two great meals, a dog dancer and a blue ribbon winner

today was a fairly laid back day after spending the past few days in marathon shopping/traveling mode. mind you, there was still a lot of traveling and shopping today but there were some nice brakes in the constant in and out of the car and stores.

i started the afternoon with a wonderful lunch with my former costume shop manager and good friend. she has recently returned from a pleasant trip to seattle and had much news about her trip and the new grandbaby in her life. we ate at the harvest cafe, which is the best restaurant in town as far as i am concerned!

beautiful weather, a beautiful view of the mountains and the beginnings of the official leaf change in the northeast. a delicious 4 course lunch that is an unusual treat..soup, salad, entree and dessert....we also managed to slip in a glass of wine.... for shame, drinking before noon

then i headed off on my first shopping expedition...a whopping 30 minutes away, as that is the closest shopping area to my town that has a fabric store. a fabric store that was almost out of everything that i was looking for, so i had to have them call another store that was another HOUR away to see if they had what i needed.

as i waited for the very nice, very pierced sales lady to call the various stores, my design advise was solicited by a lady buying black fringe...seemed harmless enough, she thought that i looked "artistic" (must be the glasses) and she proceeded to tell me that she was making a flapper dress......seemed normal enough, but there was more...she was making a flapper outfit to enter some sort of dance contest where she would be performing a flapper dance with her dog....yes her dog.....and she and her dog needed an outfit. she asked my advise on the fringe, on the boa choice and placement, about the dog's boa choice and the necklace, bracelet, earrings and head piece for her (and thankfully not for the dog, the dog was spared the jewelry and head piece part of the costume)

after all this i was still waiting on the very nice, very pierced sales lady to get an answer from the other store and I watched as the dog dancing flapper lady walk off to get more black jet beads, only to be confronted by a little girl on my left claiming to be the daughter of the dancing dog lady. so in the effort of being polite to little kids, i told her she was lucky that her mom knew how to sew and that i did not learn to sew until college.

and in an effort to impress grown ups, this little girl answered back in one breath that "she learned to sew when she was seven and this year she won a blue ribbon and a purple ribbon for her skirt that she made and that was with the 4-H and that she was only eleven now". at which point her mom returned and corrected her in that fact that she was thirteen.

interrupt- the saleslady sweetly telling me that the other store, that is an hour away, has what i need and that they will hold it for me till tomorrow.

so i said goodbye to the mother daughter entertainment section of my day and head down the road to the next few stores (an hour and a half away with traffic----uggggghhhhh)

however, to finish the day, i did manage to sneak in a nice dinner at the house with all the animals, aka karla's house. fresh tomatoes (picked from her garden), steamed cauliflower with a little cheese and corn on the cob- a perfect end of summer dinner and a pretty bizarre day of interesting people and long travels.