The Missing Piece

I’ve been hooked on jigsaw puzzles for the last couple of weeks, and I’ve had it with them for a bit, but there is a story I want to tell. The sewing studio puzzle above, was given to me by Julie as a Christmas present. I told her what I told Cherie: “Thank you so very LITTLE!!!”

Haha. But I did it.

Here’s the puzzle Cherie sent me. I did that one too, but if you look closely…

That’s pretty aggravating. I looked all over the living room for that little piece, and couldn’t find it. While I work on the puzzles, I lean over them, and sometimes the pieces get caught up in the threads of my sweater. (That’s my story and I’m sticking with it. It also happens to be the truth.)

The one place I didn’t look was in the Roomba’s vacuum bag. You see, after a cleaning job my Roomba goes back to home base and empties itself automatically into a vacuum bag that I empty about once a month.

So after I got other stuff done, I took the bag out, and cut into it with a pair of scissors and sorted through the dust and debris. (Hey, you all know me, why are you surprised?)

Guess what I found?

Now, if truth be told, I forgot to check if I had a vacuum bag to replace the one I cut up, so my Roomba got a little vacation while I waited for the new ones to arrive. In the meantime I got started on another puzzle from Julie.

But again, dammit…

Can you spell AGGRAVATED??? Again, I looked everywhere, but nope. I continued with the puzzle, knowing that the damn piece was in the house SOMEWHERE.

In the meantime, the new bags came for the Roomba and I restarted the cleaning jobs.

I got home from work the other day and something caught my eye…

Can you see it? Do you need to get closer?

YUP!

It’s the missing piece.

Was I a happy camper to put that sucker where it belonged.

So here is the finished puzzle, and I’ve decided this is it for a while. I’m going to put the puzzle board under the couch and do something else. Actually, I have to do some tidying in the studio and then I’ll be in there sewing. 

One other note: I’ve been posting on the blog using my iPad instead of my laptop. It has been EXTREMELY frustrating, so I haven’t posted as often as I used to, but I think I finally figured it out. I haven’t completely moved everything over from the laptop to the iPad, but I’m hoping to get that done in the next few days. One other thing on my to-do list.

Road Trip

Back in October 2013, I had flown to Memphis so I could drive up to St Louis with Julie. I crossed the mighty Mississippi for the first time (not in an airplane).

As you can see, the sky was a big part of the landscape. It is not like that at all in New England.

This is something else you don't see much in New England. A straight road that goes on for more than 60 miles. Straight and flat. I'm pretty sure I wore Julie's ears out by commenting how STRAIGHT and FLAT everything was. You could just see forever.

There's nothing like a five hour drive to get to know somebody. Julie and I had not yet been in the habit of having monthly two hour long telephone conversations (that would come much later.) It was really the first time we would spend any kind of time together. It's a good thing we hit it off right away. You know that feeling like you meet somebody and you feel like you've known them forever? And you can talk about anything and everything and you're comfortable? That's what it was like for Julie and me. We seemed to have the same sort of rhythm. I'd say, "Not now, but in the next half hour or so I'm gonna need a pit stop and to get out and stretch my legs," and Julie would say something like, "yup, me too." And when it came time to find a place for lunch, we were both comfortable with whatever we found. And when we took a wrong turn, neither one of us freaked out about it, we just said, Oops, I think we shoulda taken that other turn...

We talked about family and quilts and I don't know what else. I do remember we talked about the class on free pieced letters I would teach the next day. At one point Julie said, "Well you've made over a thousand letters..." and I said, NO! Not THAT many! So I got out my notebook and I counted.  Yes indeed, I had made over a thousand.

When you travel with a sock kitty, who represents a REAL kitty, and is essentially the reason you're on this trip, this is the type of pictures you take.

But when you're with somebody who GETS IT, like Julie did, THIS is the kind of pictures that get taken. (Proving once again that sometimes you need somebody else to open your eyes to some things.)

It was Julie who pointed out these birds. "Oh look, Millie... lunch!"

In St Louis we met up with Cherie who had hired me to teach and talk at Quintessential Quilts 2013. Cherie was THRILLED to meet Millie. Cherie had been following Millie's blog for years, and followed me onto my quilting blog when that started a couple of years later. That's how she knew about me, and asked me to be the speaker and teacher at QQ2013.

And people think I'm joking when I say if it wasn't for Millie I wouldn't be here. Like my friend Tracey used to tell her hubby when he'd get upset at their cat Monty... "No Monty, no Millie. No Millie, no Lynne."

I'm tellin' ya. You can't make this stuff up.

This is the class photo, taken at the end of the day. That's Julie in the middle of the back row. Julie was an extra set of eyes and ears. She'd keep an eye out for a student who was stuck, or confused, or who needed my attention "Lynne, Karen needs help." Or "Show them the Ruler Trick."

After class, Julie and I went out for dinner, and met Brenda who told the story about how her mother made chicken and... Well. You're gonna have to go read it. It's right here.  Julie was right there with me when the idea for the chicken quilt, Too Much Chicken, got started.

For me the highlights of the trip include the dinner where I got the idea for the Chicken quilt, and the next day, when Julie and I... well. You'll just have to wait and see.


If you want to make your own free pieced letters, you can get my tutorial here, at my Etsy shop. It's an instant download so you can get started right away.


Oh, Julie Sefton made the "Flying Monkeys" quilt. I've asked her to write a blog post about it so you can read it. I don't know if she will, but you can find Julie's blog here.

We're Here!

We started at Julie's house in Memphis TN, then got in the car and drove past Millie Drive.

(Millie was terribly excited.)

over the Mississippi River into Arkansas,

 which was very flat.

Into Missouri

where the road was very straight.

Until we got to the University City Public Library. (Millie was very eager.)

Woo Hoo!

Then we met Cherie and had dinner at Mama Campisi's  (which was very good).

This time it was Cherie who was a little star-struck.

The letter class is today, and the lecture is tomorrow. Wish me luck!