Hello Old Friend!

I took my new (last year) Pfaff to Tyler in Portland for its yearly check up last week and yesterday pulled out my old Pfaff to do some pieceing. It was like we were never apart. Through the years I've spent so many hours at that machine, creating I don't know how many couch throws, table runners, placemats and other things to sell and gift. Someday I really need to count them up - I'll bet I'll be surprise at the totals. So far this year, I have one couch throw top and 3 runner tops finished. Some small projects are still percolationg after clearing the ironing board and I hope to get them into production this week. I also hope to get the throw layered along with the one gifted to me by my cousin Alliene several years ago. That one will be my practice piece once I get the new Pfaff back. While we were in Portland we ran a couple of other errands, visited the Osher Map Library at USM and had lunch at the Great Lost Bear. Always good food there and a good selection of beer for David. Our meager snow pack has been further reduced by a surprise rain storm this afternoon. Temps have been trending up all week and we hit 50 today. So warm and sunny. I have noticed since COVID that brick and mortar stores have reduced their inventories and no longer include all the sizes they once carried. Case in point: I used to be able to walk into the local Agway and purchase the smaller size of dry cat food. Yesterday's emergency search yeilded only the 25 lb. size and there's no way I'm buying that as it would take Divot months and months to eat through that. And we do not have the space to store a bag that size! So it was Chewey to the rescue with their fast shipping and crisis averted. A sad moment yesterday to learn via Facebook that a horse I had been following, Vallelujah, had passed away. She was still in training at Aqueduct and apparently had a heart attack and died in her sleep. Her breeder, Carolyn, had sold a partial ownerhip share to a group of Saratoga residents who started gathering ourside the fences to watch training during COVID. Carolyn's trainer stopped to talk to them and told them they needed to buy a horse so they couold attend the races, so they did a deal. Val had varied results but her big moment came in 2022 when she won an allowance during the Saratoga meet and you would have thought she had won the Derby with the celebration. Carolyn has her little sister, Mary Union Ave., in training now and she (Mary Union Ave) ran her first race today, finishing seventh. I "met" Carolyn way back during the Alex Brown racing journey with Barbaro. She bought her first horse, Ave Ravina, and sent her to Tim Woolley to train. (Ave Ravina is the dam of both Val and Mary, along with a couple of others Carolyn has bred. She was scheduled have her last foal this year and head off to retirement someplace really noice, I'm sure.)