Lunch at McPhee's -- Templeton CA

Whenever we go to the Paso Robles area, we try to make sure that we have a meal at McPhee's. Usually it's lunch on our way out of town, but sometimes we can't wait that long......

Since Sunday was a hit and run trip -- in and out in just a few hours -- we had a late lunch here before we headed out of town. To get to McPhee's from Pasolivo was just a quick hop down Vineyard and a left on Main -- easy peasie!


Had to get a few more pictures of the scenery -- what a beautiful day!

Dan ordered a pulled pork sandwich that was topped with sauteed purple cabbage; he loves all things vegetable, so that was perfect!



The pasta jambalaya was for me -- orchiette pasta with shrimp, chicken and andouille sausage -- all coated with a Cajun spiced cream sauce. I had a very happy mouth!

Some shots of the interior of the restaurant...

Wish I hadn't fallen on the dessert too quickly to get a picture! We always order the same thing for dessert: Scoops of vanilla ice cream in a banana split dish accompanied by a pitcher of warm caramel sauce and a cup of macadamia nuts -- sort of a do-it-yourself sundae! You can also get hot fudge instead of or along with the caramel, but that might be too much of a good thing?

This is our last sight of the Paso Robles area as we are heading out on Highway 46. We've seen this fountain with colored water so that it looked like red wine was flowing out of it!

Home again -- what a super day!

Pasolivo Tasting Room -- Paso Robles CA

There are just a couple of turns and a few miles to our next destination. Since our only natural trees in the Antelope Valley are Joshua trees, which are sort of cactus-y looking succulents, we were really enjoying the beautiful large trees arching over the road on our way to Pasolivo, our favorite olive oil tasting room and olive press.



In the tasting room, you can grab a packet of sourdough bread cubes and sample any of the olive oils. You can also take a short tour in the same building to see how the olive oils are made.

My very favorite Pasolivo olive oil is the Meyer Lemon flavored, but there was a new Citrus blend here this time that we hadn't tried before; of course, we had to have some of that! There is a printed brochure that you can take that has several suggestions for how to use olive oil as well as advice on how to care for your olive oil and a recipe.

We bought a large bottle of the Citrus, two small of the Lemon because they were out of the large (and I really go through it!), a jar of olives and a couple of bottles of wine vinegar. We had these packed in a few small bags so we could work things in around the cases of wine in the trunk....

I took this picture outside the tasting room.....

....and then we were off to our next stop -- lunch!

For more information on Pasolivo, click here...

Day Trip! Paso Robles CA

One of Dan and my passions is really good wine, so when we got an e-mail from Justin Vineyards in Paso Robles that the 2007 Isoceles (their signature very yummy red blend) was ready, we pulled out the calendar and planned a day trip. Spring is ideal for this as the weather is sunny but not too hot -- comfortable for us and good conditions for wine transport. The picture above was taken from the Justin Vineyards parking lot.

Dan had called ahead to have 2-1/2 cases of Isoceles ready for us to pick up. We knew we would be tasting other wines in the Justin tasting room, so ordering 2-1/2 cases left space in one of the boxes for another 6 bottles of a possible new favorite. We hadn't taken the little red one on a road trip before and didn't know how many cases we could pack into the limited trunk capacity.

We had planned to get up earlier than we did, but we forgot about setting our clocks ahead -- oops! Got up at 7, had breakfast at a local diner and then hit the road. This is the prettiest season for a drive -- look at all the green around the highway! Usually, this is gold at best, but brown for most of the year.

Our California contented cows you see in all the ads on TV -- lots of green stuff to munch on!

Hills in the background, lots of wildflowers and the sky was such a vivid shade of blue!

As we approached Paso, there were ponds and lots of acreage planted in vines. There are many wineries up here and it seems like there are new ones every time we visit. We like the Central Coast wines very much and are members of three wine clubs in the Paso Robles area.

Through the door to explore all the goodies....

Before we go in, though, we have to look at the signpost and see what other tasting rooms we might visit while we are here.

One view of the Justin tasting room; through the door is a wonderful restaurant, Deborah's, named after Deborah Baldwin, co-owner of Justin's with her husband -- you guessed it, Justin!

These cases each contain three bottles of Isoceles, a vertical of one bottle from each of three consecutive vintage years.

We tasted some wines, purchased 6 bottles of 2007 Justification, another excellent red blend, and had to go through a little bit of angst fitting 3 cases of wine in the trunk! Then we were back on the road for a short drive to our next stop -- Pasolivo, a family owned and operated producer of extra virgin olive oils.

Free Motion Boot Camp -- Santa Clarita Valley Quilt Guild

Kris Dolan, program chair of the Santa Clarita Valley Quilt Guild, called me last summer after members of the guild had talked about not being able to get into my Free Motion Boot Camp workshop at Road to California. Registration for classes at Road opens at midnight on one fateful day in July and some of them close before the sun comes up! So Kris called and asked about my availability to teach this same workshop for the guild.

The guild workshops are held in a beautiful big room with a lot of lighting and a kitchen. There was a full class of 20 guild members.

In the morning, they worked on their free motion quilting using stencils; in the afternoon, freehand free motion was taught.





Breakfast and lunch were provided to everyone as well as the goodie basket above to keep everyone's energy up!

My friend Paula Fleischer had brought a quilt top she had just finished. Some of those circles are appliqued fabric, but most are hand-embroidered. I tried to get a close-up of a couple of the embroidered areas, but the pictures were blurry. I'm having breakfast with Paula in a couple of days, so I'll see if I can get her to bring this quilt so I can try again.

One thing we can say about her is that she certainly isn't afraid of color! I love the way this all works together. Paula has done applique and quilting by hand for the 20 years I have known her, so I have to say that I was gratified that she actually liked the freehand free motion -- she did mention that she thought she'd hate it!

