Walking with Giants

 Today on the Endeavourers Challenge blog we are revealing our responses to this quarter's Challenge - Patterns in Nature. Now, given that I proposed this particular challenge you would think that I would find it really easy to come up with a quilt to fit the theme, wouldn't you? Alas, no that was not the case, I dithered for ages over what to make. 

Then one day this photo popped up on my screen. The photo was taken a few years ago when we visited Northern Ireland and Donegal and went to see the Giant's Causeway. The site was very busy when we visited so it was almost impossible to get a photo of the basalt columns without several dozen tourists clambering all over them, so I was very pleased with myself when I managed to get this photo of just the columns. I had been thinking of plants, leaves, flowers, etc., for my Challenge quilt but realised when I saw the photo that these hexagon shaped columns would be ideal for the Patterns in Nature theme. 

 

I gathered together my supplies, quilting cotton for the basalt columns from the Cottage Cloth collection by Renee Nanneman for Andover Fabric, Linen/Cotton mix shirt for the background and Linen for the treescape. The linen and linen mix fabrics are a nod to the Linen industry in Northern Ireland, which prospered not far from the Causeway itself.

With the aid of some hoarded hexagon templates and papers I was able to create a range of paper-pieced columns to replicate the Causeway. 

So, here is my finished Challenge quilt - Walking with Giants. 

Once I had worked out how I was going to interpret the theme I enjoyed putting it all together, but one of these days I am going to surprise myself and not leave it all to the last minute :)

If you want to see how my fellow Endeavourers responded to the Challenge head on over to have a look here.

Walking in the footsteps of Giants

A while ago friends invited us to visit them at their holiday home in Donegal, so we decided to use the opportunity to see a part of the world that we had only briefly visited before. As regular readers know we are big Game of Thrones fans in this house, so as this trip would give us the chance to see some of the locations used in GoT it was too good an opportunity to pass up.

We flew to Belfast International Airport and headed over to the coast at Larne to start our whistle stop tour. Sadly we were too late to visit the walled gardens of Glenarm Castle so had to make do with a quick peep and a promise to ourselves to return.

Following the Causeway Coast and Glens route we ended up in Ballycastle, which gave us our first GoT connection as it is the birthplace of the actor Conleth Hill, who plays Varys in Game of Thrones.

This beautiful statue on the harbour front represents the Irish legend of the Children of Lir, who were turned into swans by their stepmother and sentenced to spend 900 years living in the loughs of Ireland.

Clearly the same artist was behind this statue at the harbour celebrating the fishing that brought prosperity to the town.

Fishing was the reason for this rather scary rope bridge at Carrick-a-Rede, as it was used by salmon fisherman to access the best places to catch the migrating salmon who passed by. No salmon to be seen nowadays, just the shoals of tourists weaving their way to and from the coach park!
It was daunting enough walking across the bridge with both hands free, I cannot image trying the same trip with one hand clutching a large bundle of salmon, can you?

If these nesting seagulls are anything to go by though, there are still plenty of fish in the sea.

Our next GoT connection was the tiny harbour of Ballintoy, which serves as the Iron Islands harbour for Theon Greyjoy's return.

With scenery like this on the doorstep it is not difficult to reimagine it as Iron Islands.

All that walking worked up an appetite, so we stopped for lunch at the Red Door Tea Room in Ballintoy, where if you ever find yourself I recommend the seafood chowder, it was delicious :)

Of course, we couldn't visit this part of the world without making our way to the main attraction - the Giant's Causeway, where legend has it that the Irish giant, Finn McCool, decided to confront the Scottish Giant, Benandonner, and throws rocks into the sea to create a path across to Scotland. When Finn arrives in Scotland though, he discovers that Benandonner is a bit bigger than he thought, so decides to beat a hasty retreat. Naturally the Scot in me relishes that part of the tale :) Benandonner was, however, deprived of his revenge by Finn's wife who disguised Finn as a baby, upon sight of which, Benandonner decided that if the babies were that size he definitely didn't want to meet the father :)

Even with the inevitable hordes of tourists clambering all over it, the Giant's Causeway is an amazing sight.

There is another unusual sight in this rock formation next to the Causeway, but I will leave you to guess what it is :)

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