Bus Trip Day 1

This was the 4th year mom and I ran our bus trip to various quilt shops.  This year we headed east to north east Missouri and central Illinois.  We had a pretty full bus with 47 of our nearest and dearest quilting buddies.  Everyone showed up on time and we left the Walmart parking lot 5 minutes ahead of schedule.  That was a first.  Of course it helped that we had everyone show up half an hour ahead of our departure schedule. 

This was the second year that Trevor drove for us and he made everything so easy.  I didn't have to worry about anything associated with that part of the trip and he did a great job getting us as close to the entrances as possible.  Yay Trevor!!!!!!!!

Our first stop was Satin Stitches in Columbia Missouri.  They had expanded the shop since we were there on the first bus trip in 2014.  They have a ton of machine embroidery patterns and a large selection of beautiful fabric.  I bought a couple of hand towels to embroider and a fat quarter. The store provided lunch in their large large classroom so everyone had plenty of room to eat and shop.  Being vegetarian, I didn't partake in the chicken salad croissant but I heard it was delicious even though it was a bit messy.

The store provided lunch in their large large classroom so everyone had plenty of room to eat and shop.  Being vegetarian, I didn't partake in the chicken salad croissant but I heard it was delicious even though it was a bit messy.

Next we were headed to Homestead Hearth in Mexico MO which is in this historic old building with a lot of brick, part of a plane hanging over the check out area, an old delicatessen in the back, and a historic jeep hanging over the entrance.  Such a fun place.  They welcomed us with a sheet of special prices just for the bus folks..It included 25% off 1 yard cuts of fabric, 10% off sale room prices, and 50% off patterns.  I thought it was extraordinarily generous of them so I did my fair share of damage on the credit card.  I bought about 10 yards of fabric for the Charley Harper Giraffe pattern I'd brought along.  The cutting and checkout lines was pretty long so I'm assuming most of the others were taking advantage of the deep sale prices.

Have to say, I've been to this store a few other times and found it mostly full of muted colors and civil war fabric which isn't my cup of tea but this time I found more brights and modern fabric choices so I was very pleasantly surprised.   The building is beautiful and the store is well worth the trip.

Again we left the store on time.  The fact that I scheduled each store for 1.5 hours seemed to be working!!!!!!!!!  We then drove about an hour to Hannibal MO to one of my favorite shops, Hickory Stick.  The store is full of brights and lovely unique patterns.  The owner gave mom and I a gift certificate for bringing the bus which I thought was terrific.  No other store had done that in the 4 years we ran the trip so we really appreciated it. 

I bought this really cute little panel fabric which the store had appliqued on a towel and surrounded with rick rack.  I had to have it.

 The store did a marvelous job of getting everyone in and out quickly.  Down the street is another small quilt shop which folks visited, Bits and Pieces.

It is a cute shop with a very modern aesthetic. I loved the toy sewing machines they had in one of their display cases.

As usual some of the ladies finish shopping before our 1.5 hour shopping window and so they enjoyed the lovely weather we had for all three days of the trip.

We left Hannibal about 5:30 exhausted but happy from what I thought was a successful day of shopping and now it was time to eat.  We drove about a half hour to Quincy IL to have dinner at Chicks on the River.  I was a little nervous when I called and there was no answer but I'd double checked everything before I left so hopefully it was all good.  We drove up to this beautiful site.

The cafe was a bit busier than they had anticipated but they did a pretty good job of getting us in and out.  One table brought up the rear but we really weren't in a hurry since the hotel was only two blocks away.  I had an excellent hummus wrap which had a nice spicy taste.  Trevor had some wonderful looking chicken lips and most everyone seemed to like the meal.  This was the site after we finished dinner.  So pretty.  

The Quality Inn was a very nice hotel and after a minute or two of nail biting everyone got a room.  The next morning a bunch of the women told me how comfortable the bed was even thought some of them had to make a running leap to get on it.