Glenna Beaver brought a quilt she had made for her granddaughter; loved all of the free motion quilting that she had done on it. The picture of the quilted leaves was taken from the back of the quilt....

In the afternoon, I took pictures of some of the freehand quilting designs that people made up -- wouldn't this look great as either a background fill or a wreath design in a block?

Trucks for a little boy's quilt and a cluster of grapes....the flower was really fun -- she put the machine on zigzag for the leaves...

All in all, a very fun day!

Santa Clarita Valley Quilt Guild -- Santa Clarita CA

Last night I took a leisurely scenic drive from Palmdale to Santa Clarita via Bouquet Canyon Road, basically going from desert landscape to city by way of what feels like back roads in the country. This includes an area with a lot of trees and residences that look like cabins. You get the feeling you can park by the side of the road, whip the tent out of the back of your car and set up camp.

The Santa Clarita Valley guild is celebrating its 20th year this month and it was fun to recall that I was one of the charter members attending that first meeting. I had not yet made a quilt, but my good friend Mary Ponce was joining and I spent a lot of time with her, so I signed up, too. A lot has happened in the last 20 years!

The lighting in the stage area was not very good, so during the break between the main part of the meeting and the speaker (that would be me!) I dragged Patty Vergon into a better lighted area so you could see her appliqued quilt. It is from a Pearl Pereira pattern and the hand work is amazing. Just had to share this!


Light was horrible, but this machine embroidered quilt caught my eye....



The guild library is huge! Took over this entire table and then spilled over to a second one. There are also quilt magazines for sale for 25 cents each!

Ways and means is very active; there were lots of goodies that you could buy tickets for and a lot of donated fabric, mostly in 1/2 and 1 yard cuts, but some larger, that were priced most attractively.

Spring themed blocks of the month were pinned up to be admired by all...

A big project for this guild is Quilts of Valor. Pre-cut kits were made for the Friendship Star block shown above and members were encouraged to take these and assemble them so that quilts can be made for soldiers. A big stack was already done, but there were 80 more kits and the lady who cut them insisted that she wasn't taking any home! Everybody dutifully said, "Yes, Ma'am!"

I go back to the guild on Saturday to teach an all day "Free Motion Boot Camp" workshop. As of last night, there were two spaces available; if you are interested, you can call Kris Dolan at
661-296-7573.

My Favorite Time of Day

My favorite time of day has nothing to do with the weather, the season or the project I'm working on -- it hinges on what wine is in that glass and is there a simple appetizer to accompany it? Most of the flames on Alex's quilt are stitched; there are two small areas to finish in the morning. So when Dan called upstairs to tell me it was "wine time", I decided that I was finished sewing for the day.

In the glass is a 2005 Cabernet Franc from Leona Valley Vineyards, a local winery that is located about a 15 minute drive from us. We're in the wine club and it's fun to go out there a few times a year for the wine "pickup" parties. We pick up our allotted bottles, thus saving on shipping, and get to taste what's new.

I've had a cold for the last few days, so didn't feel like cooking much and, as you know, when you have a cold you can't taste anything anyway! So I cleaned and destemmed a bunch of spinach and tossed it in a 12" skillet with my favorite Lemon Olive Oil from Pasolivo. The skillet was almost full when I started and after sauteing a few minutes, there is hardly anything in there! So I tossed in a couple of handfuls of cherry tomatoes and let them heat up while I plated some chicken.

Uh-oh! It looks like I am almost out of one of my favorite ingredients in my kitchen -- does this mean there is a trip to Paso Robles in the immediate future? Like maybe Sunday???

Alex's Quilt -- "Smoke on the Water"

I met Alex Anderson at Houston Quilt Market in the early 1990's; this was before Simply Quilts started taping and around the time her first book was published with C&T Publishing. I started machine quilting for her shortly thereafter and have quilted a lot of her quilts. For many years, those quilts took the traditional path and I did a lot of crosshatching, cables and feathers.

Alex has always been known for her superb sense of color and fabric selection and now I see her bringing that into less traditional quilts. Within the last couple of years, she has made quilts that featured pieced circles, sometimes combined with pieced rectangles and squares and sometimes with pieced in little "squigglies". When she "loosened up" to do some less traditional things, it freed me up to try some different things, too.

The first quilt she gave me that was more "arty", I just froze! Where was I going to put the feathers? So traditional treatments just went out the window and I got to play on the quilt. Then I did a couple of more and they were much less intimidating. Yes -- I could quilt without stencils! Of course, that doesn't mean I'm giving them up, just not using them for the less traditional quilts that come my way.

When Alex showed this quilt at AAQ retreat last year, I was really drawn to the corals and blues. My first thought was back to the old Deep Purple song, probably from the 70s, "Smoke on the Water". Although this is a traditional Drunkard's Path design, the colors definitely give it a more modern feel, so that's what I decided to quilt....

First I doodled designs on paper -- every time I was on the phone or otherwise had some downtime I grabbed a pencil and paper and played with flames. Then I drew some flames into one of the coral areas with air soluble marker. It was just to give me an idea of what I was going to stitch, so I didn't want the markings to stay on the quilt very long.



Decided to use a King Tut variegated thread (color #929) in flame colors that went well with the corals in the quilt; the bobbin thread is Mettler 100% cotton silk finish thread (#806). It blended well with the King Tut and also looked good with the coral polka dot on the back.

Grabbed a muslin piece out of the drawer that had a lot of other stitching on it and practiced flames for a bit....

Decided that the consistency of my stitch length left something to be desired, so installed the Bernina Stitch Regulator foot and did it again -- much better!

Now to try it on the quilt -- I like it! My goal is to get all the flames done today and then start marking the water....