I'm home from being gone for 9 days. So much to do and you'd think I'd have been organized enough to make a detailed to-do list on the plane home. I didn't. However I did find a link to a post on Buzzfeed with 21 incredibly helpful lists (those are their words, but the lists are indeed very helpful). For example:

What I really need a list for is 'how to choose everything for a remodeling project' because that's what I spent the day on. We are about to begin kitchen/bathroom/other stuff remodeling project. We are not doing this one ourselves because neither of us have the time to do it. It will be a new and amazing experience to pay to have this sort of work done. 

The contractor, Rick Owens, comes highly recommended and I like him a lot. He returns calls and shows up when he says he will. All very important. Since I work at home he is working with me to keep the disruptions to as short a time-frame as possible. The plan is to order everything, get the cabinets made, and then he will gut the house in sections and put it back together. Then move on.

My biggest quandry at the moment is which flooring to go with. We are doing the whole house and the floors are a very serious expense. Here's the Bellawood engineered floor which can be glued to our slab, in natural hickory…

Or the solid bamboo that would be a floating floor. The one I like best is darker and has a stronger pattern.

Here's what it looks like in a customer's photo. Those dark areas are nearly black.

I like it but am not sure what it's like to live with this much pattern on a floor. Do any of you have something like this? How do you like it? I should add that the Bellawood is half again as much as the bamboo which equals a lot of money. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

I ran across Sightseer, by Roger Minick. Read more about him here. And/or just look at the 1980s era vacation photos. I could be in one of them – certainly I have vacation photos that look like they belong here.

Really, what can a person say? I wish I could look back at my own vacation photos and dress differently but, on that day, I know I dressed in a way that I thought was perfect for the event and that I didn't mind being photographed in. Case in point is the photo below – me and Steve by the same Disney castle.

All I can say is that I hope over time I can do better :-). Every vacation presents a new opportunity!

When I was in Georgetown, I met Judi Tyrrell who shared a couple of her quilts-in-progress with me. They are wonderful and she said I could share them with you. Here's her version of Chirps (from Applique With Attitude, set differently than the one in the book, more like the way I set the class quilt that I made):

And her version of Fresh Picked Posies. The background is constructed the way we show in the book, Applique Outside the Lines. Judi is still working on the borders – she said she'd send a photo when it's all together.

Pretty wonderful, don't you think?

I drove from Georgetown, TX, to El Dorado today. I nice, fast uneventful drive. The speed limit for much of the trip was 75 mph. I know I shouldn't love that, but I do. I was born with a lead foot.

Once in El Dorado I checked in with the lovely ladies in the guild who were setting up their quilt show and then I avoided working on read work yet again. I shopped a litte and bought a scarf, as if I need another one. But I forgot to pack a scarg and this one is a great shade of blue and my neck was cold – and only $14!

I walked and looked at cool stuff and took photos. I drove past and then walked back to the police station because I like the look of this brick border at the top of the building:

The green in the windows against the red of the bricks is very nice as well. 

There was this old doorway…

You know, the blue-gray in the window in this photo is also very nice. I noticed as I walked that I was way more attracted to the old, beat-up facades. I'm also finding myself more and more attracted by words and letters. If only I could have gotten up in the air about 20' – this would have been a much better photo. 

The electric boxes are on the way to the entrance to my room in the B&B (which is very nice!) I just like the arrangement of the different sizes of boxes. 

Last but not least, the ironwork on this bench is also good. Why? I see a suggestion for a machine quilting pattern: vertical rows, one with a linear pattern alternating with a more organic design. Neither row of designs must be precise… the designs can be a little organic which lends itself to free-motion quilting. Fun, don't you think?

I also posted some other images to facebook and instagram and twitter that aren't in this post. If you happen to be on any of those social media sites, please do follow me. Or don't because goodness knows I understand anyone who prefers to use their time in other ways :-).

If you want to find me elsewhere, go to www.pieceocake.com, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the appropriate links. Now I'm off to dinner – Mexican food – yay!

I'm on the road, tonight in Waco, TX. Tomorrow I drive to El Dorado, AR. I did a little surfing and ran across a couple of interesting tidbits.

You may know that I am married to a scientist who has spent his professional life teaching college students science. My youngest son is biostatistician involved in research. What they study does not necessarily make sense to the average individual but it matters. Learning about things because they are interesting matters because you just never know where research may lead.

If you have read/heard about the folly of research into duck genetalia (apparently a topic in some news circles right now) you ought to also read this short explanation from the lead scientist in the duck genetalia research. Click here.

As it turns out, duck parts are both weird and interesting. See that dangly, pink, corscrew-looking thing? That's the duck's penis! I, for one, am happy that people genetalia is not like a duck's.

And as long as you are reading about stuff most people ignore, check out this review of Gulp. Yet another book I want to find time to read. I still want to read Stiff.

I gave a lecture on quilting to a lovely group of quilters this morning – it was fun! Then lunch, and then I did a little more shopping. I just could not help myself!

Georgetown is in a warmer part of Texas and I was hunting sandals with arch support. I figured this was a good place to do it. Finding arch support in a sandal is a hard but I did at Judith's! Here's the black pair I bought (so much better than my black 'dress' Reef flipflops). This sandal is kind of funky and 'rumpled' looking but they feel so good and should dress up or down.

And I found a sort of silver pair…

These are not cheap sandals but I expect to wear them for several years. I can't stand up in those cute, cheap, flat sandals and seriously, a woman needs sandals that look good with a skirt or dress. I'm tired of being embarrassed by my feet in the summer. It would have been fun to find colored sandals but surely these will suffice.

I got back to the hotel room and continued to avoid writing on the new book. I just couldn't concentrate in this hotel room. Some hotels feel like work, this one does not. So I surfed the web and found this very interesting article on garbage collectors in NYC. If you squinched up your nose and immediately thought 'why would I read that?' – this article is something you should read. It's good to have a little insight into the jobs done by those people who do hard and invisble jobs.

And then there's this happy video that my friend, Laurie, shared with me. Public School 22 is in Staten Island and while the kids change, the chorus remains. The director of the PS22 Chorus is Gregg Breinberg. The PS22 Chorus is famous – except that I'd never heard of them before and maybe you haven't either. This video will make you smile. If you want to look, there are others online.

Fun! Tomorrow I teach applique and then begin the drive north and east to El Dorado, AR. Thankfully there won't be time to shop. This is good. I'm supposed to be making, not spending.