Long Weekend: Pasadena Jan 2018

Lots of Photos Now....

My son and I had a wonderful time in Pasadena.  The bonus was the restaurant we thought was going out of business found a new location so they will be moving, not closing down.  Still we ate four meals there since we had driving up and reserved a room at a hotel. 

So goodbye to the Twohey's I knew!  So glad they found a new location though!

We ate one meal at a different place - Nine Nine Thai food.

And inbetween that we went on a once a month neighborhood walk and toured the inside of the Gamble House.  Such a treat!

The corners of things do not have corner - this repeated in all possible places.

The roof line is flatter and the beams extend beyond the roof.

Notice how the rocks at the bottom are largest - then the size at the middle and top...

Using local rocks to make a stream in the drive way!

After a few years started adding bricks with the rocks.

Front door of the Gamble House.

There were three locations with sinks in the kitchen that I saw - there may have been another one in the food storage area.

The corner of this cabinet is not 90 degrees - made this way so people going from room to room do not hit their hips on it.

Storage area for the table pads!

Bottom of all the closets had a door to put shoes.

Built in 1908 by the family of Proctor and Gamble.  Must have been wonderful to live in this house.

We also went to Vroman's Bookstore and walked up and down the aisles to see the selection of books..

We stayed at the Wyndham - close to lots of restaurants and stores...

They had the neatest lights in the headboards.

 Just pull out to turn on, and easy to direct where ever you want!

We were near the City Hall, library, city buildings, beautiful churches too.

We also visit where my Godmother used to live and the company my Dad worked for - that put me thru college!



We walked to the cemetery to pay our respects.. They have wifi, but the website only had numbers associated with the people, not their location...

On the way home we stopped for a meal at Clearman's Northwoods Inn.  A family favorite since I was a little girl... Still fun to eat the peanuts and throw the shells on the floor!

They have a best root beer here, the red cabbage salad and blue cheese salad are my favorites now!

A good weekend!

Long Weekend: Borrego Springs Dec 2017/Jan 2018

For Christmas this year, I gave my husband and son each ten index cards to write down places to go together and then to do it!  A tricky way to get to see them for at least a little while without work looming in the background.

Our first trip was to Borrego Springs.

On the way we got food at a great BBQ place in Ramona (Pete's BBQ and Burgers).  It's a liquor store.  Much better to eat while there, but we took the food to a park to eat this time....

It took a while to get to Borrego Springs, but once we got there Buffy settled in quite nicely!

We stayed in this house...  To the right is a guest house that we did not rent.

 We were right next to the state park.

Breakfast in a festive setting!

 The house is just for renting, but it is well equipped.

 The shelves for the towels was handy.

Nice flat doorways.

Peaceful patio

Beautiful views.

I couldn't capture the sunrise in the photo of the back view.  The first morning I thought the palms were on fire as they turned so orange and bright!

We ate out for one meal a day, the rest we made in the kitchen.  This was our favorite cafe. It had good food and was easy to eat with Buffy outside.  Although the art museum cafe had a really good pizza crust, but it was in an outdoor patio without a door next to the busy street so it wasn't as pleasurable to eat.

 View from the parking lot of the grocery store.

The way back home we took a different route and went around part of the Salton Sea.

We went to Shields date farm for date shakes.  Boy that area has sure built up, now surrounded by shopping strips! When I was little and even for my son a few years ago it seemed to be in the middle of nowhere.

And we stopped at Salvation Mountain, the west coast version of Holy Land USA to take photos.

We were on our little trip for three nights. Great little holiday together.  We spent most of the time reading or napping - guess we needed that.  We did drive to see the desert sculpture and to see the different neighborhoods too.

Leah Day's Explore Walking Foot Quilting: Crazy Lines

I'm following along, or should I say behind Leah Day's 2018 Project for learning to use the walking foot.  I prepared a few sandwiches to hopefully make it easier to get caught up...

But I have now stitched my second Leah Day walking foot design.  Crazy Lines.

This was pretty quick to quilt.  I think it would be nice in a space on a quilt where there is plain fabric.  Well, it would be good anywhere actually!

Here is the front

Here is the back.

Difficult to see, but I went back and added a few extra crazy lines going the other direction just between a few of the lines....  Not really worth the effort, at least using this gray thread.  But thought it might add to the design..  At least it doesn't take away from the design!

Behind the scenes I've finished the walking foot quilting for my project for the Put a Little Love in Your Heart Blog Hop that will be next week!  I just have to do the binding and then I'll be done!  This will be the fastest I have made a complete quilt!  Guess it's good to have deadlines...

Starry Bright Sky QAL: Textured Block 1 Faux Cathedral Window Variation

This year Alida is adding a textured block for between the stars, and I have completed the first one:  Faux Cathedral Window Variation...  With her directions very easy to do, even though I used a walking foot for the top stitching!

There is still time to join in this QAL, I did one a few years ago and learned so much!  Her directions are very clear and you are of course free to make changes based on your ability or time. For the textured blocks she is using Teresa's directions for the blocks, but changing the measurements so they will fit with her star designs.

She had suggested making improv fabric where I put the plain blocks, but I wanted to be sure to keep on track so went with the solids.

I have a collection of solids in yellows and golds and blues so that is what I'm going to be using for this project.

http://alidatweloqdesigns.blogspot.com/

Leah Day's Explore Walking Foot Quilting: Straight Lines

I have Leah Day's Book and I'm following along on her blog - this year we are learning quilting with a walking foot!  When I first started I tried a walking foot for the bindings, and it was really difficult for me to do.  (I think I broke the one that went with my Mom's Kenmore.)

My husband got me a new Brother (because it was rated as a great machine by Consumer Reports) as a surprise a few years ago and I have been now getting used to using it.  It's been great for piecing and has been fun to experiment with some of the extra stitches too.  But I hadn't put a walking foot on it until yesterday.

I pretty much followed the directions for Leah's making straight lines...  Except I didn't measure correctly so there are a few that are not the same distance between them...  Here is the front - where it's easy to see the stitches!

And here is the back!  I was amazed that the center line exactly had a line of stitching.  It wasn't planned but is very nice.

I had played around with the length of the stitches as she advised (but I didn't preserve mine so I can't show it to you).  I liked the 1.30 setting, but then I realized I had turned the machine off when I went downstairs and I forgot to change the setting again - most of this was just done with the default length so I think I will leave it at that!  Looking at the different stitches reminded me of when I rode a bike with different gears.  I really couldn't tell the difference between all the settings... Oh well.

So this foot went on easily.  I marked the first center line then tried to use the side of the presser foot to guide me for the remaining lines, but then decided to use a piece of tape and since my tape was 1 inch wide that is what most of the remaining distances are.  Then I experimented with the quilting guide that came with the Brother and that was great to use.  I could put it in so it was aligned with stitching on the right or the left.  Of course it would have been easier if I hadn't needed to readjust that with each change of direction, but it made it very easy.

I'm using the walking foot for quilting my project for the Put a Little Love in Your Heart Blog Hop that is coming up in about two weeks!  I wish I were done with my quilt so I could take a snazzy photo shoot this weekend, but oh well.  Going up to Pasadena with my son so we can have last sundae and hamburger at Twoheys in Alhambra. We will do other things too of course but I wanted him to remember Twoheys as I have been going there for many years.  Sad they are closing down, after 75 years they lost their lease.  : (

Thanks for coming by!