NC TOGA day three

This morning was the usual trip to Mary Jo's Cloth Store in Gastonia.  I was there two weeks ago with SIL Patty, Queen of the Enablers.  I've lost count of how many sewing machines she has found for me---4---5---6?  So anyhow I slept in and made it to Mary Jo's just in time to go out to lunch with the gang.

After lunch was the usual trip to Long Creek Mills.  I missed this at the two previous TOGAs I attended but today I finally made it.  They are a wholesale (I think) thread distributor.  

People who have seen my studio will laugh heartily to learn that I bought a bunch of thread.  But they won't be surprised.  I love thread.  I have 12 of those wooden thread racks mounted on one wall.  Nine for regular sewing thread and three for poly embroidery thread.  another four for serger thread over the door.  The rest of the thread (special construction thread, non-poly embroidery) is in four drawers of a sewing machine cabinet.  It's all about having what I need when I need it without having to go to the store.

And yes, I HAVE been promising various people pictures of my studio for years.  Someday.  Really.  

I bought giant industrial size cones of stuff I use all the time and small spools of metallic and variegated pretties on sale.  The bright gold in the foreground is my go to color for machine quilting.  Somehow almost every quilt I make NEEDS to be quilted in bright gold.

I also bought two giant rolls of interfacing/stabilizer, thick and heavy duty.  $5 each, how could I not?  Probably should have bought more.  Di and Susan kindly toted them out to my van in the broiling NC sun.  Di says this weight is perfect for placemats, which my spell checker initially tried to persuade me should read "placenta".  I will use them for the purse project that has been simmering in the back of my mind for at least a decade.  Could get dozens of purses from all this.  Or it will sit in my studio for another decade.  It won't spoil.

The car keys on top give you an idea of size.

In the bad news department, four, count them FOUR, people that I was really looking forward to spending time with either can't make it at all this year or will only be here on Friday.  But there will always be another TOGA next year and three of them I will get to see in NonTOGA locations.

BTW, does anybody else have problems charging electronic devices in hotel rooms?  They are VERY slow to charge and quick to lose the charge.   Is Monroe in some kind of electromagnetic vortex?  Happens every time I come here.

I did discover several years ago why hotel room coffeemakers make such dreadful coffee.  It isn't necessarily the coffe itself because I brought my own coffee and it was just as bad.  They just don't get hot enough.  Is this related to the device-charging problem?

Now I bring a filter basket that sits on top of a cup--my own ceramic cup--and heat the water in the microwave.

Because coffee really, really matters.  Even more than thread.