I See Quilts in the Sidewalks of Dallas

Quilters see quilt designs everywhere--that's nothing new. So I shouldn't have been surprised, when I decided to escape the boxes for some fresh air this morning and started seeing quilts in the sidewalk.




I'm sure this was part of some interesting public art project–I'll have to find out . . . or maybe someone will leave a comment and tell me what it's all about it. Whatever it is, I like it. It was a kind of dreary, wet morning and finding these gems in the side walk was delightful.



I liked this one enough to take a close up of the "block." Wouldn't this be a fun block to hand-piece?



But back to my walk . . . I was headed to a cafe whose menu was included in the welcome packet for my loft. I got walking directions from googlemaps, consider the public transportation option, but decided to put off learning DART for another day, and was on my way, walking.

My printer is still in a box, so I didn't have a printed map or directions and at some point, I wasn't sure I had gone the right way. I passed a familiar landmark, the Mosaic Building, where I had met the realtor who had helped me find the loft. I decided to stop for coffee at the Opening Bell, where I was already a regular and in their system, and make sure I was headed in the right direction . . . plus their Carmel Latté is as good as the Carmel Marvels I used to inhale on a regular basis at Beaners in Michigan.



With reassurances and caffeine in hand, I continued toward my goal . . . I passed the Dallas Museum of Art–and was thrilled to realize I live within walking distance.



And then I found the corner of the advertised cafe, where I saw, not a quaint cafe, but a monolithic office building.



The cafe was across the street . . . in the ground floor of a smaller office building. My breakfast, a spinach and cheese quiche, was lovely. My walk home deviated slightly, enabling me to find another quilt block in the sidewalk–this month's lotto block, Bow Tie, in Lincoln Plaza.



Here's the "block" and one that I hand-pieced for the lotto in my motel room on New Year's eve.



My "knot" is smaller, but the block is the same ;-)

I thought this sidewalk art was pretty interesting too, even if it doesn't bring to mind traditional quilt blocks.



It's part of Pegasus Plaza. Here's a larger view.

An Unexpected Day

A friend and I got up early on Saturday morning to head for Holly, Michigan and their annual Run Like the Dickens 5K race and walk. The temperatures were only in the 20s and it was windy. For me, it was really more of a stroll than a race of any kind. The path went through neighborhoods where people blasted Christmas carols from their homes for the participants, passed briefly through downtown and then looped back to the school gym.

After the walk, I passed on the cookies provided--our plan was to head to Somerset, a shopping mecca in the Detroit suburbs, have a nice lunch and shop 'til we dropped. We had our destination in sight and were talking about parking and lunch options while we waited at a traffic light ... and someone in a big commercial van plowed into the back of my friend's jeep. There was no warning, no squeal of brakes--I don't think he braked at all--before he hit us hard, propelled us ahead into the car in front of us then caught up with us and hit us again. Three ambulances, two patrol cars, two tow trucks and maybe 3o minutes later, we were on our way to the emergency room--my friend in a collar and strapped to a backboard, me, feeling like a bag lady carrying as much of the stuff from her jeep as I could grab before they towed it away. She spent the hours (and hours) at the hospital wondering if she should have refused care at the scene and signed the waiver like I did; I spent the time thinking that she was doing the prudent thing and I was being stupid. I'll be calling my doctor tomorrow ... besides all the understandable aches and pains, it hurts to breath and I'm wondering if I could have cracked a rib or something ...

A Walk in the Park

I've been walking with a friend in a nearby park. The leaves are falling, the colors are fading, but it is still quite beautiful. (Click images for larger versions)







It has been a beautiful October here, from beginning to end. I took these photos on October 2 (on a walk back to the office from a meeting)



It's kind of amazing considering the 2-day snow storm that happened mid-month. France took some nice snowy landscape photos.



They're so much nicer than the one photo I snapped.



(yes, those geraniums DID survive the snow and are still blooming ;-)