Around Here

 Around Here...

We decided to go out to happy hour last night downtown but couldn't find a place to park.   We forgot what a zoo it is downtown on Friday and Saturday nights and that last night started the Valentine's Day weekend.  So we stopped by the grocery store for some supplies and came back home  to have cocktails (French 75)and snacks while Ben cooked us a lovely dinner of lobster and shrimp scampi.   
  

 We're having some friends over for  dinner Sunday and the big pot of beans you see on the counter is the start of a french cassoulet that Ben will be cooking.   I love cassoulet and am already looking forward to it.  

My job is to make a salad and decorate a bit so I found this fun fabric that I'll hem up into napkins at my quilting bee this afternoon.  Won't they look great on our red tablecloth? 

Ben and I have rediscovered snap peas.  We're trying to add more vegetables to our meals and appreciate how easy these are to prepare.  Cut off the ends and steam them until they're done, all crisp and crunchy and ready to eat hot or cold.  Just mentioning in case eating more veggies is one of your goals, too.    

Paul's teacher says he's ready for a new, improved baritone saxophone. It's hard to rent good ones or to find good used ones, so yesteray we drove an hour northeast of here, way out on the plains, to a shop that specializes in new saxophones and Paul tried some out. We came away with a new mouthpiece that makes his current rented instrument sound much better, an improvement that will have to do while Paul earns some money to help pay for a new horn, which is seriously big bucks! 

I'm impatiently waiting for the new table I ordered for my new sewing machine. Ideally machines are set into the table top so the needle is flush with the table.  I had a table like that for my old machine but the opening didn't fit my new, bigger machine so I've been quilting with the machine on top of the table, and that's hard to do day after day.  Can't wait to get things right again. Meanwhile I'm using a temporary table the same size as the one I ordered and I rearrange things and finally worked out a way to have both a right return and a left return by the machine.   

Think "work triangle" in a kitchen and you'll get the idea.  I love it and I'll love it even more when my machine is positioned correctly.     

Hasn't stopped me from quilting, though.  I finished the triptych I designed for the kitchen wall and am quite happy with it.    

Fetcher spends quite a bit of time in my studio even though he's not a quilter. 

We're having a spell of the most lovely spring weather.   Another warm week with highs in the 60's is predicted.  Here's a beautiful sunset we saw the other night when we were out walking. 

Hiking is challenging as all the snow is melting and you have to be prepared for pretty much anything on the trails, from snowpack, to ice to slush, and, of course, the dreaded mud.  We hit all of these yesterday on a big hike we did but the warmth and sun made it a joy to be outside regardless of the trail condition.