And I drove and drove…..

I left the house about 9:45 am yesterday morning, with Sadie pouting about being left behind.

And I drove.

How’s that for a short post?!

It was a beautiful day for a drive and I even enjoyed having the sunroof open for a bit ---

You know, if I had to pick the one thing about to day that I was the most grateful for, it would be google!

Thursday night as I was getting everything ready and packing the car to go I plugged in my magenta featherweight to give it a test run only to find that the light bulb was burned out.

In typical “make do now” fashion since it was after 9 pm, I ran down stairs to STEAL the bulb from the black featherweight. No bulb in it.

The white one didn’t have a working bulb either!

((Yes, I’m a featherweight hoarder, I have 3! A black one, a white one, and my midlife-crisis hot magenta metallic baby with the ghost flames on the machine bed:

I’ve had this baby a year, and I admit it. I get giddy when I take her out of her box! I start singing Stevie Wonder! “Isn’t she lovely, isn’t she wonderful……” :cD

But alas…NONE of them had working light bulbs and I was on my way out the door. I googled sew & vac on my phone from the car. Up came a little map thing with red tabls listing where they were. I picked the closest one on my route through Richmond, VA and called.

“I need 3 featherweight light bulbs”

“No problem ma’am, we’ll have them at the counter for you!”

Another bonus?? GPS took me right there no problem! The only hiccup was that the shop was closed for lunch when I got there, but I was hungry too, and there was a great Korean place just across the street that I never ever would have experienced if I hadn’t run out of functional featherweight light bulbs!

I loved this place! ((Korean Garden)) I was the only Anglo in there, which to me is a very good sign. I ordered a hot and spicy soup with meat, veggies and soft tofu, toped with an egg. The soup comes boiling to the table and the egg cooks as you stir it around, kind of like in egg drop soup. The servers wear traditional Korean garb. I was the only one in the place speaking English. Such a fun little side trip that might never have happened!

After lunch I went back to the sew & vac shop, the owner was back from his own lunch, and he quickly replaced the burned bulb in the magenta machine, and sent me on my way with two spares for the other machines. ((And yes, he LOVED the paint job!!))

Always be willing to leave the interstate for the road less travelled. It just might be the best part of an other wise long predictable drive!

I arrived in the Lexington Park area around 5:30 pm. Gosh I love driving and seeing the Chesapeake Bay!! It was unbelievably blue ---there were boats on the water. It's so picturesque when you take the bridge over...

I’ve been welcomed into Julia’s home --- fed a wonderful dinner of grilled chicken salad served on her back deck. And we set to puttering!

Instead of sewing this trip, I’m kitting UP for next week’s trip! See that big tub of neutrals? I’m behind in my cutting down. Not of my OWN scraps, I do that automatically as I make them…..but when people give me boxes or bags of scraps, they tend to stack up until I get get around to sorting through and cutting them into their sizes. This is neutral hunks and chunks of various sizes that could easily be cut into usable quilt-parts. And that’s what I’m doing. I’ve spent the night cutting something like 200 quarter square triangles, 100 bricks, 100 squares….and it hasn’t even made a dent! I’ve cut the left overs from THESE units into 1.5”, 2”, 2.5” squares and 1.5” strips. Stuff that is less than 1.5” are going in the neutral strings. It’s still not making a dent.

All I can say is the scraps look far better when cut down to size so they are ready to use, than when they are just in a tub all scrambled!

Today is a Bricks in the Barnyard workshop!! It’s been a couple of years since I’ve taught for this guild, so I’m really looking forward to seeing everyone again!