Wine and Friends

We had beautiful weather for a day in Temecula Wine Country yesterday. We were meeting up with our friends Debi and Jim for a day of visiting and sipping. Debi and Jim were coming from an appointment, and so we arrived at Cougar Vineyard & Winery a few minutes before they did.

While we waited for them to arrive, we walked around the vineyard a little, taking pictures of every blooming thing.

I've seen these little knee-high shrubs all over while we've been in Hemet. They look a lot like rosemary, but I don't think they are. In any case, it's been hard to get a very good picture of them. This isn't a very good picture either, but I wanted you to see their little purple flowers.

These were the vineyards in front of the winery, and there were olive trees too.

Searching around, I found a few olives.

Across the way, we could see their next door neighbors, yet another winery.

Walking through the front doors...

and into the tasting room, it looks like this.

Inside was a little display about the "barrel art" tour.

There was a map with different wineries where one could see more barrel art. This might be kind of fun.

It reminded me of a public art display held in Portland some years back, only Portland had cow art. Here's just one example:

Getting back to the winery, and despite its name, this winery seemed obsessed with woofies. This would not have pleased the felines with whom we are traveling. Your woofie could even join a club.

They had a wine cork bulletin board showing their members.

Along with dog art.

But we forgave them this foolish compulsion because their name and their label,

and even their cork...

honored the felines once worshipped as gods in ancient Egypt. There was even cat art on their wall.

And then there was this wine. With a name like that, it has to be good, right?

We thought we might have a glass, but settled on this one instead.

It was a nice bold red.

I didn't think to take a picture of our group yesterday, but here's a picture of Debi and me at a reunion some five years ago.

After enjoying wine and a nice lunch at Cougar, we decided to head off to Robert Renzoni Vineyards & Winery. I'm recycling this picture of the tasting room from a previous post. It's a beautiful winery.

Inside, their tasting room is impressive.

There, we actually did have my namesake wine.

It came in a very pretty bottle.

The tasting room included a nice gift shop. Look how pretty these bottles of olive oil are.

Are you feeling brave?

No? How about something home baked?

Outside was this old tractor.

So we had a really lovely day catching up with Debi and Jim. They do quite a bit of international travel. They also have an RV, and so there was no shortage of travel talk.

Before heading out yesterday, I had some time to work on my hand quilting project. I filled this hoop and then moved on to the next location.

I'll work on it some more today, but then I'll probably put it aside again and start working on the next snowflake. It's all ready to go.

Also, today is February 1st, which means its the beginning of International Embroidery Month. I'm all ready to start the stitch-along with Crabapple Hill Studios, and I can't wait to get started.

There will be other things on today's agenda besides hand-stitching though. For one thing, we need to repack our belongings. Things have kind of gotten scattered here and there since we've been staying put the past two weeks. Tomorrow, we'll move along to Pahrump, Nevada, again, where we'll stay for another two weeks. Erik and Mae will be joining us next week, and so we're looking forward to seeing them. I know they're ready to get out of Portland for a while. The weather there has been absolutely awful. Portland saw more rain in January than it has in the past 14 years! It's just another reason we call ourselves "Rainbirds," and not "Snowbirds."

Okay, so the sun is rising...time to get stitching. I'll be checking Instagram compulsively this morning, looking for the first "inchy" to be posted for the stitch-along.