Friday, November 6, 2015

Friday Mishmash - Debby Visits!

Among the awesome benefits that have come from blogging are the friendships I've made through the internet.  Once such online-turned-in-person friend is Debby, of Debby Weighs In.  We've now met up five times, I think, both in California, where she lives, and Texas, where I live.  Quite a few months ago, she was planning on coming to Houston for a quilt show, and we made arrangements for me to drive there when the show was over, pick her up, and bring her to my house for a couple of days.  Which in my reality meant that Jeff would do the driving while I was the contented passenger...Houston is the fourth largest city in the United States, and driving the freeways in that city scares the bejeezus out of me.  Turns out Jeff was going to be out of town during that time, so I went into high anxiety just thinking about the drive.  And then the rains started, and parts of Houston were flooding, including some of the roads leading into the downtown area, which is where I needed to pick her up.  After spending too much time fretting about this, I finally remembered to make the classic game show move, and phoned a friend - in this case, Julia, and asked her to go with me.  She said yes in a heartbeat, because that's the kind of person she is, and with that, my worries didn't disappear, but the elephant foot that was weighing my chest down was lifted...whew!

A few hours after we finished running 9 miles on Sunday, Julia and I set out for the big city.  She was my navigator, and an excellent navigator she was - we managed to arrive at Debby's hotel in one piece.  We got Debby and her gear in my car, and decided to get out of downtown before finding a place to stop for lunch.  Google maps failed us at that point, as it didn't recognize that a freeway on-ramp was closed, and kept directing and redirecting us in a square around downtown (gotta love all those one-way streets) back to that closed on-ramp.  There was only one slight incident where a quick left turn resulted in some horn honking and flop sweat, but we soon found a different freeway (there's no shortage of freeways in Houston) and by that time both Julia and Debby had their phones navigating us in the right direction.  Hi Debby, meet Julia, and now let's try not to die - welcome to Texas!

We found a Mexican restaurant for lunch - Mamacita's - and had a nice time eating, talking, and decompressing from getting out of downtown Houston.  Julia took a picture of the bloggers:
We look remarkably calm here - amazing what some caffeine, chips and salsa can do!

Then we were on the road again.  Except for some rain, the rest of the drive wasn't bad.  Julia was pointing out some fun roadside attractions when we came upon the signs for Buc-ee's, which is something you just have to see to believe - it's a gas station, rest stop (but not for truckers), shopping center, food court, mega-store that screams Texas, so naturally we had to stop and give Debby the Buc-ee's experience:
With the Buc-ee Beaver, and just some shots of the WALL OF SNACKS there. 

We finally arrived home, and Julia was released from her navigator duties (seriously, she's a good friend for coming along with me).  Debby and I relaxed with some knitting - she's the one who taught me how to knit, nearly four years ago, so it seemed only fitting to be sitting and knitting (sorry, I couldn't resist that).

Because I torture Debby with writing about the cinnamon twists from Blue Baker so often, we went there for breakfast on Monday:
Cinnamon twist, check!

We spent the rest of the day mostly stitching.  Yes, stitching!  Debby does this beautiful hand-stitching on her quilts with colored perle cotton embroidery thread, and I expressed an interest in learning how to do it a while back.  She arrived with a mini quilt in hand, ready for me to start stitching on!!  I was so excited I didn't even stop to take a picture of it before I started doing the stitching, but you can see what it looks like here:
She layered and sewed it together, and then basted the backing to it, which I've already managed to pull out in my enthusiasm.

Here's a close up of the section that I stitched:
Not bad for my first try!  Although I almost instantly regretted all of that orange stitching for the sun - it felt like it took forever to finish.  

Debby had me pick out some thread colors from her stash so I could continue working on this piece after she left, and she supplemented what I chose - here's what I woke up to the next morning:
All the thread colors are so pretty!  I have no idea how long it will take me to finish this, but I think it will be a fun project to work on when I'm not knitting.

Paco and Kip know an animal lover when they meet one, and both managed to get some quality time with Debby:
Everyone was very content...

It was a short visit, but a fun one, and all too soon I delivered Debby to our little airport - seriously, it's so small that when I was driving up to it, she asked "what is this?" which, yeah...it's tiny.  I'm glad she made the extra time in her trip for me - it's always so nice to spend some time with a far away friend!

10 comments:

  1. How cool and exciting to learn a new skill. Embroidery doesn't look easy though. You did
    pretty work. You have such cool and interesting meetups with blog friends.

    Well I finally got all the "finishing" work on my first cardigan done yesterday. The button bands, collar, and seaming are every bit as involved as knitting the pieces of the cardigan.
    I will post it to my raverly acct. I am susanc7818 there.If your still interested in seeing it I think you are my friend there as well. I haven't figured out the whole raverly thing yet what is so great etc. I have used it to ask questions though when I was stumped with my knitting project.
    Have a great weekend and thanks for sharing your visit with fellow blogger Debbie with us.

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  2. I think it wonderful that you ladies are friends in person from blogging. It is great that you got to spend some time together! Buc-ees looks amazingly fun and your stitching looks beautiful! :)

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  3. That stitching looks like so much fun. Much easier than hand quilting.

    if I ever come to Texas, I will look you up. Same for you if you come to NY.

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  4. That really was so much fun! I got a souvenir at Big-We' s---hahaha. What, my kindle recognizes Big-We and not the famous Buc-Ee??

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  5. That's awesome! Someday I'll make it down for a visit! :D

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  6. Aww, love this! Blogger friends are the best! And I love that she taught you to knit - another blogger is the one that got me started :)

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  7. The famous cinnamon twist! Blogger meet ups are fun. I hope to have more.

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  8. Awesome post. Nothing like friendship....and like you...I have made some wonderful online friends! (Got to see one last weekend! WOO HOO!)

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  9. How much fun for the both of you that you could meet again! Looks that you had a nice couple of days together.

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  10. That was so nice of Julia! All in all a great friendship post.

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