A Little Trip

On Friday I went with my SIL and my husband to visit Shipshewana.  

If you have followed me at all you know that this is one of our favorite places to visit.  

I was hoping to pick up some Christmas fabric that I needed to finish the stockings I wanted to make.  We went to Lolly's and Yoders and NO luck!  Can you believe that??  

How are both shops about not to have what I need??  I

 chose the North Wood line by Kate Spain for the stockings.  

I am TOTALLY in love with this line of fabric.  My especial favorites are these two prints.

My heritage is Scandinavian and this line is so representative of that.

  I only took a couple of photos while we were in Shipshe.  

It was a cold overcast day and almost no one was there.  Perfect!  T

he only down side was that they don't make fry pies in the winter.  

WHAT???  No fry pies???  I was crushed.  

I did find these amazing fish chairs.  

Too bad the resin furniture is so expensive or this would have been my daughter's.

You can see how the sky looked on Friday.  Cool photo op though.

We started decorating the house on Saturday and on Sunday we got dumped on!  

This was my deck in the morning.

This was a peek into the back yard.

The view out the front door about 9pm.

This morning as I got on the bus to go to work, this was the parking lot.  We got about 10" last night.

So that catches you up on my doings.  

I did manage to make progress on the stockings 

but I can't show you until they are delivered to their new homes.  

How was your weekend?

~XOP~

VACATION Yay!!!

I just returned from vacation and it was a blast!  

My husband and I drove to NC to visit our daughter, the fish biologist. 

 We decided to make the drive in 2 days so we could stop at the Homer Laughlin Factory (Fiestaware) in Newell, WV.  

Man that place never disappoints!

We bought a few things (gross understatement of the century), but we left more than we bought.

 They had a cool Halloween display as you walked in.

I am still fascinated by the broken pottery pile!

We continued to drive and I found this quilt shop in the old Seneca Glass factory!  

Country Roads Quilt Shop, in Morgantown, WV.   

 The owner was so nice!

The shop was adorable too.

There she is in her wonderful shop!

You can see the stack from the glass factory outside.

I found a few treasures while I was there!

We continued on to our final destination of the Locust Hill B & B, in Marlinton, WV. 

 Apparently it used to be a dairy farm!

This was our room.  So cute!

This beautiful Dresden was hanging in another room.

View from our room.  There is a pond outback and a fire pit too.  

they also have a pub located in the building and the food was fantastic.  

There is literally no place in the town to eat, so this was perfect!

This is the side of the house.

We got up the next day and continued the drive to Mebane, about 4 hours more I think it was. 

 There were a LOT of quilt barn/houses everywhere we went, but it was not easy to get photos as we were whizzing past them!

 We have made friends with one of the gentlemen that lived where we had my dad.  

His name is Roy.  He and his wife lived in the AFC home with my dad. 

 When my dad passed away, they were worried we would stop visiting, but we have not. 

 Anyway, we have been helping him get his house ready to sell, which included getting an Estate sale person in to clear out the house.  

She didn't want to see the silver as no one wanted to pay what it was worth.

  So she gave it back to us and we took it to a place near our daughter's called  Replacements, LTD.  They buy china, silver and crystal. 

You can get replacements of your pieces here too.  

So if your grandma gave you some china and you are missing the gravy boat, you can look there and see if they have one!   

While we were waiting to see if they would buy the flatware we had brought 

we took a tour of the place.  

It is the size of 7, count them SEVEN, football fields!!!  

Just look down this aisle!

The tour guide told us they did over 70 million dollars worth of business last year!!!

Clearly, I am in the wrong business, LOL.

This is the wall of Fiestaware!  Please excuse the drooling on the floor.

A very interesting service that they do is piercing your flatware.  

Always wanted a slotted spoon in your silver or even your regular stainless flatware? 

 This is the place to get it done.  They use water to do it.  It was very interesting. 

 They repair and re-plate silver too.  Check out the candles and pine on the cake server.  

Many different patterns to choose from.  

I even got to see what a Sardine fork looks like (weird, and you know you totally just Googled that).

They had some china from past presidents.  This pattern was the one chosen by Abe Lincoln.  

Next we went to a Asian/Mexican grocery store!  Odd combination to be sure but awesome.

It was called Super G Mart.

The first quilt shop was called Ye Olde Forest Quilt Shop. 

 It didn't really have a lot of modern fabric but it did have this "Stitchy Woman"

 that my husband insisted I purchase!  LOL

The next shop we went to was amazing!  

I could have spent all my hard earned money here!

It is in Greensboro and called Studio Stitch.  

It would be dangerous to live near here for sure!

If you are looking for a few HTF/OOP fabrics this place had some beauties.  

Give them a call!

Then back to my daughter's place to have her daddy show her how to make Sushi.

She did pretty well.

This is getting long so I will continue later in the week.  I hope you are enjoying my travels!

~XOP~

The Weekend is Improving!

