A Mix of Old and New

What's new with you?

Here's what's new here at the Three Cats Ranch. Yesterday Mike picked up the little compact dishwasher for the RV. It's practically the whole reason we bought the new RV...that, and all the other stuff. Originally, it was supposed to be a non-optional option in our rig...only then, non-optional became nonexistent when the manufacturer stopped installing them. We couldn't even get them to do it despite our ongoing and insistent begging. Not to worry...the Resident Engineer can take care of that, and so he's done his research and settled on this model. Straight out of the box, it looks like this:

In a word: "Shiny." The door opens down, and inside...

I expect it'll work great once it's installed...and once we get the cardboard and styrofoam out of it. So, I guess you know how the Resident Engineer will be spending the rest of his weekend. He's been spending the last 24 hours researching Home Depot and Lowes for the plumbing parts he'll need. Last night he was very excited to show me a plumbing configuration that hooked into the back of the dishwasher and then had a pipe that led over to the sink. He was ecstatic at his find and showed me the picture on his iPad. I was enthused too..."That's amazing!" I said, while mentally shrugging my shoulders. I'm glad this stuff turns his crank. He says the same thing about me and my quilting.

But what turns both our cranks these days is our PAVED ROAD!!! Just take a look at that shiny asphalt. It hasn't even been striped yet!!! Yahoo!!! (Don't think I can't tell you're mentally shrugging your shoulders.) We only drive about 500 yards in this direction before hitting the road that was paved some five years ago. Still, the lack of dust/mud thrills us to no end. I wonder when we'll stop being excited about it.

We were headed down to Witness Tree Vineyards to pick up a wine shipment. There's the witness tree there on the left. We hardly ever get good weather when we come down this direction, and so it was nice to see blue sky and sunshine.

Here's another shot of the witness tree. I've written about the witness tree before. You can find my blog post about it right here and an article from the New York Times about witness trees in general. And I love this tree.

Here's an article about this particular tree, hanging on the wall inside the wine tasting room. Remember that you can make the image larger by clicking on it, and that might make it easier to read.

Across the vineyard was this old barn and a more modern version to its right. Which one do you like better?

Sadly, the Witness Tree Vineyard is closing down within the next year. The winery has been sold, the vines have been removed, and the wines are going on sale by the case. We learned about their closing at our last pick-up. We're told there will probably be one more pick-up, and then Witness Tree Vineyards will be no more. It's sad because they make the most wonderful wines. We'll miss them when they're gone.

After picking up our shipment, we headed to the Golden Valley Brewery in McMinnville for lunch. It's a favorite lunching spot. They had some beautiful trees dressed in their autumn best in the parking lot.

Inside, Mike had a beer, and I had a hard blackberry cider. Yum.

Mike had a chipotle burger with lots o' bacon.

I had a veggie sandwich with marinated portabello mushrooms, roasted red peppers, and a little too much cheese.

Despite the cheese...Yum.

Back home we picked up the mail, and I found a new book I'd ordered. I read about this book on Melissa's Sea Breeze Snippets blog. Since she's done all the work for me, I'll just direct you to her blog post to read about it. It has lots of handy tips about how to use modern methods to achieve traditional results. I agreed with Melissa that there are lots of useful tips in this book. She also notes the book is out of print, but it's still available on Amazon if you're interested.

The Cardinal Mosaic has a little bit of applique when I've finished with the piecing. There was some good info about hand applique in the book. I've been wanting to give it a try, and so this might just be the motivation I need to get started.

The only sewing I did yesterday was to stitch some more of the Appalachian Memories barn. I am loving how this is looking, and I can't wait to do some more on it this morning.

As I mentioned yesterday, I was going to try some Thread Heaven on the Valdani floss since it wants to shred before I've finished the length I'm using. I wouldn't say the Thread Heaven made much difference, and so today I'll try a different needle with a larger eye and see if that helps. Maybe it'll take a combination of the two. I'll let you know. And this being Sunday, I'm linking up to:

Also, I'm caught up on my housework and so I'll get back to the Cardinal Mosaic.

Just six sections to go. I won't get it finished today, but maybe tomorrow.