A Fun Day Out

Yesterday Marilyn and I went up to the Quilter's Cupboard in Uxbridge. It's a lovely quilt shop that, in addition to quilting fabric and patterns, has a great selection of wool felting patterns, wools, and threads.

Marion was up there a week ago and found this fabric, which I, of course, had to have. 

It would be a great lining for a project bag.

I thought this bag of many colours of felt pieces would be a great addition to my stash.

I bought the pattern to make some ugly Christmas sweater ornaments.

I used to have a vest very similar to this. Back when I used to work as a high school teacher, I would wear to work a different Christmas sweater or blouse every day of December. I even won awards for being most festively dressed. One of my principals tried to compete with me one year and failed miserably with her one Christmassy vest.

I also bought the wool to make the ornament and will probably have enough to make a couple of them.

I also admired one of the larger patterns that was finished and on display. 

A kit with all the required wools was already made up.

After staggering out to the car with all our purchases, we went to a nearby golf course which has a really nice outdoor patio for lunch. The tables were well spaced out. It was so nice to dine outdoors and with the breeze off the golf course, there were no wasps to annoy us.

It almost felt 'normal'. 

The parcel from Teresa  arrived a couple of days ago. I can tell you it is an autumnal theme as you can probably tell from the delicious colours.

I don't have to have it finished until the end of January but will work on getting it done by the end of December. It's quite large 185 sts x 186 sts and is 1 over 2 on 40ct. I want to get started on it today but haven't decided if I'll start in a corner or in the centre and whether I'll grid the fabric or not. 

I have made a pact with myself to get rid of at least one garbage bag full of junk/trash/crap from the basement every two weeks (when we have garbage collection). While I was down there this week I  found my high school scrapbook which I haven't looked at in years. So many memories flooded back of band trips, football games, music camp, games of bowling, etc. etc. Then I found a program of a stage production of Becket that involved an enormous number of students and staff at our school - at least a couple of hundred. The producer and director was Mr McGrath, who I understood to be on sabbatical from Oxford University. I have no idea why any university professor would want to teach at a Canadian high school in the early 70s. 

Anyway, it was while rehearsing for this production that I met my long-time friend, Francey, when we both would go outside to smoke in the smoking area (back parking lot) during breaks. Originally from the Gulf Coast of Texas, she had arrived in my home town (Sarnia) after spending her teen years in Europe where her dad was stationed for work. In the play, she was an English Court Lady and I was a Court Minstrel. I remember my beautiful royal blue, velvet tunic and the tune I and the other two flutists played (although I don't remember the title). 

Francey and I became friends and ended up both attending Western that fall. We joined the same sorority and were roomates for a year before she graduated and moved to Texas for graduate school. We have kept in touch and visited over the years. I attended her wedding in Huntsville TX and she made the epic voyage from Georgia with her husband to attend mine.

I sent her a scan of the program which prompted an anecdote by her of me driving her home after the cast party. I have no memory of that at all. We had a nice FaceTime chat this morning, laughing about how, although there was a lot of drinking at the party, no one seemed to be really drunk and we seemed to be good 'social drinkers' even then.

Another memory I have is when we both boarded off campus in the same house and would drink at football games, come home somewhat 'wazooed', play card games, and then pass out until dinner time. We would often use coupons we'd get on campus for discounted meals at Steak and Burger downtown. I have so many great memories of my time at university and Francey is in a lot of them. I'm so fortunate to still have contact with several friends from that era.

I also found two cases of my grandpa's slides from 1958 to 1968. I went through them all and scanned the ones that had any people I knew in them. Out of over 1100 slides, I kept about 40 of the actual slides and probably digitally saved 60 of them. So the rest went out in the garbage, too. It's a good feeling to get rid of stuff like that.