Glorius, Beautiful, Wet RAIN!!!

I woke up yesterday to the sound of huge raindrops hitting the now repaired gutter next to my bedroom window!!  The best part is there was no clanking from the downspout, as usual.  It's nice and cool, but not cold, and the air is clean and crisp!!  Sounds like a GREAT day to drive to Sonora and pick up my batik quilt.  Although it was supposed to take 10 weeks (I think it has only been four), they called to say it was ready for pick-up.

My plan was to drop off some of that pumpkin butter we made at a friends house, have lunch on top of a hill somewhere (leftover turkey sandwich .. yum!!), then pick up the quilt.  I knew the traffic would be bad, as it always is going this direction on a Saturday.  It was made even worse by the snow coming down in the Sierras, calling all skiers from across the state.  No matter ... I'm just going for a nice drive!!  It poured!!!  Then poured some more.  My wipers were having a hard time keeping up, but that's okay ... we need it!!

The rain makes for some fantastic pictures!!  I saw them all the way up into the hills, except my camera was sitting on the table at home.  Not wanting to incur any road rage because I slowed down to look or pull over in a driveway, I just kept going, getting a couple of images on the fly.

It was about that time that I remembered the pumpkin butter ... sitting nicely in the fridge AT HOME!!!  You can't imagine the spew of words that came from my mouth!!  This is almost a two hour drive from home!!  Sorry friends ... you'll have to wait until next year!!  DARN IT!!!  I hate it when I do that!!

The hilltop lunch didn't work out either, so I ate my smoked turkey cranberry mayo on a Kings Hawaiian roll slider in the quilt store parking lot.  What a mess!!  I had cranberry sauce and mayo falling all over the steering wheel and my lap, with not a napkin or towel in sight!!  It sure did taste good though!!

Amazingly, the quilt store wasn't busy at all, as I wandered around picking up a few more fat quarters and one new pattern.  With thread 25% off, I snagged a few spools, before checking on the quilt.  It was gorgeous!!  You can see some of the machine quilting here.  I could NEVER do anything THIS pretty!!  They stitched the edges and trimmed the batting perfectly!!  Maybe in the end it was worth the $100 to have it done, but that makes this quilt pretty expensive.  If anyone ever gives you a quilt with stitching like this, know that it cost them a small fortune!!!  From now on, I think I'll stick to the lap size!!  By the way, they DO sell quilting machines here ... which I looked into ... almost had a heart attack and quickly dismissed!!

A very nice surprise as I checked out however, made the quilt price easier to swallow!  I got 25% off the entire ticket price, including the already-on-sale items.  When I got home, the kids were pretty tired from napping all day, so we just snuggled on the couch!!  Monday I'll get to work stitching binding on the quilt ... the final step!!  THIS one's going on my bed in the rig!!

I'm feeling bad that I didn't deliver the goods, so today I'm driving BACK with camera in hand ... assuming I don't leave it on the counter!!  I haven't been on a picture-taking foray in awhile and the butter MUST be delivered!!!