Recently I read, in the McKenzie River Reflections (Oregon) about 5th grade students, who raised $1,300 with a Sunflower quilt they made to benefit the McKenzie Outdoor School.

Image: sxc.hu

Although the photo wasn’t in color, the sunflower designs looked lovely and very individual.

Sunflowers seem to be a theme in other schools this year.  In New Hampshire, students planted sunflowers on the front lawn to beautify their school and to promote its “green” theme.

In browsing through my quilting books, I’ve come across three patterns with the sunflower’s name.  Do you know of any more?

• Kansas Sunflower
• Sunflower
• Basket of Sunflowers

Do you ever use a sunflower theme in your crafts?

(My“Country Kitchen” column appears in the print edition of River Reflections. I’ll be writing about sunflowers there soon.)

You may remember my winter dream home… If not here it is again:

The Delta Shelter is from Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects - actually I keep meaning to do an update on this house. But first let’s look at a new project from Tom Kundig.

Eleven Eleven East Pike is the first condo building from designer Kundig and will be offering a nice high end look and feel but not at a completely unreachable high end price. Here’s a first look at what’s planned for the exterior. Not a bad slice of color for a Seattle structure. It looks great with the weather. Which sounds sort of silly to say. However, having spent most of my life in Oregon, Washington, and Northern California, I can tell you that a splash of color looks awesome on a typical cloudy days.

Eleven Eleven East Pike is going to be located in Seattle’s Pike - Pine triangle neighborhood. There will be twenty-seven 600-1125 square feet homes situated above street level commercial space.
It’s a beautiful building with some nice perks:

• Built Green: Three-star certified, urban infill development, highly walkable neighborhood with a Walk Score of 98.
• Nine-foot ceilings with floor-to-ceiling windows and doors.
• Strategically-placed peepholes at varied heights in the exterior front door and unit entry doors.
• In-unit movable hanging puzzle walls.
• Custom-built “Urban RV” (movable multi-purpose storage and counter top unit designed by Tom Kundig) available for purchase.
• Modernist roof line.

I really like it - it’s a total Northwest building. If you live in the Northwest you know what I mean. If not, well, it’s still a pretty cool structure. The roof line is a stellar touch. Thus far the website for Eleven Eleven East Pike is pretty bare, but with expected occupancy in Fall 2008, you can already register to learn more.

I thought after our treehouse adventure that maybe we should move on to something a bit less rugged and a lot more round.

When I was about nine years old my mom took me to meet some friends of hers. They had this huge dome home sitting on a cliff, in in the woods, in Oregon, overlooking a lake, with a huge deck and hot tub. The sun actually set while we were there - it was like nothing I’d ever seen. I was amazed, and as you can imagine, completely smitten. I’ve had a thing for any round home ever since.

Like this one:

This home and a virtual multitude of other cool homes are built by Deltec Homes. Deltec has this to say:

“In a time where technology increasingly separates us from our roots, many of us choose to retreat to nature and to the peace that can be found there. Deltec is incorporating this desire into its homes and homebuilding. What better way to escape from the rigors of our hectic lives than retreating to a space designed with nature in mind?”

Heck yeah! (Says the girl permanently attached to her computer) but I can feel where they’re coming from.

Deltec Homes located in Asheville, North Carolina, is well established (they began in 1968) in the home industry as, “the major supplier of unique, panelized, circular structures… used as primary and secondary residences, multi-family units, and commercial projects.” So they’re big but still very down to earth. I talked to them today on the phone and they are a seriously nice company; friendly, helpful, all that good stuff.

Do you love the curvy kitchen? I want the curvy kitchen… and this room:

Very relaxing… much like the treehouse but you know, more upscale.

Deltec has a Q&A on their site that discusses the energy efficiency of their homes, how to build, costs, and amazingly the hurricane-proof qualities of these homes. Which they cover in a realistic manner:

“There are no hurricane proof home designs that we know of, but based on our homeowners’ experience, a Deltec home comes about as close as you can get. Deltec has never lost a home to high winds in almost 40 years of business.

Names like Katrina, Andrew, Ivan, Hugo and Charley represent billions of dollars in property damage and destruction. To Deltec homeowners, they typically represent just some lost shingles.”

Another perk is speed. Some of the homes can go from this…

To this…

In about five days. (Sadly, as Deltec says, “rainbow not included”) To give you an idea of what a round home looks like on the inside, here’s a floor plan:

They have too many cool things on their site to show you in one post. So, I’ll likely save the rest for another time. In the meantime you can go check them out for yourself. They have tons of pictures, videos, and much more good info at their site.

I’m out for now but I’ll leave you with this…

Now, do you love round homes as much as me?

[All photos courtesy of Deltec Homes] Thanks Deltec!

Try underpinning a castle.

This is the Canterbury Castle. The Canterbury was built in 1931 and is meant to resemble the original Canterbury Castle in England. The castle is located in Portland, Oregon and the latest I hear it’s a privately owned residence. It’s about a 20 minute drive from my house, so I may head up there soon to see if it’s still standing. I’d think so, since it was added to the historic register of historic places in 1987 — folks usually frown on tearing down local historic treasures.

Here’s a picture of the castle back in the day.

I’ve lived in many a Northwest city, as well as on the 101 coast. Tons of people in these areas seem fond of building on hills — although we’re not known in these areas for our lack of mudslides (yes, it rains a lot). So, call me crazy, but hill-building; not the best move ever. And yes there are innovative and safe ways to build on a hillside — but still…

The Canterbury was built on a hill and it’s seen it’s fair share of soil deposits sliding down the hill into the city below. The information I found is a bit vague but it looks like a company called SoilFreeze here in Portland, came in, at some point in the 90s and saved the day.

On SoilFreez’s site they offer this information:

• “Frozen soil was used to underpin a historical structure in Portland, Oregon’s west hills area while the vacant lot between it and a neighboring home was stabilized and a foundation for a new home was built.

• Site soils consisted of silts and clay with three slide planes present in the unstable hillside lot; one ancient slide plane; and two recent planes

• The recent slide planes failed in February 1996 and also in November 1998 depositing hundreds of cubic yards of soil onto a city street below.”

It seems like a hefty job.

Check out this site, for the sweetest little love story about this house.

Anyone seen this home in person?