Cooking and planning

We had a very nice day yesterday, but it didn't involve any sewing at all, unfortunately.  We did some grocery shopping very early so that I could spend time cooking for today's Indonesian dinner with Pauline and Bob.  It's actually a lunch so this morning I'll be doing last minute cleaning and cooking.  They are bringing their two little dogs, which should be interesting.  It should be nice weather, so maybe we'll take them for a walk after dinner.

After some intense work in the kitchen, Paul and I went out to lunch at Azteca, a new Mexican restaurant, with four friends, Bill & Diane and Fiona & Chico, for Chico's birthday.  At Bill's urging, our group tradition has become that the birthday person tells a little biography, and Chico's is quite interesting since his family left Cuba when he was a boy and the Castro regime was just beginning to take hold.  He knows firsthand what an authoritarian government is like.  The waitstaff sang a Mexican Happy Birthday which was quite fun, too.  The food was great and plentiful, so we had a snack for dinner.  Our weather has been super

Tomorrow, I hope to get back to sewing, including making a couple of blocks for the Pat Sloan March block-a-day project.  The blocks are easy and great leftover scrap busters - 12" quarter log cabin blocks.  I'm using the same black fabric for the beginning 4.5" locks and dipping deeply into my string basket.  30 blocks will make a nice quilt for Bags of Love.  When we get back from Virginia, I want to start back on my modern Dear Jane quilt.  I have quite a few rows (six?) left to make.  I also have some smaller projects to work on, including a small duffle bag.  I don't enjoy making three dimensional items, but it's nice to have a project that gets finished sooner than my usual bed quilts.

We have been monitoring the weather, and we shouldn't run into snow going south or returning, so we'll leave here on Wednesday and make it to Harrisonburg on Thursday.  Friday morning we'll visit the new Virginia Quilt Museum and then continue on to Staunton for two plays and a backstage tour at Blackfriar's Theater.  Even though our snow here is melting, we'll surely get a little more before winter is truly over.  It will be nice to have a bit of a break from it all.