Now I Play Catch-Up

I am back in Montana after being gone for 10 days. I left last Friday and drove to Spokane, where I spent the night. One of my stops in Spokane was the small quilt store where I have been teaching. The owner has decided to sell off her stock of quilt fabrics and notions in favor of focusing on machines and longarm quilting. She is a Juki dealer. She’ll continue to have a brick-and-mortar store, although it will only be half the size. And she still wants me to come teach serger classes for her.

I drove to Seattle on Saturday, sneaking in between snowstorms. I’m glad I went when I did. The drive was easy and traffic light. I was not able to get the fantastic Airbnb that I had at Thanksgiving, but I did get another one nearby that was almost as nice. DD#2 had friends visiting from out of town, so I didn’t see her until Sunday evening when we all went out to dinner. On Sunday morning, I drove up to Anacortes, Washington, which is about 90 minutes north of Seattle, to visit my friend, Joan.

Joan and her husband moved to Montana (with his job) around the same time we did, in 1993. She and I met at our church’s Moms group. We both had little girls the same age. Joan is also a cancer survivor. We bonded and spent a lot of fun times together. Unfortunately, her husband’s company decided to leave Kalispell, so they moved back to Seattle. When I had to go to Seattle for my bone marrow harvest in January of 1995, I stayed with her and her husband.

We lost touch over the years, but Joan e-mailed me a few months ago and said she had taken up knitting again and was thinking about me, which was funny because I had been thinking that I should look her up on one of my visits there. We made plans to meet up last Sunday in Anacortes, where she and her husband live now.

I wish I had remembered to take a picture of the two of us. I am so bad at that. We walked downtown for lunch. She took me to a beautiful little knitting store that had a yarn-bombed seating area out front:

It was raining, so we didn’t linger. We had such a good time catching up with each other, and now I have someone else to visit in Washington.

On Monday, I did some shopping and ran errands for DD#2. She doesn’t have a Costco membership, so I usually go and get her a few things. On Tuesday morning, I left the Airbnb and headed south to Puyallup. The husband had asked me to stop at Allied Body to pick up some lights that came off the new truck back in December when Allied put the flatbed on it. Pacific Fabrics just happened to be on the way:

I’ll do a roundup of my sewing purchases later this week, but I am glad I went with a list.

[Yes, I was driving all over western Washington. The Diva mostly behaved, although the check engine light came on mid-week. Diesel fuel in Washington contains a small percentage of biodiesel. My Dodge pickups always ran very nicely on biodiesel, but the Jetta hated it. Whenever I filled the Jetta in Washington, the engine sounded like it was full of loose bolts. The BMW doesn’t run rough, but I do notice that putting biodiesel in it usually causes the check engine light to go on.]

My Airbnb in Puyallup was lovely and only five minutes from the Washington State fairgrounds. This was the main reason for my trip:

I taught three knitting classes, one each on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday afternoons. I’ll do a roundup of those, too, later this week.

For now, though, I need to unpack, do laundry, and play catch-up. More tomorrow.