Girly Time, Part 2

Oh, there you are! Did you take a bathroom break and get your popcorn bucket refilled? Good! Then we'll end the intermission and continue with our story. Thursday the plan, in theory, was to spend the entire day playing on Venus. No, no, not the planet. Venus is Bev's new long arm quilting machine. When we arrived, Bev had a little crib-sized practice thingy loaded onto it and we took turns trying some stitching. Here's Nancy taking a turn: I'd brought along my Boston Commons Horror since I didn't care if I messed it up worse than it already was, and we'd planned to start work on that pretty early but somehow we ended up with more errands to run Thursday morning. Funny how that happens. Heh. The main reason we were going out again was that the day before I'd been in search of some do-it-yourself framing components and couldn't find any, but the SuperfantasticBev got on the phone and found some at a store in another part of town, so we were going to get them. I needed them to frame a print I'd gotten from Frances ages ago. I had never quite gotten around to framing it because it was a size where I couldn't use a standard frame and I am incredibly lazy. But it's finally done! Yay! Take a look at it hanging on my bedroom wall: "The Harbour" by Frances Caple Doesn't it look wonderful? Anyway back to the main story...Thursday morning was fun because we got to go through a part of town I'd never been to, which meant I got to see things like this: and this: The courthouse isn't being used as a courthouse anymore, since the city built a nice, shiny new one, but I kind of loved the Gothic one, so I hope they're planning to do something with it. And none of us had any idea who the guy with the extravagantly swirling cape is supposed to be, but Bev was kind enough to circle him a couple of times so I could try to get photos of him from a moving car in the rain. People kept looking at us like we were crazy. I wonder why? My theory is that one of the town's founding fathers was a vampire. It would go along with the whole Addams Family-esque courthouse and I don't see how anyone except a vampire, a matador, or a stage magician could be quite that into working the cape. It's my belief that this sculpture depicts Mr. Swirlula in the moment before he transforms into a bat. He can't be about to pull a rabbit out of a hat because he doesn't have a hat. And I don't see a bull anywhere. So. Vampire. You really can't argue with logic like that. Eventually, a couple of stores and a restaurant later, we made it back to Bev's house and started trying to load my BCH quilt onto the rollers. Um, did I mention that the "H" part of BCH stands for "Horror"? I don't just mean the whole blowsy, overblown, pasteliness of the whole thing, although that's bad enough. But also, that quilt is so NOT square or flat. And, well, we kinda sorta forgot to DO anything about that before we loaded it onto the quilting machine. So things got a little interesting. Here I am, in a pause between quilting strange viny-flowery-shapes onto the BCH. I'd planned to show you a close-up of the quilting part too, but all those photos turned out so badly that it would have been pointless to post any of them and I didn't want to mess with unfolding it all when I got it home in order to try again. Lazy, remember? We got about 1/3 of it quilted before the needle got so dull that it wouldn't get the job done anymore and Bev realized she didn't have a replacement needle that would handle the thread I'd brought with me and there was no place local to buy one. Oops. So we said fuque it and watched Survivor instead. I can't say my shoulders were all that sorry. It's basted now, so I'll finish it at some point on my regular sewing machine and then maybe I'll donate it to some organization that works with the blind. Or maybe I'll reverse it and make the front the back and vice versa. I like the backing fabric! Playing with Venus was fun though! It made me want one of my very own. I am not, however, holding my breath on that one, as both money and space could be An Issue. I think for now I'd better just plan to go back to Bev's house and play again sometime soon. And you know if I do, I'll take pictures and share them with you! Oh yeah, and for the art-of-the-day thing, I'd really planned to draw something to post for today's entry, but didn't quite get a Round Tuit, so I'm going to reach into the Backup Desperation Bag O' Finished ArtsyFartsy Tricks, close my eyes, mix them all up, and pull out THIS: "Big Blue Sky" (clickable if you want to see it larger in a new window) All together now - Ooooooohhh! Aaaaahhhh! PS...Blogger's spell checker wanted me to change "pasteliness" (which, ok, I KNOW isn't a real word, but it got my point across!) to "pestilence". I find that hilarious and all-too-perceptive! PPS...Addendums in response to some early comments Thanks to Bev, here are a couple of photos of me looking not-so serious for Karoda. The only "smiley" one I had of myself at the machine had a weird glare spot right on my face, no idea from what, but I kind of figured the camera was trying to tell me something. Heh. But Bev emailed me these that she took with her camera: (thanks, Bev!) When I talked about Girly Time, I probably said something about going to Cincinnati, but the little field trip we took Thursday morning was actually to Hamilton, Ohio, so that's where the Addams Family Courthouse and Mr. Swirlula are located. I think that quilt looks better in the photos than it looks in person. In the photos it looks more like I planned for it to look when I started. In person, I think it looks like a droopy, wrinkly woman of a Certain Age, wearing an overly ornate floral dress and too much make-up. But thanks for the nice comments!