Cars

Hmmm, well. It's not the expected red Rav4 for sure. It became increasingly clear that the local Toyota dealership (Highland, IN) was not going to come up with the car we had ordered. The (very nice and very good) salesman kept calling us to try and convince us we really wanted another model, another color, another package. Finally, last week we confronted them and the deal was off.

Car buying isn't easy for us in the first place and this was not happy making. My guy's a car guy and gets very attached. So, we decided to keep our clunker (he loved that thing).

But he's a car guy, so he's always looking (new, old, doesn't matter really). He found 0-down, 0% on Chevy Malibu (if you cut him, he'll bleed Chevy bow-ties) (it's their logo) so we went and looked. My bum leg didn't like it. But, being who we are, we had to sit in every single car in the showroom (except for Corvettes---just not our taste).

And we liked this chocolate brown Impala. And it also had 0-0%. And it qualified for the Cash for Clunkers program. Soooo, we have a new brown Impala. (It's actually Mocha Bronze Metallic, I believe. I suspect it will be called Cocoa since neither of us drink coffee in any form but I am totally addicted to chocolate.) The car has loads of "stuff," most of which we're not interested in (leather seats, on-star, cd player, satellite radio) and some we are: fold down rear seat, Bose stereo. It's pretty cool.

No embroidery in it at all. I think I was a bit burnt out after the intensity of the Japanese Embroidery class last week, so I didn't mind at all. Although the steering wheel is black and I've been thinking about making a cover for it, perhaps with a monogram initial, so we can keep it from getting too hot when sitting in the sun.

To round out the car-oriented weekend, we spent Sunday at the annual Orphan Auto Picnic. It was a gorgeous day. Sunny and not too hot. The site had loads of shady trees. I spent much of my time sitting in the shade with my knitting, chatting with my sister. Bliss! I love the rounded swoopy curves of many older cars and this show always gets great cars. Larry goes around with a portable microphone and chats with the owners about them and it's usually pretty interesting.

When I did stroll around, I took a bunch of photos. Last year I focused on photos of hubcaps. This year I went mostly with hood ornaments. They used to have such lovely and interesting ones. It made me realize that I haven't worked in my design journal for ages. (Last year I did the hubcap photos as part of Sharon B's Studio Journals class.) The curvy lines and shiny surfaces made me think of the silk shading I've been working on.