I have so much to tell you all I don't know where to begin! First an update on the van. Apparently the dealership believed they were at fault (hmm let's see, they touched it last, had the wheels off less than 2 weeks ago to replace my transmission). Now they didn't *say* that but they are fixing it for free, so what do you think? I have a loaner car and should have mine back sometime on Wednesday. I guess the repairs are finished but there is some repainting that needs to occur.

I think you should remember that a few weeks ago I was asking for stuff for a friend's friend that had left an abusive relationship with 3 small children. Several of you sent me stuff. LTW quilted 3 quilts and donated them and the CL's had one that they donated also. PTM put the binding on the 3 from LTW. My friend, Anne also went above and beyond the call. She made 4 pillowcases, put them on pillows and added a few extra goodies for the kids. I have not thanked her properly, so sorry Anne! Here are photos of the pillows. One for each child and

Two for the mama!

Thank you so much Anne, they are perfect.

Next I thouht you might like to see what I bought at Checker. I *tried* to be a little restrained but...They had fabric sample cards and I love those so I got a few. You can see there is a little Hope Valley in there and I was so excited about that!


There were several panels, some that will be perfect for the church. I loved the Manly line on the right. Those might make fun little guy quilts. I even found Santa on a motorcycle!! Too much fun. PTM and I always have a blast going through the carts of these and I think we spent at least the first hour or so doing just that.
I also got a little fabric while there. Some Nicey Jane charm packs (splitting with PTM) and she got some Hope Valley charm packs that she is splitting with me. I also got 2 JR of Delft in both the green and the blue. These are right up my alley!

I bought a few inexpensive books and patterns.

I preordered these things so we were able to pick them up when we were there.



I am particularly excited about the Liberated Quiltmaking II book but have not had time to go through it yet.

The last thing I will talk about on this post is that I received 2 more blocks for Matt's quilt from Barb L. Along with a note for Matt. Thanks Barb!!

I still have LOTS more to share but I will stop here, go check the mail and put in some laundry. I did make it to the gym for 2 hours this am. My DD2 is home so loads more laundry will be done tonight too.

I did manage to work on my JR Quilt a long block and get it finished. I guess you will just have to stop back to see that along with the other goodies I got in the mail!!

Skaneateles and Watkins Glen

The next stop was Skaneateles (pronounced like Skinny Alice, go figure!) We stayed at the Sherwood Inn. We left NY after my visit to the simulator and it was about a 4 and a half hour drive we arrived at the Sherwood Inn.


Overlooking Skaneateles lake(one og the Finger Lakes.


Because there were not too many folks staying there they upgraded our room to the best room at the Inn and it was gorgeous. Here let me walk you through our room. As we walked into the room to the right was the sun room.
View from the sun room:




This was the view we had from the couch. And the fireplace was to my left.


Directly behind me was the bathroom and between the bathroom and sun room was our bedroom.

You can see our room from outside.

There are lots more pictures on my Flickr so go and check it out!
We spent one night at the Sherwood Inn and then we stopped at Patchwork Plus (another quilt shop located in Skaneateles) before heading to Watkins Glen. My photo shows the center of the shop, but there is much o=more on both sides of where I took this photo. they also have LOTS of yarn too. This shop was one of the Top Ten shops in the Quilt Sampler magazine. It was fabulous. Probably one of the best I have been to. They were so nice here too.

DH and I had passed the Stella Maris Retreat on the way from the Sherewood Inn to the quilt shop so I asked if they ever have retreats there. Apparently they do, twice a year. So if any of you live near to there, you should check out their website and go!! They should be posting information in the near future about the upcoming retreat.

I am sure you realize I could NOT leave without some take out, right? Here goes. I don't know if I have confessed this before but I have NEVER bought any Kaffe Fassett fabric, *GASP*...it's true. WHY??? You ask. Well, honestly, I am so overwhelmed by the choices and without a project in mind I just can't seem to make a decision about which ones to purchase. I decided to jump in and so I bought a few half yard cuts here. I have been following Kelly at Don't Look Now and she uses a lot of KF prints and explains why, so I was thinking if I want to make some of her patterns, and I do, I need to start looking for prints that will work.



Now I know this is not the best picture but you get the idea. I have never seen fabric with competitive swimmers on it. Both my girls swam for oh so many years and DD2 even swam her freshman year in college. So I had to buy some of that for later quilts for the girls. I bought the bunny one for PTM as she is always doing such nice things for me. (Like using her discount to purchase some new sneakers for me and she picked them up at the store for me too!!) I gave it to her already so I can show it to you now! I also found some 30's kind of fabric from the City Quilter but no photo and gave her a FQ of that too. Again,not the best photo but this was the first pattern that caught my eye when I walked in the door. Isn't it adorable??

I still have Watkins Glen and Montour Falls to show you as well as my trip to GR. Wow, how many blog posts are too many in one day?? I hope you all are not bored yet!