Minnesota Jaunt Day 2

On Wednesday, we had another full day in St. Paul.  Barb is such a good tour guide.  I asked her to take me to a stained glass store so I could get some dichroic glass.  Mom and I are making some glass jewelry and dichroic glass is so pretty and sparkly.  I need another hobby like I need a hole in the head but since there is a large glass kiln in my garage why not use it.  We went to Glass Endeavors where I found some very pretty pieces, so it will be fun to use it.

Next we were off to Artscrap, which is this very cool place where people donate their old art supplies and the store sells them at garage sale prices.  Loved it.  I got some zippers for $,25, some jewelry supplies for $.10 each.  It was a fun place to spend some time and very little money.

At 1 p.m. we headed to a retirement home for Barb to help with a ceramics class.  This is such a cool retirement home, the residents have dogs, the building is gorgeous and they have all these fun rooms, like a sewing room, a library and I'm sure there are other rooms but these were the ones I was interested in.  They even had a cafeteria that was serving fair food for the week.  We stopped for more fried cheese curds.  There were 3 ladies at the class and it only lasted an hour.  Two of the ladies were from the neighborhood and the nun lived at the facility.  One of the ladies was very talented too.

Did I mention Barb is an awesome artist, she works on all these fun and interesting projects with some of her friends and they have an art show every year.  She is a Photoshop wiz and can do great tole painting - she even painted this sweet little stool for my daughter when she was little.  Totally jealous of her artistic ability.

Then we headed to the Como Park Zoo and Conservatory.  This is such a lovely botanical center so I took tons of pictures.  Hope you like them.

It was such a gorgeous place it was worth being hot in the green house.

On the way back to Barb's, she got a call from a friend who had two tickets to the St. Paul Saints minor league baseball game.  What a perfect way to end a wonderful day.  The weather was beautiful and the night was lovely.  We had seats in the top row of the first section on the aisle with tons of legroom right behind the home dugout on the first base line.  It was pretty much a pitchers battle and when we left at the end of the 7th inning it was 1 to nothing Winnipeg.  One strange thing about the game was that people didn't really cheer.  I usually like to yell during a game but it wasn't appropriate at this one.  Sort of odd.  The stadium is pretty new and they had quinoa and black bean lettuce wrap which was probably the healthiest thing I at the whole trip.  Such fun.

Left for home on Thursday at about 7 a.m. thanking Barb profusely for an awesome visit.  She was the perfect hostess.  Picked up mom in Des Moines on the way back and had lunch in Valley Junction at The Tavern.  They make the best onion strings.  I love being retired.

Minnesota Jaunt Fair Day

OMG I had a great time on my quick visit to Minnesota this week.  About a month ago I decided I wanted to go to the Minnesota State Fair.  My friend Barb works for the fair each year setting up the displays for the crafts building.  Every year she is so excited about the items that she gets to see and I thought I need to go back to Minnesota and check this out.  I lived in Minneapolis over 33 years ago and I went to the fair once but I didn't really have any memories of it.  Having grown up in Iowa I was sure that there was nothing to compare to the Iowa State Fair but I was wrong.  The Minnesota State Fair rocks.  I'm not saying it is better, I am saying it is very cool,

On Monday, Mom and I started the drive about 5:30 a.m.  I dropped her off in Des Moines to visit friends and I was way ahead of schedule so I stopped at Woodside Quilting in Des Moines and checked them out.  I saw several things to love but I am going on a quilt bus trip next month so I decided not to buy anything but I did have a nice conversation with one of the owners.  I also stopped at Quilter's Cupboard in Ankeny.  This is such a cute little shop I really like it.  There were several small bag pattern's I hadn't seen before but I only walked away with one yard of fabric.  It was really cute Halloween fabric.  What can I say I'm a sucker for Halloween!!!!!

I made such good time that I made it to Barb's house in St. Paul before 7 p.m. so we went to dinner at IndoChin which is one of my favorite places to eat.  I had the Kung Pao Mock Duck.  So Good!!!! Nice and spicy and great texture on the mock duck.  Gotta love a place that give you vegetarian choices.

