What a lovely, and long, weekend it has been. I took Friday off as we had the company golf tournament. Now, as my friends can attest I am quite awful at the game of golf and actually woke up dreading this "fun" event. So, I gave myself (and my unknowing teammates) a gift by begging off. Initially, this posed a conundrum for me as I didn't want to make up a lie about why I wasn't going, like "my dog is sick", it didn't seem fair to the dog or my teammate, on the other hand I also didn't want to just say "hey, I hate golf, don't know what in the heck I was thinking and am just not gonna go", as that seemed a bit too blunt. So I finally settled on " I'm just not feeling up to it today", which was both vague and true.
Saturday we went to a friend's 50th birthday party. DH, being horribly allergic to cats, had the bright idea to use a gas mask in the hopes that we could stay in the house more than 60 minutes before a "total airway closure" emergency. God love him he walked into a house full of mostly strangers for a social situation (party) in a gas mask! Now, I ask you, what kind of cohones does it take for a man to do that! He is a true treasure, you must understand that he basically did this because he knew how badly I wanted to go and have him with me. I love this man.
Finally got around to creating the "sunset" backdrop for the elephant silhouettes in the African quilt. I started with 4 yards of 36" plain white muslin, dyed the entire piece a lovely shade of yellow in the washing machine, then I had to seam it to the approximate dimensions (square 52") and left is very over sized. Now the hard part, I wanted the middle to be orange and the bottom scarlet. So, I basted a couple of "guidelines" in black thread to divide the piece in thirds. Then dyed the entire lower 2/3rd orange on the stove, carefully holding the top 1/3 out of the dye bath. This turned out so well, I got excited and immediately started on the bottom 1/3 in scarlet. Well, not a total disaster, but I did learn that it's not smart to handle your lovely yellow parts with gloves stained in scarlet, damn! Anyway, I knew this was not likely to be perfect as it's the first time I attempted a complicated dye job, hopefully I can cover some of it up with the elephant silhouette. On top of the near dye disaster, I think my washing machine has developed a leak.
Just another day in paradise! A friend of ours is a partner in an excellent new winery, De Novo Wines, and hosted a harvest party this weekend. Oh what joy it is to live in the wine capital of America. We had the opportunity to help harvest 1000 pounds of Syrah grapes at the Apicella Vineyard. Herve and Ladd (sadly, Dana couldn't make the party this year) clearly love their work and sharing their joy with friends and family. 
We met at the estate, parked in the emu/donkey/llama pen, grabbed tools and buckets, walked a short, but incredibly picturesque way down to the actual vineyard where, after a short explanation of how they judge when to pick the grapes (something about Ouija boards and refractometers) we all set to work harvesting the juicy, ripe grapes. Many hands make short work and we were done in less than an hour, but even in that relatively short time, us city folk were shiny with sweat and obviously not used to "hard" labour.
Next step: measuring and crushing the grapes. The grapes were dumped into the crusher (this really looked like a re-purposed hot tub) and we all scrubbed our little feeties super clean and dipped them in a disinfecting solution, then whoopie jumping into the tub!! After a lot of laughing, stomping, drinking and more laughing the juices were literally flowing. Ladd claims all the "Joie de vivre" adds spirit to the wine and I totally believe him. All in all, this was a super duper day.
