customer quilt done, visit with Diane, new porch lamp

While Michael was walking the dog Tuesday morning (7/11), I got the last of the chicken carcasses off of the porch, strained the stock and got everything cleaned up and refrigerated.  After that I finally got my customer quilt trimmed: 

before heading out just after 9 AM to my long arm friend Diane’s house.  Diane bought a new INNOVA machine (named JOY) and I have been dying to see it…and HER!!!   OMgoodness….we talked and talked and talked and talked…we haven’t seen each other in forever and we had a RANGE of topics to discuss…it was WONDERFUL :~).  She showed me her machine in action:  

and I definitely have tension envy….the tension on her stitching was just beautiful.  She reminded me that when INNOVA demos their machines at shows, they have black fabric loaded up….and some brilliant thread color (lime green, variegated, whatever)…that’s how confident they are that their tension is perfect.  Diane fixed us a scrumptious lunch (chicken salad, fruit cup, out-of-this-world blueberry cake), but I don’t know how we even managed to eat because we were still talking so much  :~).  The only bad part was…..I looked at my calendar and thought I had a 3 – 5 PM meeting….so I left Diane’s house early…when no one showed up at the lodge, I looked at my calendar again and realized that I was looking at the wrong week.  Turns out it is next week.  :~(.  Oh well…we did the best we could and have decided that we will really try to schedule a “play date” once a quarter.  I got home just after 3 PM and headed downstairs.  Michael decided to play some pool while I started to load up my next customer quilt.  

This is just the backing….and the wrong side at that.  Do you think she’d notice if I never send her an email that her quilt is finished???  This matches EVERYTHING in my house  :~).  Michael left before 6 PM to pick up Larry and head out to see SPIDERMAN, while Jan picked me up at 7 PM.  We headed to Chick-fil-a for peach milkshakes and then came home and talked for quite awhile.  I got to show her our newest porch purchase.  Michael and I had a pole lamp in the media room.  It was so old that neither of us was sure whose it originally owned it...him or me!  Anyway, it got very little use in the media room and he moved it out to the porch weeks ago so that we could read at night.  Last week he picked it up to move it a bit closer to the love seat...and the bottom of the lamp (the heaviest part that stabelizes it) fell out and broke into a million pieces!  It looked like it had been a big round piece of concrete and we had no idea how to replace it. So...here's our new and beautiful lamp:

 After Jan headed for home, I just read my book until my honey got home from the movies.  We had a thought to sit out on the porch for a bit, but we were both so tired we just fell into bed.