Leaving the cold behind…

I missed the first snow of the winter when I was in Houston. It was all gone by the time I arrived home but never fear… there was more to come… about three inches, to become subject of today’s featured image!

What is one supposed to do when it’s cold outside?

Well, I started a tweed stitch baby blanket using the cotton yarn I had bought at Prism Yarn in St. Pete’s. It’s a combination of white, a very pale pink and shades of lilac.
I made a new Dimensional Stitches sample.And I packed my bags!The cold is so much easier to bear when you know you have a trip booked to warmer climes 🙂

The alarm rang early on Wednesday morning for Steve to take me to the airport as the sun was rising.West over the Rockies just south of Denver,Coming in to land over the brown, dry landscape around Burbank. It was about 60 degrees warmer at Burbank than Midway… it felt good!

I had some time to spend before I could check in at my hotel in Pasadena so I just dropped my bags and headed over to the Norton Simon Museum. I enjoyed lunch outside (!!) before wandering around the galleries of paintings and sculptures. You can look at the museum’s excellent website to see better pictures than I could have taken, but I did take a few outside.

This is Sitting Cheetah by Gwynn Merrill looking magnificent in the afternoon sun. A view over the pond, looking back at the museum buildings.All just steps from downtown Pasadena.

Next up was a shopping trip… I needed supplies for my five night stay. It was downhill all the way to Trader Joe’s and did you know it all started in Pasadena?I did not walk back to the hotel. The Sheraton has a shuttle so I took a ride!

Time to check in, unpack a little and head over to the Convention Center to collect my badge and papers for STITCHES SoCal 2019. I had planned on going on an exploration of some of the local clothes store but I met some fellow teachers at crossing and went to dinner instead.

On Thursday I taught two embroidery classes. I didn’t get any pictures of the morning’s Introduction to Folk Art Embroidery class but here are the ten happy stitchers at the end of our Dimensional Embroidery Stitches workshop. They did well.I have to admit, after the large classes in Houston it was very relaxing to have smaller numbers stitching away…

Yesterday I taught a Walking Foot Quilting class in the afternoon. Straight lines, combined and altered stitches and even some spirals emerged in the three hour class. We all left the room happy and smiling.

I’m moving on to a Free Motion class today and finishing with Dorset Buttons tomorrow morning. It’s a very nice laid back pace in SoCal. I could get used to this!