Gifts from Guests

Deana made us a couple of lovely gifts and left them in the rental house. One was a beautiful crocheted afghan:

She had been working on this throughout the trip but I didn’t know she finished it until I saw it on the couch. I adore the color. 😘

The other was this very useful hanging towel for the stove. Thank you, Deana!

I love receiving handmade gifts.

I don’t have anything exciting to report. Yesterday was errand day and I spent most of it in town. I am on the Advertising Committee for our craft co-op sale at the end of September, so I met with the other two members and we planned our strategy for this year’s market. The co-op sale has increased in size over the past few years and is experiencing some growing pains. Not everyone is happy with some of the decisions that have been made recently, but they were necessary to keep the co-op financially solvent.

After the meeting, I picked up some chicken feed. At the quilt store, I got orange thread for quilting the table runner and another half-yard of the Kaffe shot cotton so I could finish the Free Range Slacks store sample. The new addition to the building—which will include space for receiving and an area for the sewing machine tech to work—is almost done. At the moment, though, there are boxes of new fabrics under the longarm machine. waiting to be checked in. I got a sneak peek at some of them, including a line of cottons that would make lovely skirts and tops. I am going to spend a day in the store this week learning the features of the Bernina 990 machine so I can teach the mastery classes going forward.

I popped into Hobby Lobby because I need more 1/4" organza ribbon and it’s on sale this week. I use that to stabilize the shoulder seams when I sew knit garments. I can’t quite figure out what is going on with Hobby Lobby and its lack of apparel fabric. They haven’t had any for almost a year now.

Traffic in town is just insane. Everything takes twice as long. I didn’t arrive home until almost 2 pm but got the groceries inside before the heavens let loose with a good rain shower for about 30 minutes. We are supposed to get more rain—and possibly thunderstorms—today. That’s good because I need to tie myself to my office chair and stop procrastinating. I have a couple of projects that need attention if I want to do any more sewing this week.