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About Becky Goldsmith

I am a quilt designer/teacher/author, a wife/mother/grandmother, and certified yoga instructor who is searching for balance, strength, and happiness in all things.

Show and tell…

Susan S. sent me this photo of her first Vintage Gone Modern block, from Wool Applique the Piece O’ Cake Way. I really like her fabric selections and I’m surprised at how much I like the black stems. I don’t usually like stems this dark but they are very well-balanced by the other fabrics.

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She wrote:

Thought I would send you a photo of the first completed block of Vintage Gone Modern.  I love the combination of cotton with felted wool.  The colors are rich; the texture added by the wool is luscious.  It has added a tactile facet to applique. This is my third Piece ‘O Cake project; each is more enjoyable than the last!

I love getting this kind of email :-).

Street/random people photos…

People are interesting to look at. I don’t need to know the people to find them interesting. So when I’m out and about with my camera, I take pictures of people.

You don’t have to know these three people to have an idea about what they are doing, and what they might be thinking and feeling. I wonder if the fellow on the right is with the couple on the left?

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I thought this couple looked nice together as they took their time walking uphill, and down.

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This couple, admiring the view at an overlook, looked so peaceful against the blue sky.

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And then they were joined by a man ready to catch some rays…

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One of the things I like so much about the culture in Germany is an apparent lack of inhibition about their bodies. That might true of the men, more than the women… I don’t know and I don’t have a good way of finding out. But I find it refreshing. I wish we in the US were a lot less hung up on the way we look.

Sometimes people are pensive, or sad, in public. We can empathize with them from afar.

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He was looking at little bunnies…

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At Andechs, waiting for the wedding to begin… The guests were arriving as we left, many in traditional Bavarian clothing.

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I like taking pictures of people who are posing for a photo :-).

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Don’t they look happy!

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And, rarely, people will stop me to say ‘take my picture!’ so I do.

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Jeff asked me why I take pictures of these random people. I explained that when I look at photographs in museums or other spaces, I am drawn to pictures of people. I don’t know them, the photographer may not have known them, but the best of these pictures draw me in. My photos are not museum-worthy but they won’t ever get better unless I practice taking them.

And, lastly, a photo from an actual street. I love manhole covers and this one, featuring Munich’s coat of arms, is a very pretty one. And it has a person on it!

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Selfies…

I have never been much for selfies. My arms aren’t long enough and my nose always looks too big!  But I decided to go for it on this trip and Steve went with me…

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I’ve decided that the key is to get over yourself. No one has long enough arms.

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Also, it takes some manual dexterity to take a selfie with one hand. I’m not always successful, but I’m better than Steve who was not remotely interested in taking them.

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I also decided that you only need so many selfies. We did not overdo it.

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Jeff surprised us all by coming prepared with a telescoping selfie stick. He acknowledged that if that had been my idea, he would never have gone along but we were all glad he had it. You can fit 4 people and scenery into the frame if you can move the phone far enough away :-).

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Hiking at Kampenwand…

We took the S-Bahn (smaller train) to Kampenwand. It is a ski resort in the winter and a hiking spot in summer. There is a gondola to take you up the side of the mountain.

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You can hike to the top of the rocks, but we didn’t. We did hike to the Biergarten that is very near there.

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It wasn’t a hard hike.

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Along the way we watched para gliders taking off. There were lots of them flying around.

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There were cows! Actually, there are a lot of cows in Bavaria and they look somehow different from the cows I’m used to seeing.

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There is a small church…

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From this spot you can see another trail that takes you to a different high spot that overlooks the valley below. We decided to hike down and then up that little trail that you see in the next photo.

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Steve and I are still working on perfecting our selfies :-).

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There are several places to hike in Bavaria and I’m so glad that we are on this trip!

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Visiting Andechs…

From Wikipedia: “The Benedictine priory and erstwhile abbey of Andechs is a place of pilgrimage on a hill east of the Ammersee in the Landkreis of Starnberg (Upper Bavaria) in Germany, in the municipality Andechs. Andechs Abbey is famed for its flamboyant Baroque church (1712) and its brewery. Composer Carl Orff is buried in the church. The abbey runs a brewery, Klosterbrauerei Andechs.”

Just to be clear, we went for the beer. But first we stopped by Ammersee (Lake Ammer).

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These little boys braved the cold water for a swim:

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It was hot in the sunshine so we rode the bus up to the Andechs Abbey where you can see the church and grounds.

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This monk was waiting for a wedding to begin…

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I looked close and saw this photo, tucked behind Jesus’s feet on the cross.

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Building detail from the Abbey grounds…

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Next to the Abbey is a Biergarten where you can buy beer, sausage, cheese, and more.

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I haven’t said much about the sausage and beer. It was good but I’m happy to wait a while before I eat more sausage. The countryside around the Abbey is lush and green. In fact, the Bavaria is pretty much all lush and green at this time of year.

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One of the other things I noticed as we traveled around Bavaria is that most of the roofs, especially outside of Munich and Salzburg, have tile roofs. Even the barns have tile roofs!

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Amazingly enough, I have more pictures to share with you, but I’ll post them tomorrow.

The churches we saw…

I am Catholic but I had not realized just how Catholic Bavaria is. There are churches in just about every direction. Many are in the Baroque or Rococo styles. I was not good about making notes about the churches I photographed. These photos will just give you an idea about what you might find when you walk inside…

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I expected things to be dusty, but they weren’t.

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There were paintings in most of the churches and the ceilings were not ignored…

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Most of the churches had large pipe organs. I’m not sure which church this organ was in.

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And, lastly, none of these churches were out of use as churches. Even though tourists came in, looked, and took photos, they were respectful of the fact that these are houses of God.

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