It's a hard job, but somebody had to do it

Sherry has been scouting out a quilting retreat, and so far I haven't heard any complaints. It looks like a beautiful big house near Cullman, Alabama, that is open for small groups to convene and do whatever you want to. In this case, they're quilting.


According to her email, "You don't even need to get out of your PJs if you don't want to. There is a smaller house across the street for smaller groups. The only bad thing across the street is you can't smell the food cooking all day. Yesterday for breakfast we had ---eggs, sausage potato casserole, sausage, home made biscuits. For lunch--Jambalaya, coleslaw, corn bread muffins, lemon squares. For dinner--baked ham, Waldorf salad, home made mac & cheese, green beans, home made yeast rolls and chocolate cake."

Mike thinks too much emphasis is being put on the food and too little on quilting, but take a look at this:

Breakfast.

A cozy sitting room. Pretty.

The second story railings make good places to hang and admire your quilts. Sherry has finished two since she's been there.

This one...

And the kitty quilt.


It looks like a great place with few distractions and beautiful surroundings. Look at the view from the dining room windows.

I would think you might not want to leave when your time was up.


Maybe I'll get a chance to go one day. Sherry and I went to the Alabama Quilt Symposium also in Cullman last year (2 years ago? time flies). It was fun, but there were classes and lectures going on all the time and not too much time for being on your own and relaxing, not to mention so-so food and the chef who yelled glared at us because of some dining room tray omission. This looks more like my cup of tea.

My free time today was spent taking Mama's computer downtown to the guys to fix it. My friends Sam and Luay. I'm still not sure what happened to it, but it mysteriously lost its IP address and wouldn't connect to the internet. She's had terrible withdrawals pains the past 2 days, so it was good for it to be fixed.

I just realized that it was exactly a year ago that I got my new computer from them, and it's been perfect. I meant to compliment them on having had all the potholes in the parking lot fixed too, but they got busy just as I was leaving. I appreciate having someone I can trust tell me what's wrong (even though they do pretend to be about to charge me a fortune for their work - "What do you think you should pay for this?") But they are very reasonable and probably don't charge enough.

I'll end this cold winter day with a few flower pictures from Guatemala sent by Gaby. Not that it's that much warmer there - 6 degrees C - which I just learned is around 43 degrees F if I did the math correctly. They don't normally need heaters, so they're having to bundle up more than usual. Hopefully the 43 degrees is the coldest it got.

Is this a raspberry? Or maybe a blackberry with the thorns?

Bird of Paradise. Amazing how beautiful this is.

Poor Alejandro and his boo-boo. He fell on some stairs around Christmastime while running and had way too many stitches in his head. Nearly gave his parents heart failure. But it's looking good now. I hear he was very brave! (And look at those eyelashes!)