El Paso, surgery and play

I really don’t plan to cram major events altogether, it just happens. Hubby and I spent a few days in El Paso, Tx celebrating his Mom’s 94th bday. It was a grand time:

She is very well-loved by many, for good reason. I’m a counter and I stopped counting at 50 cards!

This was fun – my Sister-in-Law bought this special candle for the cake and it was spectacular. It started out like this and then all the little petal-like things flopped down, each with their own candle and they moved around the center candle. It was really cool!

I thought this was special – for one of our meals, we ate on the Old Country Roses by Royal Albert China. And that glass? It was almost 100 years old! Did I mention that my MIL made all of our meals except one? She is a fabulous cook and we all ate very well. Eating together made for more visiting and that was a delight.

She was born and raised in Texas and I spied this on her bumper – love that!

It was a special time for us to get together. We were missing a few in this photo.

For a brief time both sons were there. Son #2 is proud of his car. I think it’s a Golf R and it’s pimped out for performance. He is single….

Oldest son with his Grammie – see the joy?

If you’re ever in El Paso, you know you must visit Julio’s! Just plain good Tex-Mex.

I did very little sight seeing and lots of visiting. I know most do not think of El Paso as a tourist destination but there are some pretty scenes. The Franklin Mountains extend from El Paso to New Mexico. They are barren and beautiful in their own way.

We got a chance to visit the El Paso Desert Botanical Gardens:

This was a new one on me. It was not labeled but aren’t those pods cool?

I never get tired of this. I have a few at home and I love the way the sun can hit it just right and illuminate the spikes.

Now this was the oddest thing, a pole with a bunch of shoes screwed into it. A closer examination showed this:

I have no idea what type of bird prefers old shoes to nest in!

Yep, that is The Wall (between El Paso and Juarez, Mexico).

El Paso is home to Ft. Bliss and there is definitely a military presence there. This sobering sculpture sits in the airport.

The day after we arrived home from El Paso we were up early for Hubby’s knee replacement surgery. I needed some pre-op meds too:

Hubby emerged victorious and now the real work starts…

I am a bit suprised at how much aerobic this is for me – I did 40 flights of stairs yesterday. We are thrilled and grateful with the care Hubby has received. He is a healthy guy with bad knees so I expect his recovery to go well. The good thing about your knees going early is that you get it done while you’re relatively young!

I really needed some purposeful self-care. I did a few random things just for fun this week:

You may recall that I was in Pat Pauly’s Design class last week at Craft Napa and one of the design-provoking activities was to randomly put fabric upon index cards and then trim up the edges. I intend to continue to do these. All 3 of these started out looking pretty random, nothing special.

I was surprised at how unifying the quilting line was, it brought each composition together. I was not sure how the flaming orange neon thread would do and that too was a surprise – I like how they turned out. My fav is the bottom one. And the top left one, that circle thingy turned out to look like a flower once the feather was quilted in. Who knew?

I follow South African quilter Hester Helena Jeffrey on FB and recently she posted about doing her dense backfills using two threads through one needle. A lightbulb went off for me so I had to try that:

Okay, so I used what I had and would never do this combination on a quilt. The double thread does make the stitching stand out and the curvaceous feather tips pop, exactly what I wanted. I do love the vermicelli meander but the bubbles give the feathers the most impact.

At Market in Houston last year I almost became a groupie at the Odif booth (French company – they are the ones that make 505 basting spray). I have not found their “Grippy” at retail so I resorted to an online purchase. At the time, the only place to buy it at a reasonable price was Artistic Artifacts. I loved visiting their booth (and spending money) at the Houston show. I sprayed the Grippy on one of my rulers designed by Yu Tien Wu (FB name of Iris White). She gifted me with a set of her rulers and I love them – so well designed. The Grippy worked perfectly and gave a solid grip on the fabric without the raised edge you get from the shelf-liner type product. I wish Grippy was more readily available; it’s a great product.

Do ya think I crammed enough into a week? Next week “should” be calm and the following week I’ll be studying with Betty Busby at Santa Barbara Quilting Retreat. Lucky me!! I’ll link up with Nina-Marie’s Off the Wall Friday.