe, so I painted my journal page pink, and once that dried, I attached my page. I then rubbed just a bit of the paint on the edge of the paper to soften it and make it look more part of the overall page. 

   I added a few stamped images to it including the bottom scissors, the snaps and the purple-ish pattern piece. Then I used my old Martha Stewart button paper punch and made the 3 buttons you see on the bottom left near the scissors. The other buttons were already printed the paper. 

  The top partial butterfly was on some scrap paper. I fussy cut it and added it. Then I had some butterfly washi tape that I added to continue the butterfly theme. To finish my page I added some paper lace on the left side, and I stamped the quote from an old Hero Arts sewing set.

  I hope you're excited about Halle's theme and will join us over at Art Journal Journey. Please remember we are an art journaling challenge, and we accept any type of art journaling, but we do not accept CARDS, ATCs, TAGS, etc. 

  Also just a reminder that we may not be able to comment on a link that goes to social media., so please be aware if you link up through social media you will most likely not hear from us.

  I hope you have a super start to the new month, and I', looking forward to seeing some sewing journaling  for Halle's challenge. 

   

T Stands for Another Play

    Hi everyone.  Happy new week to you. And hello  to everyone who  stops by Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog   blog for our weekend T Day meet ups.

   Last week was a nice balance of busy days and not so busy days. Of course a couple of rainy/cloudy days didn't hurt with that. 😉  My husband finally finished getting his boat ready for the season, so one day we went out and went fishing (and ha ha, guess who caught most of the fish; my poor hubby was kind of sad it wasn't him 😁). It was also time for a second play at the Ogunquit Playhouse in Ogunquit, Maine.

    You might remember from my T Day post a few weeks back that this year some friends and I bought a 3 show season pass to the theater. Last time we went to see a show about The Temptations (click on the link if you're curious about that play post). This time we went to see a classic that I had never seen either on the stage or  the film version. 

Again, no photos are allowed during the show so I borrowed a few from the playhouse's website.

    What a fabulous show. An usher told us during intermission that 3 of the actors, including Dolly, were Tony Award winners from Broadway and also that the costumes came from a Broadway production of this play. I'm not really up on Tony Award winners, but I can say that the whole cast was amazing. Here's some photos.

   You can see there was a lot of singing and dancing. Plus the sets were amazing. I'm always very interested in how they make sets. I know very little about how a stage is set up and how they are managed so maybe that's why I'm always curious about that.

    You might remember that last play post I mentioned how they have these  glasses that you buy with your first drink and then if you bring them back you only then have to buy your drink, not the glass also. Here's my ticket for T this week since I brought my glass back with me.  This time I had some prosecco, and I'm inside the theater in my seat. The lights made a lot of glare, and my phone couldn't quite decide if I was taking a photo of my glass or the curtain backdrop.  But anyhow, here's my drink.

And here's a clearer view of that intro background that we saw before the play began.

   We don't have tickets for the next play, although we have talked about getting them because we've had such a good time at these first 2 shows. Our final season ticket is not until early September when the play will be The Producers, which I have seen years ago in Boston. It's by Mel Brooks, and I remember laughing non-stop. I am looking forward to that show.

   I hope everyone has a great T day and week ahead. And for those of you in Canada who don't stop by frequently, have a great Canada Day, and for those of you in the US, have a wonderful July 4th holiday.

Sunday Art -Mish Mash

    Hi everyone. I hope you're having  a great weekend. It's already the last weekend of June, which doesn't seem at all possible, does it?

   Thanks everyone for your bee questions and comments.  When I open the hives I do use a smokers, but I don’t suit up.  I do suit up when I put in a new batch of bees because then you get so many flying around all confused.  New bee packages contain 10,000-12,000 bees, and they all have to leave the package and get into the hive so there's a lot of bees in motion at once.

 

   But usually when I go into the hive I don’t get all that many that fly out. Most of them stay inside the hive doing their job and some of them are off looking for pollen and nectar. Those bees are so busy they just ignore you.  It’s just those few guard bees you have to be aware of. However, if you stay calm, you can usually just ignore them, or if they are really bugging me, I have a brush with soft bristles that I use to move bees inside the hive (when and if I need to move them), and I can also use that tool to brush the bees off of me. 

  And not to bore anyone with more bee photos or to give anyone the heebie jeebies, but the wild milkweed growing in my garden is now starting to flower and is attracting all kinds of bees, including my honeybees.

  And  for some reason (which I can't figure out), my new bees would rather enter the hive by going under the outer cover as you can see here

rather than going in and out the main hive entrance like the old hive does. Hmmmm.

   Today I am joining Nicole for her Sunday in the Art Room (SITAR) and also Gillena for her Sunday Smiles.  I'm going to start off this art part of my post with my final page for Matilde's Houses and Buildings challenge at Art Journal Journey. Matilde's challenge runs through this Tuesday.

    This page is part of a homemade journal that I used some music sheets in. Then I created this page on top of the sheet.

     I used a small piece of textured paper for the house itself, and I also used a TH die cut yellow house block to create the roof. There is some of the yellow pieces underneath the textured paper.  I outlined these with a Sharpie. Then I added a die cut butterfly on the roof. The window, flowers and snal are all punch out and/or fussy cut images from 49 and Market. The little white planting pot the flowers are in was a scrap on my table. It's actually from a Greek column die that I had used at some point. 

     The gentleman is also is TH die cut that's been sitting on my work table (the die has 3 of these men and I used the other 2 at some point). Then to finish my page  I used a TH quote rubber-stamp and added a few small flat yellow beads. 

   In this next photo you can see the whole page within the journal.

   And finally, a few views of all the milkweed and also the beehives. This is my wild garden area, and other than a tiny bit of fall and very early spring quick clean up, I don't do anything here. I just let nature take its own course, and occasionally someone gives me some plants and I might add them here because this area gets a lot of sun.

    That's all for today. Have a great rest of your weekend and start to the new week.