Barb has owned english setters for all of the 36 years I've known her.  Ariel is her current dog and a very sweet dog.  Even though I'm not a dog person I enjoyed petting the sweet girl and getting dog kisses.

On Tuesday we headed to the fair.  Barb got us free parking since she is an employee and we didn't have to wait long for the shuttle to drop us off at the front gate.  We were on the hunt for good fair food but we did enjoy some entertainment too.  There was a drum group that did a little acrobatic show as well and I found the glass blowing exhibit very informative.  How cool that they had all their furnaces on this small trailer.

There were some interesting vendors near the front gate.  I was particularly interested in the vendor that re-purposed old mechanical pieces to furniture and lamps.  

Then we found our first tasty item, deep fried cream cheese stuffed green olives.  It was a bit pricey but then what can you expect at the fair and it was delicious.  Hot and salty and creamy.  MMMMMM.

We strolled through one of the vendor buildings and on the way out saw the yarn bombing.  Such fun!!!  The horse used to be a topiary.

As we headed to the Creative Arts building we had some of the famous Danielson's Daughters Onion Rings.  Oh what battered goodness.   There was a plethora of wonderful projects at the creative arts building.  I loved, loved it.  My favorite quilt was this beautiful two sided quilt.  

What you can't see from the pictures is that the quilting was coordinated.  When you looked at the quilting from the front it looked like it had been custom quilted for that side and if you looked at it from the back the same thing.  It was so well designed.  Just breathtaking.  What was amazing is that it didn't win a ribbon but the fair personnel were smart enough to hang it so you could see both sides.

There was this cute idea to tie in with all the fair food on a stick (did you know they have pork chops on a stick) there is a category of quilts on a stick.  How fun are these!!!!!  Oh, oh apparently this is the fifth year of these cute little quilts and the theme is quilters can bake too.  Brilliant!!!!

 Here are a few of the other entries I liked.

Then we headed over to the fine arts building and checked out some of those amazing entries.  These had to be juried into the show.

I loved this sculpture.  She just had so much attitude!!!  Her price tag read $6000 by the way.  No wonder she feels superior.

Next up was the food building and deep fried cheese curds.  Longest line I had to stand in.  Then we had some really delicious, refreshing watermelon.  For some reason I forgot to take pictures of the great food, guess I was too busy eating.

Then we strolled over to the horticulture building.  The place they carve the Fair Princesses as butter sculptures.  Did you know that the Princess gets to take her butter bust home after the fair.  A bit creepy taking a hunk out of your ear to butter your corn.!!!!  

Barb and I loved the seed art.  Turns out all the seeds they use are from Minnesota and there are about 20 or 30 types of seed.  Some amazing and tedious art work.

There were also a bunch of very fun scarecrows.  Who knew there was a scarecrow competition?!?

There were also some very cute fairy gardens.  I didn't know that was a thing until a friend mentioned she built one this spring.

Next up were the animal buildings.  Had to go to the very cool "Welcome to the World" building which is where baby are born.  They had giant screens of a live video of a baby lamb being born.  Sort of gross and I felt bad for the ewe with all those people watching.  Here are some of the babies we got to see.  SOOOOO CUTE!!!!!!

We also checked out some of the adult animals.  Did you know there are more pigs in Minnesota than there are people. The biggest pig there weighed 1400 lbs. Taking care of the animals is an exhausting job so this young person was catching a few zs.  At this point in the day,  Barb and I could identify.  We were ready to head back to her house.  The main gate seemed miles away but we made it.  I was very glad to sit down on the waiting shuttle.


Have to take my hat off to Barb.  After all that walking at the fair, she came home and walked Arial.  I declined to join them and sat with my feet up.

And as if we hadn't eaten enough we headed to the Green Mill for dinner later in the evening.  I had a delicious pizza for dinner and then the leftovers for breakfast.  I love cold pizza.  It was a wonderful day and I just want to thank Barb for being such a great tour guide.