Some Slow Stitching

Good morning, my friends. I'm writing fast this morning. In a couple of hours, I'm getting a routine eye exam. Nothing seems amiss with my vision, but I check in every year anyway. It means getting myself around early this morning. After that, I need to make a quick stop at the grocery store, and then I'll have the rest of the day for sewing.

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, we were headed out to the Portland RV Show. We haven't been to the RV show in at least five years, and we were curious to see if anyone had come up with anything new. Before going, I had some time for slow-stitching. I stitched up what was still in my hoop...

And then moved the hoop to the left where I was able to capture the last of it.

This is finishing up fairly quickly. There's a lot of stitching in the letters and numbers. The heavier sections of the letters are filled in with long and short stitches. 

After that, we both got in our workouts, and I started some chili in the slow cooker. For a side, I tried this new recipe for Cast Iron Beer-Batter Cheese Bread. It was super easy to make it, and it baked fast. We liked it.

While we were eating dinner last night, I said to Mike that I thought cornbread was a better accompaniment for chili, but he said he liked this beer bread better. And that's a rousing endorsement. It's another recipe from America's Test Kitchens. I've linked to it above the image, but you probably can't open it without a subscription. If you have trouble, email me, and I'll be happy to send it to you.

Okay, and so we headed out, getting some fast food along the way. The RV show was at the Portland Expo Center, way across town from us. Traffic was absolutely horrible both coming and going. We passed a car completely engulfed in flames on one of the main highways along our way. Just now I did a search looking for any information. Strangely, I could find nothing. When we left the RV show to come home, roads heading in that direction were closed. Fortunately, we had an alternative route, but traffic was heavy everywhere. I'm still curious what happened.

We didn't see anything at the RV show that made us want something different. I took only a few pictures. When we go to the RV show, I'm always looking for something the kids could tow with one of their current vehicles. (I don't even know if they have any interest in RVing, but I'm interested for them.) Take a look at this little guy.

Inside, it has cushioning and the ability to set up a small table. The cushioning makes into a bed. This one even has a bathroom and a little cooktop. It seems larger inside than outside.

The only other one where I bothered with pictures was this 38-foot fifth wheel. It's a little larger than ours, but it had an interesting floor plan. The kitchen was right in the middle. Looking left, it looks like this.

Looking right, it looked like this. If you look at the extreme right of the image below, you can see the usual two steps up. The steps take you to the part of the fifth wheel that extends over and hitches to the tow vehicle.

Usually, that leads to the bedroom. In this rig, the living room is there.

Walking past the living room was this small "office." Well, don't you know I recognized this as a sewing room right away. People who came in after kept saying things like, "Oh look! An office!" And I had to keep correcting them. "No, this is a sewing room," I said. The women laughed and smiled. The men looked confused. 

It even has a window. Cool! (And, sigh. We weren't planning to buy anything, but if we were...)

Leaving the sewing room and turning directly around, you can see to the back end of the rig.

At the back end was a bedroom with a king size bed...a must for us.

The bathrooms were much prettier than they have been in previous years. Many had these bowl-type sinks.

At our last visit to an RV show, many of them had dishwashers as an option. Indeed, when we bought ours, it came with the option for a dishwasher. But then, when we actually placed our order, they no longer offered the dishwasher. (No reduction in price, BTW.) We purchased ours and Mike installed it after market. Looking in even the most expensive and luxurious RV's yesterday, there were no dishwashers, nor even any place to install one. So there you go. I'm feeling smugly superior about our dishwasher.

Okay, but what if your cats want their own space. Well, I have a solution. 

You just harness one of them to this little "Pet Camp" RV, and they can follow along behind as you go down the road. (Never trust your cat to navigate the route ahead of you. This safety tip is offered at no extra charge.)

Okay, so I've already told you about our harrowing drive home. It was made even more harrowing because we stopped off at Home Depot to get the ball rolling on replacing the carpet in the upstairs of our house. It's needed doing for at least a couple of years, but we needed a break from that sort of thing when our plumbing disaster reconstruction was all finished up. And now...the time has come. I'm dreading the process with every fiber of my being. Mike is dreading it even more than I am, I think. Still, we stopped off, selected a couple of samples, and someone will be out to measure at the end of the month. We're aiming for January.

And then, when we checked the mail, I was happy to see the fabric I was awaiting had arrived. This is going to work beautifully for my project.

Today, I'm hoping to put that fabric to work in my Patterns in Nature quilt. You remember this one, right? 

Some of you have guessed there's green in my project. You guys are too smart for me to fool for very long.

And let me just tell you, I was pretty happy that dinner was already made when we got home. Walking through the door, it smelled like chili. We sat and watched the news, and I spent a little more time on my slow-stitching.

That's where I'm headed next. I think I can squeeze in a little time before I need to take off. 

There was no other sewing yesterday, but I'm confident I'll have some time this afternoon. I'll commit to one hour on my "Green" quilt, and then I'll get back to my quilting. If there's time, I'll finish up the last three cat blocks today.