Charlevoix Part II

I started the day out Friday with a fabulous scrambled egg breakfast. Not your typical eggs -- these included fresh cilantro, chives, cheese, onions, and more. Add the sausage and bacon and you've got the perfect beginning to the day. Denise and I took Miki for a walk through the trails that Mike has groomed. I sweat like mad just like when I work out so it must have been a good walk, right?


I spent a good hunk of the day knitting and we went for a nice boat ride with their neighbors, the Geigers. Dinner was a cookout at the Geiger's home afterwhich we sat outside and watched the fireworks. Friday's fireworks were the prelude to Saturday's grand finale fireworks.

Saturday morning Denise and I headed down to Boyne City to their Farmers' Market, in search of more of the delicious organic blueberry bread that Mike loved (the only bread he's ever had where he didn't need butter!), freshly baked scones and bagels, and a few items for the evening meal.

I devoured a bowl of Denise's homemade granola and headed out to the Castle Farm for the Fiber Festival. I drove up to Charlevoix to do several things: see the fiber show, Venetian Festival, visit with my sister and her family, plus bring my show tent back downstate for next month's show.

The Fiber Festival was delightful. I saw several artists I knew -- Kris Miller (Spruce Ridge Studios), Suzanne Higgs (Hooked on Felt), ceramist Patty from Romeo, Deb McDermott (Stonehedge Fiber Mill), and a few others.

In Deb's booth there was this fabulous felted girl's coat ~~

It was too darn cute!

I did buy a few skeins of yarn, one ball of roving and some buttons (I still have to photograph them!) but I kept my spending to a minimum. A local sheep farmer was demonstrating how to shear a sheep so I camped out and watched him. The sheep was quite nervous as this was it's first shearing ever!

He got down to business and soon the sheep was squirming ~~

I left the farm and stopped at a grocery store to pick up the ingredients to make my Cherry Magic Cake (see previous post). That would be my contribution to our dinner where we were hosting the Geigers. We prepared a fabulous meal, well Denise did most of the work, and everyone enjoyed their Veal Parmigiana, zucchini, salad and the cake. Next we off for a quick ride in the Geiger's boat over to Round Lake to watch the Venetian Festival parade of boats and then the fireworks.

Let me tell you, it was the craziest sight ever. With the first fireworks to announce the beginning of the boat parade, we witnessed the mass exodus of ducks -- they swam out into the lake as fast as they possibly could. You could barely see them in the dark but you could hear them splashing away. Too funny!

There are always a number of boats that put on lights and various decorations to entertain you. My favorite boat was a Christmas themed version that towed a little rowboat behind it where 'Santa' was standing upright, waving to the crowds, as is he were in his sleigh. Another boat, a perennial one, had the young women who had competed for Miss Venetian Festival ~~


The fireworks were beautiful and thunderous ~~






But one thing became abundantly clear -- we were definitely downwind of the barge and that was not a good thing. The smoke was so thick we could hardly see plus it obscured the actual fireworks.


Well, that's it for now. The last update on my trip will have to wait for tomorrow.