Quilting in my cave

Well, after a very busy, busy week for me, this is a fun moment at the end of the week. On Friday, I had the pleasure of teaching this nice lady how to sew my favorite teddy bear pattern, and here she is, holding her unstuffed, very first project. She made a couple of boo-boos, but after I made her rip the stitches and do it over, she had a nice looking critter to call her own. I sent her home with her very own usable pattern, the instructions for installing the nylon joints to make the arms and legs movable, a catalogue with the necessary supplies for making more bears, and a couple of estate sale chenille bedspreads she can use to make a bunch more teddy's. Joanne said she had so much fun learning how to do this, and she was very thankful to have my assistance. She was an excellent student. Tom said her hubby was an equally adept student, when they were outside in the orchard, pruning the apple trees. Jim has trees at his home in Minnesota that needed pruning, but he did not know how to do it, so he got showed!!! It is a necessary thing to do for the trees, and now he can help his own trees. LOL

Our weekend was wonderfully busy, as was our whole week, but now it is done, and we can get back to our lazy ways for a couple of days, before we start getting our stuff ready for loading into the motorhome, as we are getting closer to our Arkansas departure date. We are hoping the weather warms up some before we actually leave.

Today, we went to Nicollet, MN for the annual fish fry. We have gone on the first Saturday in February for that feast at least 15 years now. It is such a good meal, and we look forward to it all year long. We always meet a group of friends to share the meal with, and this year there were 14 of us, all eating beer battered pollack, German potato salad, creamy cole slaw, warm bread, and excellent coffee. Nobody went away hungry, I just know. After we eat that huge meal, we go around the corner and hit the famous meat market, to stock up on smoked summer sausage, made at the meat market. That is very good and this year we got a jalapeno flavored sausage that has a real zip to it. Should be wonderful on crisp crackers.

When we got done with all that, we headed to Mankato, MN to get Tom's glasses fixed. He lost the nose pad part of his specs, and we could not find how to repair them ourselves, so he put them on the dining table for about 2 weeks, knowing we could get them worked on today, so he wore an old, very scratched pair, and they are not good for his eyes any longer, so he was not doing well with reading and such. Now he is happier, because he can see again. They must have been in very bad shape, because the repair took almost an hour at Vision World! I think the girl working on them learned a couple of new words while working on them. One lens kept coming out of the frame, every time she was cleaning them before handing them back to Tom. She did some very bewildered frowning a couple of times, but was pleasant most of the time.

Left there and headed to Blue Earth, MN, so I could pick up my prescription refills at Wal-Mart. I also got some fusible interfacing to use for stabilizing some tender chenille I want to use to make a few teddy bears from. It is yellow and lovely, but very easily torn, so in order to make it a bit more sturdy, I will use the fusible, which will strengthen it a lot. I also picked up another box of my Mango/Peach tea, which is heavenly. I love the aroma of it while it steeps.

We left there and headed home finally. Seemed like forever since we were home, but it was just a few hours. lol Was glad to get home, as I really wanted to get to the basement and put more stitches in the wedding quilt, but alas, we both sat down in our recliners, and promptly fell asleep. When we woke up, we had to had a bit of left over soup for a quick, light supper, then back to the recliners, Tom to sleep and I to read some of my book. Now I am doing this and getting ready to head to bed. Does not seem that any stitching will be done tonight! I did take a couple of patterns off the computer to work on, and will most likely take them to Arkansas to work on, as they are small things, one is applique BOM and the other is a pin cushion thing to make.

I will be back tomorrow, to show you the green quilt I made for our friend's birthday, which was yesterday. I did not get the quilt to her yet, tho, as she was gone all day yesterday, and we were busy with house guests. She will get the quilt tomorrow, so I will let you see her with the quilt. I know, I know, this is supposed to be a quilty type blog, but sometimes I just don't get to quilt much. I want to, but it just doesn't happen the way it is supposed to. LOL

So, until I gift the green quilt, I will say good night, stay warm, think happy thoughts, and smile!!

Quilty hugs,
Ele