Family visit, new blocks, and capturing rocks in thread

My sister, aunt, son, daughter-in-law, daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter all visited for the Cherry Blossom Festival! I live in suburban Washington, DC. I had to put some of them up in a motel, but the visit was wonderful and so were the cherry blossoms. We toured the Smithsonian museums, rode the tour trolley, toured the National Cathedral,ate lunch in it's garden and made an auto excursion to Leesburg, Virginia. My 84 year-old aunt and 5 1/2 year-old grandaughter both kept up with all the walking. In Leesburg, besides lunch, we visited a thrift shop and a couple of antique stores. I bought a beautiful scarf in the thrift shop that I expected to cut up for crazy quilting, but I don't know. It may serve as a table cover instead, at least until I need a piece from it to exactly fit a crazy quilt block. It's 54 inches square.

Before the visit from my family, I made two crazy quilt blocks in greens. The first was in preparation for a workshop by Allison Aller at my embroidery guild, Constellation Chapter, EGA. She is giving two workshops, one on curved piecing of crazy quilts and the second on floral embellishment. I'm taking only the second so I made a block with curved piecing to be used there. The second is a donation block in support of breast cancer research for auction at the annual Crazy Quilt Seminar in Omaha, Nebraska.

My friend Susan reported on her blog about her trip to New York City's Central Park. She speculated on how to translate the many rock formations there into needlework. Well, I tried. My daughter, when she lived in Manhattan, was a rock climber. I took some pictures of her climbing with a friend in Central Park. In my first crazy quilt I translated one of those pictures onto a block representing her interests. I can't say I was satisfied with the result, but here's a picture as a challange for you to surpass.