Apres SS - The Salt Lake City Chronicles...

With all the excitement of Sewing Summit over, we had Sunday to explore Salt Lake City centre.  Boy is that place quiet on a Sunday!  It was really quite eerie without other people and cars about.

This is the view from our hotel window, wasn't it a lovely day to go exploring?

We decided to walk up to Temple Square to see what we could see there.  This is the temple itself, but we weren't allowed in there:

This was in the gardens near the temple, a little Jack sized fountain:

Then I found some people to play with:

And then there was a HUGE fountain.  I got a little damp posing for this, but it was a nice day so I dried off quickly.

We went into the visitors' centre where I met this big guy.  He was seriously echo-y and there were all these planets and clouds and things round him.

We saw some people over at the conference centre up on the rood and we really wanted to go up and play there too, but we had to go all round inside first.  This is where they have the HUGE services for the LDS people both locally and round the world.  It seats 21,000 people, and is broadcast in 97 languages around the world, 54 of which are translated simultaneously in-house:

This is looking up from the stage end.  You can't really see it here because of the lens LT used, but the chairs are different widths to accommodate the curve of the auditorium.  We think there must be a bit of a fight for the wider seats, they look comfier...

My, what a big organ they have.  The choir sits up next to it, but in the open bit underneath they can wheel all sorts of things in and out:

Up on the roof of the conference centre is a garden.  There's trees and wild flowers, but because of the time of year all the flowers are dead.  The trees are pretty though:

You can see up the street to the capitol building with the dome.  We rather liked the brown house in front of it...

This was looking across to the temple and the city centre buildings:

When we came out of there, we headed to where there was a mall with real live people and open shops in it, just a couple of stops down on the Trax.  We just had to go into this shop after we saw this hanging outside:

We ended up having dinner at Cheesecake Factory (which conveniently ticked off one of Laura's wish list thingummies) as it happened to be one of only 2 restaurants near the hotel that were actually open!  We had salad and wee breaded cheese bits, weren't we good?

Err, well, except for these:

Mysteriously we then failed to take a photo of the cheesecake desserts, so we'll pretend that didn't happen, 'kay?

The Sewing Summit Diaries - Part Deux

I think LT was trying to break some kind of 'no sleep' record, but we made it down to our first class if not bright eyed and bushy tailed, lively enough to be torturing Rachael from Imaginegnats whose fabric we were sharing in the Shapes and Angles class, as LT's was in her bag that was still in Paris...  Doesn't she have a cool pencil case?  I think they suit me...

Anyway, we did some sewing of partial seams.  Didn't I do well?  We didn't have an iron...

I also helped Ella out with her Maxi skirt:

Then I made a new friend in the gift shop, but LT wouldn't bring him home with us...

And after all that we had to go to a bar for the SLMQG mixer, where I got to do a bit of hanging about on the bunting before LT won a prize - fabric, just what she needed...

We may or may not have got irrationally excited by the appearance of this by the time we got back to the hotel that night:

By this time sleep was something we vaguely remembered in our dreams, but alas, not a lot more was to be had that night, even after a drink!

The next day we went to a bunch of lectures, and I got to play with some new friends:

Di from http://www.randomthoughtsdoordi.com/

Laura from http://www.needlespinsandbakingtins.com/

We might also have needed a bit of this to try and get us through the day:

I think I'd make a great teacher for this class, don't you?

Allegory wasn't convinced...

But at the end of the day we got to snuggle under these:

Whew, I was a worn out little bear after all that, but look at all the loot we have to take home!

LT says to look out for a giveaway in the next week or so...

The Sewing Summit Diaries... Part 1

Whew, the staff have FINALLY pulled their finger out and started typing up my grand adventures.  It was quite the ordeal, and I really needed to share it with you all, but apparently she was tired...

Anywho, the trip did not start well.  Arriving at Edinburgh airport we discovered that the plane was going to be 1 1/2 hours late.  This did not amuse either of us for several reasons:

1. We'd got up at 3:15 am to get to the airport, having not really slept the night before (Ahem, we? - LT) Yes, 'we', you disturbed me (From 2 rooms away? - LT)  YES!
2. There was only a 2 hour changeover in Paris based on the original flight time, it was now down to 30 mins, and in fact they were telling all of us with connections that we wouldn't make our flight, but, you know, there were other flights later that day, later that week... (and in a couple of cases, no other flights, tough luck, we offloaded your cases! - LT)
3. The breakfast options were bad.  We managed to get a yoghurt parfait, and a This Water, and then waited.  And waited.  And waited.  Did I mention the waiting?

Eventually we made it onto the plane, and the very nice pilot tried his best to fly as fast as he could to get us there with as little delay as possible, so by the time we landed there was 25 minutes to make it to the flight.  Could we do it?  Well, we could if we ran as fast as our little legs would carry us (OUR legs? - LT) Details...

First we ran off the plane to the bus.  Then we waited FOREVER, while ever member of the crew got off, chatted to their mates doing the next flight and sauntered over to the bus.  Then we were driven round half of Paris to get from the runway to the inbound gate.  After that we ran up the stairs, saw that our flight was boarding, and there was still a chance we could make it, then we ran down a long corridor, and then we ran through security.  Well, we ran through security right up until they found the half of that This Water that we hadn't consumed in Edinburgh in LT's bag...  They excruciatingly slowly (and deliberately - LT) extracted the bottle from the bag, made a great point of showing it to us, and then handed over the bag.  So we ran and ran and thought the gate would be down a corridor just round the corner, except that's where we found the train.

Train?  I hear you cry.  Yes, train.  We had 2 stops to do on the train and the minutes were going by agonisingly slowly waiting for it to go, then for it to stop at the first gate letter section, and then to get to our gate letter section.  And that's when we discovered that it was the furthest away gate from the train that you could get...  So we ran and ran and ran and made it to the plane before it took off - phew!

Except our luggage didn't. Make the plane that is.  Nor did it make any other flight that day.  It finally arrived at 9 pm the next day...

Tune in tomorrow, if herself can be bothered to type, and we'll tell you all about Sewing Summit.