The first time we went to visit Blanche

We were so excited to go visit our friend Blanche!  Hattie, Ruby and I piled in the car and drove to a quilt shop (big surprise there…) where we could shop and meet up with Blanche.   After the quilt shop we headed for our weekend getaway but not before stopping at Russell Stover.

  Here are Ruby, Blanche and Hattie in front of Russell Stover.  We weren’t expecting to see a chocolate store on our way and of course we had to stop.  I won’t detail what all we purchased. That part isn’t really important.  Besides we were saving all of our money for fabric purchases!

Blanche was really prepared for us.  She had gotten a list of quilt shops in driving distance so we could have some serious quilting fun. Unfortunately she wasn’t aware of a little exchange between myself and Ruby.  The short version is that Ruby and I were talking about drinking and I may have said something to the effect that I could drink her under the table.  I’m not sure why the conversation went in that direction, I only know that I am guilty of making the comment.  At Blanche’s house events played themselves out.

We had a wonderful dinner, complete with wine and then some mojitos.   Sometime after we arrived but before we got crazy, we did a little birthday celebrating for Ruby.  At one retreat we talked about pinatas.  It’s not really important why, we tend to talk about a lot of things while we are at retreat.  There’s no rhyme or reason.  Ruby mentioned that she had never had a pinata at any of her birthday parties and after we finished gasping, she called her mother to find out why.  It should be noted that Ruby’s mom is not quite used to us and was not expecting a phone call let alone a phone call with a question about childhood birthdays and the lack of a pinata.  Her response was, “Ruby, we are Irish”.  This made us laugh all the more.  So, being the good friend that I am, I bought Ruby a pinata.  I also brought stuff to fill it.  However after going through the motion of filing the pinata, Ruby decided she couldn’t destroy it so we carefully reopened it and divided up the stuff inside.

  Here is Ruby with her monkey pinata (really, would I have picked anything else?).

After that, things started to get a little dicey.  That’s because Ruby brought up my comment.  Blanche’s husband was happy to oblige by pulling out various bottles for us to imbibe.  Ruby let me choose and I thought the tequila would maybe scare her off, after all we didn’t have any training wheels to go with it (training wheels being the salt and lime).  Unfortunately for the both of us, Ruby was not deterred.  We were each poured a triple shot of tequila, which we drank.  We then did a second.  Blanche joined us for some tequila, but Hattie was much smarter than we were and did not participate.  In fact she went to bed early.

I’m sure you can guess what happens next.  We went back to drinking mojitos and eating coleslaw from the fridge at 2 in the morning.  You didn’t guess that?  Well, you probably did guess that we got pretty drunk and you get credit for that.  Hattie stayed around to watch the show get started and decided that she wasn’t going to drink with us and instead was going to go take a shower.  Ruby got a little worried about Hattie and took my hand to go look for her.  She was still in the shower and I did not get any pictures of us barging in to make sure she was okay.  Once convinced that Hattie was fine, Ruby and I went back downstairs to continue our what-seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time fun.  After a bit, Ruby got a little worried about Hattie (again) as she kinda snuck off to bed and we didn’t realize it so we had to go check on her.  I mean one minute she was there with us while we were singing 80’s hits and the next minute she wasn’t there at all. So, in the middle of the night the three of us stood at the foot of her bed (after turning the lights on) and just watched her sleep.  Creepy right?  Yeah, it kind of was.  Thankfully she didn’t wake up, but it gave us a good laugh especially the next day when we explained to her what we had done.  It wasn’t too long after making sure that Hattie was alright that we decided to go to bed ourselves.  Usually it’s the sober people that mess with the folks that are drinking.  Seems like we had that a bit backwards….

I will confess that I did not sleep well, like I’ve mentioned, we had quite a bit to drink.  I was also up very early thinking that having something to eat would help me feel better so I helped myself to some of Hattie’s homemade banana bread.  However, I couldn’t make myself eat it and proceeded to wander around the downstairs for at least an hour until the next monkey was roused from sleep.   I also took about 3 baths. The fact that I did this still makes Ruby giggle.  None of us was feeling very well that morning, except for Hattie.  It took us a while to get going and we seriously pared down the list of super fun quilt shops that Blanche had researched.  I did manage to snap a picture of Ruby the morning after.  That’s pretty much how I looked too.

It is important to mention that on the way to Blanche’s we passed the most gorgeous sunflower fields.  Such large bright yellow heads bobbing in the sun, such happy color providing photo opportunities.  We had to stop.  Of course we were not feeling well so we aren’t looking our very best and we tried to stay out of the way of the high schooler who was having her senior pictures taken.

  Aren’t they pretty?  If we weren’t feeling so bad we would have appreciated them even more.  There was a whole field of them and they were just beautiful.

 Here we are carefully picking our way through the ditch to get to the sunflowers.  We weren’t the most graceful this morning.  Except for Hattie….

 Here is me, Hattie and Ruby.  I particularly love they way my shorts(?) are starting to ride up.  A very nice look if I do say so myself…

This weekend serves as a perfect example of why drinking and quilting don’t mix.  I felt so bad that I didn’t even take pictures of the various places we visited.  Thankfully we took a second weekend away and were able to enjoy the quilt shops that we only had vague impressions of the first time. We did start feeling better eventually, but Hattie had to do most of the driving since she was the only one we could guarantee was sober when we started out.  By the time we returned to Blanche’s we were doing pretty good but still had an easy dinner and stayed far far away from anything resembling alcohol.

I would like to share a couple more things before I bring this story to a close and I know it’s a lengthy one.  Blanche is one of the most creative quilters I have the privilege to know.  She has also provided some inspiration for my crafting room.  Here is her stash, please disregard Hattie trying to steal her fabric.  She’s just so organized!  Sorted by color and size and uniformly folded to that everything fits so neatly.  Maybe you’ll find some inspiration from Blanche as well.  I would like to report that I do have everything in my stash that is 1/2 yard to fat 1/4 uniformly folded and waiting for my Ikea closet to appear so they can be put away.  Thanks Blanche!  I’ll bet if you are really nice she might share her folding secrets with you too.  Just leave us some comments and I’ll see about talking her into it.

Finally, I would like to leave you with this.  This is Blanche, Ruby, myself, and Hattie posing in Blanche’s tub.  It came with the house and was not a choice that Blanch would make as it was totally unusable since it held more water than the water heater does.  However, we were in awe of it and decided before we left we needed to see if we could all fit comfortably inside.  Surprise!  We could.  Of course even if we couldn’t, we probably still would have crammed ourselves in just for the sake of a picture.

Happy quilting!