Monday, January 17, 2011

Speed Trip

We have returned, tired and bleary eyed, and me with a sore stitching finger...

Friday night found me sewing late into the night by machine, finishing up the last of the border work.  I scrapped the stencil/free motion quilting for something much simpler but still time consuming, cross hatching.
After repeated thread breakage, lumps on the back, more skipped stitches and frustration, I determined the cause of all my problems was cheap needles.  Months ago I found packs of EZ Quilting machine needles for a song at Tuesday Morning.  Though they were the same length as my other machine needles, the eye of the needle was lower on some and this caused my bobbin thread to be pulled up incorrectly.  I threw all of them away after switching to my only "good" needle in the house!  The binding got machine sewn on before I crashed for the night at 1:00 AM with a wake up call set for 5:30 AM.

We headed out by 6:30 and had an easy drive through L.A. 
Spotted some lovely snow capped mountains in San Bernardino...

and masses of wind turbines on the way to Palm Springs.

We led most of the way.

The mountains are all volcanic in nature, with some strange formations just plopped down, seemingly.  I took occasional photos in between stitching the binding down. 

Dunno what was wrong with these palms.  Fire, maybe, in the past?


Grant giving the thumbs up as he crossed the Colorado River into Arizona for the first time in his life.

The white is the tops of cacti.  The black is big basalt rocks thrown out of the earth by volcanic action.  Some were a foot or more in diameter.

We arrived in Scottsdale about 4 PM and got the van all emptied in short order.  My brother Ted, SIL Laura and my nieces came over to help.  We checked into our hotel and left Erica (who had had 1.5 hours of sleep the night before) to acclimate her cat and get a bit settled.  The above is the view from our hotel.

And looking across the valley floor towards Phoenix.

Grant really loved the Southwest style furniture.

We also loved the fireplace and the great view from the little balcony.


The little casitas were about six or eight units and really nice, overlooking a golf course.

Arizona sunset, Erica's first as a new resident!  Next post, the finished quilt!

4 comments:

Darlene said...

I'm glad you enjoy your week end visit to the Valley of the Sun.

jovaliquilts said...

Neat photos -- and I love the wind turbines! I drove that route in January 2005 and remember how amazing it was.

Shay said...

I've seen those wind turbines in a movie I think. How cool to see them on your blog.

I had no idea the drive from LA to AZ took that amount of time. It doesnt look far on a map...he he

Thanks for taking me along on your road trip.

Stephanie D said...

Who would have thought to look at the placement of the eye on a needle? Boy, you must really have been frustrated to figure that one out! But glad you did--I'll know to stick to good name brand needles.

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