on the road again

I showed you Deb's quilt a few days ago while it was on the quilting frame. I am happy to report that it is now off the frame and went home with Deb last night. Because of the challenging arrangement of blocks it took me a little while to come up with a design that would fit into the "wheel" of this wagonwheel block. I ended up doing a lot of these:

looping scrolls in varying sizes to fill in the spaces. Once I get into the rhythm they are hard to stop!

And today I am celebrating the start of a great vacation. This is my girlfriend getaway with Nancy and Leisl, great traveling partners. Here is some of my stuff in the staging area, waiting for final packing andthen loading into the official Stitchin' Trips trailer.

We headed east this morning, into the land of cheese, which can be a hard road for us lactose intolerants! We are staying in Appleton tonight, went out to see Country Strong for our evening entertainment and popcorn binge. Pretty good show, a few tears were shed. Our only real problem with the show was that the speaker system was not working well, bass notes were real buzzy, and for a show about country music singers that was not good.

I left my sewing room looking forlorn, but I think it will be looking much better when I return in a week. It started with a plan to hang my new design wall, a lovely gift from my precious husband, I was totally surprised that he had even remembered that I had shown him a picture once. Hanging it on the sewing room wall made the most sense to me so it would be within easy reach. That meant taking down some wall shelves and a lot of decor and misc. stuff pinned to the walls. That left one bare ugly wall with big holes from the shelving screws. This room was first painted blue when it was Dan's room. Then a few years later he changed to another room and this room became Julie's room, so we got really creative and sponge painted white over the blue. For a long time I wanted to repaint, but always felt overwhelmed by the thought of removing everything. But when I saw one wall was bare, I came to the conclusion that the time is now to get a clean coat of paint. So here are some recent photos of the collection of stuff that

is usually in my room, and the only things remaining are the wooden table and the gray metal cabinet. The rest I was able to remove to other temporary homes nearby. And then I bought paint and left town! Hoping that the good painting spirits will be present in my home (Bob) and feel free to get the job done! There will have to be a big reveal when I get home!

When I talked to Bob tonight he was mumbling something about emptying out the closet to remove the shelves and lay new flooring, I think he may have been delirious! I had intended to just cover it with plastic until the painting was done, but if flooring is changing that's a whole other ballgame! I'm a little afraid that if he has to actually handle and pack up all the stuff in there, he might start to wonder about my purchasing plan. I'm not sure he knows that there is no purchasing plan, I just plan to purchase whatever meets my needs!

This could be an interesting vacation!