A GOOD DAY

Today we decided to have a relaxing day before hitting the road again.
I was so slow getting up and at it today that I missed breakfast in the Hotel dining-room, so a packet of oatmeal cooked up in our room microwave and a bit of fresh grapefruit had to suffice.
Mr. O decided he wanted to go for a run. He had an enjoyable 14.5 km (about 10 miles) run; even took a few minutes to enjoy his surroundings.

He enjoyed watching the jackrabbits and road runners, the wild flowers and a coyote.
If you look closely at the second picture you can see a coyote just on the ridge...he ran across in front of Mr. O and startled a lady biker coming from the other direction. The last pic is of some of the signage along his run...good advice , don't you agree?
While Mr O was running I dressed in my new duds, added a bit of bling and went off in search of local quilt shops. I felt like Christopher Columbus in search of new worlds.

Armed with my book, The Quilters Travel Companion and our new GPS, I was on my way. There were 4 shops listed for the Tucson area, but I had decided that I would
visit 2 of them...The Quilters Market and Bella Quiltworks...however just before leaving the room I check my emails and JoAnne, a regular reader of my blog, suggested I try a shop that was a favourite of hers when she lived near Tucson...the Quilt Basket.
Boy am I glad I followed her advice! Friendly and helpful staff and a shop chock full of wonderful things.

I just had to buy the patterns for the embroidery sampler and one of the black wool projects on the wall. I tried to leave without them, but they just jumped into my basket and would not take no for an answer!

Of course when you buy patterns, you need to get the stuff to make them...

Some wonderful little gems are coming home with me in this bag. Okay, off to the next shop. I took a few shop photos here and will show them at the end of the post. ( I still can't figure out how to insert what I have forgotten without losing part of my post)

They asked that I not take photos in the shop other than samples of patterns I was purchasing, so these were the two patterns I settled on, but let me tell you there were many more that I wanted. It's just that I am thinking I need to live another fifty years to use what I have and that's not likely to happen...so I picked up some wool to add to my stash for a few projects I have in mind, and a piece of fabric I have been looking for to make pillowcases to match a quilt I made last year, and then I was on my way.

Here are the samples I took photos of...

Paid by bill and I was off to #3
The Quilters Market. This shop was featured in the Quilt Sampler magazine and I forgot to record which issue, sorry gals.

This shop was totally different than the first two...not a piece of wool to be had...lots of brights and lots of batiks and loads of eye candy.

I just loved their displays and vignettes and of course I picked up a few things here as well.

Can you guess what this is?

Now just look how they packaged up my purchase...not really any extra cost to them, but it is almost like they gift wrapped it for me, just to make it more special.

Hope you had a special day! I did.