Walk Report

Hello, everyone.

The sky was hazy and the day was forecast to be hot, but we got out and got walking anyway.

Did the Hike and Bike for about 6 miles, working-in new insoles for both of us. There were 15 cottontail bunnies to see, plus two roadrunners. One of them sat in a tree and called at us.

A roadrunner

I've been working on some little things to hang from our packs on the pilgrimage this time. We're going to be walking to Fatima, as well as to Santiago de Compostela, and I thought it would be an idea to have some sort of token that we're pilgrims to both places.

The Marian monogram traced onto Sulky Solvy and basted onto the nylon flag fabric (from stash) and ready to embroider

One of the finished hang tags. The piping is supposed to be reflective--by the way, don't soak reflective piping in OxyClean solution to get the remnant blue ink out! It softens the reflective coating. Stitched in cotton floss, using stem stitch. backed with 2 layers of poly organza and 2 layers of white ripstop nylon. A buttonhole is at the top for hanging the tag from a handy place.

I've never tried making something like this before. If I do it again, I think I'll put the last layer of ripstop on last, over the piping, and I think I'll also soak off the Sulky Solvy before assembling the little tag. Might be good to trace the design in yellow, too, instead of blue. (That was supposed to be a light blue and you can see from the picture that it's almost as bright as the floss!)

These tags are about 2/3 the size of our scallop shells from last year. I think we may use the same shells again this year, since we didn't "souvenir-ize" them by writing details of our first pilgrimage inside or anything like that. They're still plain and simple, the natural creamy color of the shell.