Finishes All Around

We've had a lengthy discussion spanning the past week about the future of our trip. Now that we're on the western side of Texas, we're moving into territory we've seen many times. Of course, there is still much we haven't seen, and much we want to see. Nevertheless, the weather kind of helped us make our decision. Here is the forecast in Lubbock for today.

Now, we understand that it is winter all over the Northern Hemisphere. But wouldn't you think we could get through Texas and Florida without needing to wear our winter woollies? So, to describe days of planning in a few words, we're heading to the Pacific Coast after visiting a couple of spots in the Texas panhandle, and bagging the rest of the west in favor of the warm weather we know we'll find in Hemet, California.

You know we came to Lubbock for the sole purpose of fixing our front landing gear. Mike thought it would be a two-day job but, like a champion, he finished it in three hours yesterday! Yahoo!

Also, he fixed our coffee maker, which took a dive off the counter top when we forgot to bungee it down a few weeks ago. It's one of those expensive espresso machines, and we love it. When I opened the door to the RV after a particularly bumpy ride one day, I noticed dark spots all over the floor. What the....? Then I realized they were coffee beans and I knew instantly what had happened. Of course, I did the sensible thing and shut the door immediately. If I can't see it, it didn't happen, right? Then I did the next most sensible thing I could think of...I went around to where Mike was standing and said, "It's a tragedy. It's bad."

"What?!?" He asked, looking alarmed.

"The coffee machine...we forgot to bungee it down." He looked as stricken as I felt. We're serious about our coffee.

We've had our machine for about 15 years, and so it isn't quite as flashy as the one in the image above. I'm picturing it here so you can understand the repair. As it turns out, the machine is particularly well made...which explains why it was so danged expensive. Parts of it snap on and snap off, and those parts had become separated from the main part of the machine. We were able to simply snap those back into place. Then we tried to make a cup of coffee with it. Everything seemed in working order, except that the coffee dribbled out in all directions instead of following the flow of gravity straight into the cup. We both made sad faces.

In the meantime, we've been making coffee with a conventional machine, but we've missed the convenience of our espresso machine that makes coffee one cup at a time, grinding the beans, dispensing a cup of coffee, and then dumping the grinds into its own hopper, readying itself for the next cup. Mike thought he could repair the espresso machine, but he needed a special tool that allowed him to open it up. We had that delivered here to the park in Lubbock. When he opened the machine yesterday, it seemed as if everything was working properly, but he noticed that there were grounds all over the inside of the machine...obviously collected from many years of use. With that in mind, he ran pipe cleaners through its plumbing and voila! It started making coffee again.

So, yes. I happen to be drinking a cup as I write this post...and I'm a happy woman....and my eyes are wide open. Mike is my hero.

Okay, so what about the finishes, you ask. As if that weren't enough. While he was out fixing the landing gear, I was inside finishing the Meowvelous Mini quilt. It was about 2/3 quilted, and I finished that off. While we were in Austin, I visited a Jo-Ann store to get some batting. I'd brought scraps along, but when I pieced them together, it wasn't large enough, and so I needed more. While I was there, I picked up a spool of green thread, thinking I'd use green thread to hand stitch the green binding. Only...I wasn't thinking, and I got one of those little 110 meter spools, then realized I barely had enough for quilting it. With that in mind, I used the green thread on the quilt top:

And white in my bobbin. It turned out to be a good choice.

It took me about half an hour to finish the quilting, and then I sewed together the binding strips and stitched them to the quilt.

From there, just the hand-stitching was left, and my little quilt was finished.

Here's how it looks from the back.

The kitties were, of course, jumping with enthusiasm at the prospect of another quilt just for them.

Now it's washed and lying next to our bedroom window. Both kitties have walked on it, but so far, nobody has napped there. I'm thinking that will probably happen today. It's a sunny spot in the morning. Finishing just the quilt top was my February goal for:

Now it's a finished quilt. I'll link up when the time comes.

As for the remainder of our stay here in Lubbock, my friend Caro suggested there was a brand new quilt museum in Lubbock. I've Googled that, and didn't find a "quilt museum." However, I did find a quilt exhibit at the Museum of Texas Tech University entitled, Today's Quilts: Art in Stitches. The museum is closed on Mondays, and so we'll pay them a visit today to see the quilts. Also, we're going to visit the National Ranching Heritage Center. I mentioned it in yesterday's post, and I've done some reading about it since then. It sounds very interesting. Not sure if we'll get there today or tomorrow, but it's on our radar screen.