Montana!

Back from my quilting retreat at Quiltworx in Montana - had a great trip, learned a lot, saw bears more up close and personal than I would like, and the people were as nice as they could be...even nicer!

Country Music and Fox news - check.
Sean Hannity - check.
Anti-President Obama ads with scary voice doing the commentary on Obamacare - check.
Double rainbow on the first day of arrival - check!

The photo is from Judy's retreat center, over Flathead lake on the north side. Not much better in life than a double rainbow! Joy, Joy!

On Tuesday, Judy was doing a demo, when one of the women looked out the window and saw two bear cubs coming up the driveway. She had her camera, but by the time the rest of us grabbed our cameras, the bears had gone on up the driveway, where our cars were parked! Never did see the Mama Bear, which is especially scary. Judy immediately locked the doors and ran upstairs...I thought she was going to get her shotgun! LOL - I don't even know if she has one, but that's what I thought! On Saturday, the bear cubs came back, again up the driveway.

Here's my project on the last day. I'm going to do this again, with different colors, especially since there are now papers for a queen size extension.

On Friday morning, I went for a walk with one of the other attendees, and this is the sunrise. Nice way to wrap up the retreat! Double rainbow welcome, gorgeous sunrise to depart! Montana is beautiful country. As I was driving up to Flathead, I was thinking that I could see why they call it "Big Sky Montana." And I am waitlisted to go back next year. Militia be damned!

I don't know about you, but I have thought about running away from home way more often now as an adult than I did when I was a kid.

Happy happy, joy joy!

I finished Grazin' in the Grass!  But I can't post a picture! My iPhone camera just has a black screen...everything else is working, but no camera. Great. I have just about gotten to the point where I never even use my real camera anymore...just the iPhone.  I don't even know where my camera is...I think the last time I used it was Houston last year. I'll take the iPhone to PeachMac tomorrow maybe and see if they can fix it.

In other quilting related news, I've worked on the Brown Sugar Stitchers Quilt of Valor quilt. The Executive Board met and sewed the blocks together. That was an experience. Last week I went to the Anita Goodesign event sponsored by A Scarlet Thread in McDonough...the facilitator said that all their digitizers are men, and you just give them the design and tell them what colors you want and they do it, so they are able to turn designs around really quickly. If they were women digitizers, there would have to be a "discussion" about the design and the colors. LOL! That was our experience with putting the blocks together for the QOV...some people wanted sashing (but didn't have any) and some people wanted to have alternating blank blocks (but didn't have any) and it was a warm day. So it was an experience. 

The Anita Goodesign event was so much fun! I told Al when I left that he needed to take my credit cards so that I couldn't spend any money!  He did not do that, so to make a long story short, I joined the Diamond Club where you get a design every month...that you've paid for in advance by joining the club, of course. Since I've had experience with embroidery and the ladies at my table had not, I "let" them sew while I chatted with my neighbor. Karin came around to take pictures and I told her I would hold the completed block up, but I had nothing to do with the actual sewing of the block. So who ends up getting her picture on their blog? Pretty funny...

But the real happy, happy, joy, joy today is that I received my Feathered Star Pattern! Yippee! I was hoping it would be here in time for the retreat and it made it. I don't know if I will have time to cut out everything before I leave on the 10th, but I'll give it a shot! Cannot wait to sew on this one!

I posted this on my Facebook page the other day, because I think it is hilarious:

"My husband thinks I'm crazy. But I'm not the one who married me."

And because I haven't posted in so long, here's another one to brighten your day:

You couldn't handle me even if I came with instructions!