Lest you think I am a slug.....

Yes....I was on vacation for over 3 weeks, but I want you to know I didn't totally forsake quilting!!!  I did manage to get to a quilt shop I'd heard about....Rainbow's End in the lovely town of Dunedin, Florida......huge inventory but (as with many large quilt shops) it was a bit overwhelming.  (Funny thing...on way out from shop, I kept setting off the detector device.....I offered to empty out my entire purse but the gal just kept taking my wallet and holding it and making me go back through....this went on for about 5 minutes and the check-out line was building up, so she finally just told me to leave.....very odd as, with the exception of the things I'd paid for and she checked out for me, I had the same things on me when leaving as when entering...and I didn't set the device off when I walked through it entering the shop.  The whole incident was a bit annoying to me AND to those waiting in line behind me!!!  The first photo here shows part of one wall of the shop and the second photo shows some fabrics and quilting related supplies I bought on the trip....including a stitch-in-the-ditch foot for my machine.  I then went to a couple of quilt shops with Kathy (my quilting partner-in-crime)...although I can't recall the names of those shops...one was in Englewood and about to go out of business so not much left there and the other was a tiny shop in North Port.  I also went with Kathy one afternoon to her little sewing/knitting group and did a bit more work there on my English paper piecing circles (which are shown in the last photo here). That project is moving along slowly, but it is very portable and I'll try to push myself to work more on it again soon.  I see a notice today that Blogger is getting a "NEW" look in April and they are encouraging people to update now. Great...just what I do not need...is Blogger changing things yet again!!!  (I'll cross my fingers this update works better for me than the previous one!)

Some vacation photos......

These are some photos from one leg of our trip.......a stay on Clearwater Beach with a balcony room that looked out over the water at Clearwater Pass....nice beach and pool where we stayed, too.  The weather was wonderful and it was a very enjoyable time there. You will notice my little sidekick, Spencer, enjoyed the view, also.  Blogger didn't allow me to post the photos in the order I wanted them to post.....sorry about that.  I think you can still get the idea, though, of how pretty it was there.  (I think the photos will enlarge if you click on them.)  I'd like to go back and stay there longer next time.

A little detour........

Before I begin showing some of the photos from our recent vacation, I have two photos to show of surprises I had in the mail upon my return.  One is from a blogging pal, Linda.  (HERE is her blog.)  She and I share a love for Disney World and she had made these terrific neck coolers for when she went with her family.  We had been in touch about this and she was going to let me have some of the little cooler "beads" to put in some neck coolers I was going to make. Well....imagine my surprise when I returned home and found not only the "beads", BUT also 5 coolers just waiting to be finished.  She included a lovely note (and her handwriting is among the nicest I have ever seen...and as a retired elementary school teacher, I feel qualified to judge that)!!!  The photo shows what she sent me and I LOVE the Disney fabrics she used!  THANKS, Linda!

         The other surprise in the mail was the arrival of a cute necklace I won on the blog of another blogging pal, Nancy.  (HERE is her blog.)   I don't wear a lot of jewelry but this necklace really appealed to me and it will get a lot of use.  THANKS, Nancy!!! 
     I promise to start posting vacation photos next.........I have tons of them, so I will spread them out over the course of a few weeks.  We had such a nice time and such beautiful weather that there were photo opportunities every time we turned around and looked!
       Thanks for all the kind comments on the drawings I posted yesterday.  Believe me when I say I CANNOT draw, but the Disney artists step everyone through the class in such a way that everyone experiences success and has a lot of fun doing it.  On my own, I could never have done those drawings...that's for sure!



  

Back to reality.....

We got back home day before yesterday from a trip of 3+ weeks to Florida.....visited some friends as well as did a wonderful week at Walt Disney World and a nice stay at both the Sarasota area and on Clearwater Beach.  I am very behind on blog-reading and realize I will never catch up with that, so will just start fresh now.  (Excuse me for missing some of your posts while I was away.)  I am going to share many photos from the trip in the coming weeks.  I am going to start out with photos of drawings I did in the free animation classes offered at the Hollywood Studios part of Walt Disney World.  I really enjoy those classes....20 minutes of working with one of their artists and they get even a terrible "artist" like me to draw something very cute.  I am going to collect a few more in subsequent trips and then mount them all, collage-like, in a frame.  Here are the three I have done so far..... Dopey from Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs......Tigger from Winnie the Pooh.....and Jiminy Cricket from Pinocchio (that I did last year).  Of course, Blogger did not let me position the photos where I wanted them........GRRRRRR.....but at least all 3 of them posted!  I think you can click to enlarge them if you wish to see them in greater detail.  It is amazing that the Disney animators get a group of about 50 people from age 5 to VERY old (and with varying degrees of ability) to do something so cute in such a short period of time!  If you ever go there, try it....you'll have a great time.

What a dog!!!

As you can see, this post has nothing to do with quilting or crafts, but I saw this dog awhile ago and had to take a picture.  His name is Diesel.  I thought of a couple of cliched sayings when I saw Diesel....things like "He has a face only a mother could love".....and "He is so ugly that he's cute" and even "That face could stop a clock".  LOL  Diesel was very happy to pose for a picture, though....once his owner said his name and promised to give him some cheese!!!  He had the most crooked teeth I have ever seen on a four-year-old but he was a very friendly, gentle boy!  What do you think of Diesel?

My hairdresser is so nice....

I love the gal that does my hair. She is so nice and goes out of her way to accommodate her customers.  She is also a very good hairdresser.  For Christmas I made her a small zippered bag.  I had no idea if she would like it.  It turns out she liked it so much (and used it so often) and felt she could use one even larger, so...I surprised her at my last appointment with this new, large one...measuring about 9" wide by 8" high...with a nice, glass-bead zipper pull and two inside pockets. She was very thrilled with it.  She said many of her friends have asked where she got the smaller one...and she offered to sell them in her shop if I wanted to make them, but....I'm not too keen on that idea right now.  Maybe I'll reconsider down the road, but for now.....I told her "Thanks, but no thanks!"

How silly of me......

I went to the trouble a few days back to post the nice flowers from our Valentine's Day breakfast but I also had a photo of what I ate there...and forgot to include that, so here it is now.  (I sure am enjoying reliving that breakfast a couple of weeks later.....aren't I? LOL)   This was called Bananaberry French Toast. There was a mixture of berries and cream between the pieces of bread as they were cooked and then the syrup and the bananas on top.  It was super-yummy!!!  The photo under it shows the hotel's small indoor pool (that goes outside to a hot tub and overlooks the ocean...which you can see if you click on the photo to enlarge it...IF
Blogger lets it be enlarged, that is.)  The hotel has a nice glass elevator, too, so anyone riding it can look out at the ocean.  It is a really nice place!