Studio Time

My friend Cherri just got herself an amazing new sewing studio, and a new long arm machine. She graciously invited me to stop by and see the studio and try out the machine.

The artist is in!

My other friend Rachel patiently taught us how to use the machine, and more importantly taught us how to approach the design of the quilting, block by block. Jill and Kaci were also there, so the five us us worked on collaboratively quilting one of Rachel's charity quilts. The long arms was a lot easier to use than I thought it would be, and I'm looking forward to taking advantage of Cherri's good nature and quilting one of my quilts on her machine!

Rachel told me not to take a picture of her, but I think this will work if I don't have her head in there.

I also took advantage of Cherri's open floor space to finally baste the quilt I've been working on for my dad's girlfriend. I'm so glad to finally get it basted. I've been putting it off because I hate basting, and as a consequence I haven't been doing any quilting at all lately. I can't start another project until I get this done!

Cherri's adorable dog Lulu did what all animals do when confronted with a quilt, which is to sleep on it.

After I left Cherri's studio I met up with my friends Leslie and Chris and we went to Chang's Mongolian Grill. Leslie and I have a pretty sentimental attachment to Chang's, because we used to go their every Saturday after camp was over when we were camp counselors together. We would look forward to it all week.

This particular time, our waiter was by far the most awesome waiter we'd ever had. We wrote him a note to let him know this, and then waited until he went in the back for something and hightailed it out of there before he could see that we wrote it.

We had a lot of debate as to if we should show it to him while we were there, but ultimately chickened out.

At Chang's, we have a tradition of getting fortune cookies, reading the fortunes, and then throwing the cookies on the ground in the handicap parking spot. Don't ask me how it got started, but we do it every time we go.

My fortune said "You may have to modify your plans".

Chang's is in the same parking lot as Winco, so we went there too. I used to shop a lot at the Winco in Salem when I worked at camp, and I always loved and feared the honey section.

I have no idea how this works.

We had a pretty fun time just wandering the aisles and finding weird things.

Chris managed to find some climbing time.

In Fritz related news, he's taken to spending all his time on top of the toilet. It's not so bad, but he's started to put his paw on my shoulder every time I sit down in an effort to get me to pet him (with mixed results). He's a strange cat sometimes.

At least he's not on the toilet seat anymore.