Kathy and Bruce (who live outside of Edmonton, Alberta) arrived yesterday (despite some wrong directions from their GPS) and we spent a delightful afternoon.  While Bruce hung out in the shop with Tom and Steve, Kathy and I played with our quilting stuff.   She looked through my books/patterns to get some ideas for her Cat-i-tude panels and coordinating fabrics (same ones I had pointed out to Wanda last time we were at 35th Ave.) while I scrolled through the books and dozens of magazines she had brought.   Of course I had some ideas for her, and also some fabrics to donate that coordinate well with her fabrics.  I did decide to keep a handful of the magazines (only those with patterns I actually might get around to making), and the rest will be passed along to the quilting group at the RV park in Yuma where they will eventually land for the  winter.

This is their 16th winter snow-birding at that RV park, and each winter Kathy teaches a weekly class.  This year's class will be beaded cabochons, but others years her classes have included pottery, stained glass, jewelry, scrapbooking, and fused glass.

As Bruce quips, Kathy has never met a craft she doesn't like.

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Of course there was a fair amount of Show & Tell yesterday - which is when I discovered a couple of my tops/WIPS are MIA.  I looked everywhere they should have been (twice, and then a third time!) so high on my agenda today was to take everything off those shelves instead of just flipping through the pile.  Since they are projects I love, and belong to the group of UFOs I'd like to take with me to work on at the retreat in February, it would be a real issue if they were truly lost.

My spaghetti dinner (along with garlic bread and a nice salad) was a big hit last night (and there was just enough spaghetti left-over for lunch today) and then the remainder of the evening was spent telling stories while Bruce and Kathy oogled lots of Tom's fire obsidian cabs.  

Kathy and I started this morning with a lovely soak in the hot tub (her first time au natural.)  But going through the piles and stacks of quilts on the shelves in Alex's room afterward I did not find the missing quilt tops (which got me rather worried) though did find Sandy's Christmas present that I'd forgotten about, and something that might work for Marilyn.

Kathy certainly enjoyed looking at the quilts, and snapped pix of many of them.  The truly good news is that later I found the two quilt tops, in a cabinet with my panels.  They probably landed there in May, when Marcie and Patti were helping me organize.

Kathy and I spent part of today perusing pictures of quilts saved on my computer, looking for ideas for her Cat-i-tude quilt, and then fighting with the computer ("it should have worked...") to get some of them copied for her.  We tried a number of methods, and she even called her computer-savvy son Ted to see if he could help.  Eventually we managed to transfer the pix to her memory stick, though it took WAY longer than it should have; you'd think we were trying to hack into the Pentagon!

Like most people I've introduced the Disappearing 4-patch to, Kathy really liked that pattern, so we spent part of the afternoon making up a couple of blocks, in different sizes, to see how they would work with her cat panel blocks.  I'm really looking forward to seeing what Kathy decides on for a final pattern.

Andy called today while he was driving to class, and we caught up on a few things.  I'm toying with the idea of making a trip out in early December, so mostly I just needed to know if that would work with their schedule.   He doesn't see why not, so now I need to see if I can get all my ducks in a row between now and then.

Spoke with Alex yesterday (had a question about his car registration, which is due later this month but needs an emission test first) and found out that he was heading home today.  (Though not for long, as he's heading back to California on Thursday.)  He appeared mid-afternoon, and after a quick hello headed back to his place for a much needed rest, though he did join us for dinner this evening.  Kathy & Bruce treated us to dinner at the Genghis Grill, delicious as usual.