What I Did On Vacation...

Sounds like a grade school paper, doesn’t it?   I was in Arizona for a week, as you may remember.  Got home last weekend and have been playing catch-up, working (Farm) and tending London, and preparing for my next trip.  More about that in a bit.


Visiting family south of Tucson was such fun.  It was cool-ish for our first couple days (in the high fifties/low sixties) but soon jumped up into the seventies with clear blue skies and no wind.  GORGEOUS weather for the annual Tubac Arts Festival.


Before Festival started (on Wednesday), we took the time to shop our favorite stores.

Bruce checks out some interesting ironwork

Lovely outdoor pieces.  We didn’t buy any metalwork this year for our patio, but did purchase another large colorful Talavera pot for our front stops and an iron and tile patio side table.  

I thought these chandelier-like hanging baskets were awesome.  Maybe next year?

Lovely furnishings with a definite Mexican/Spanish influence.  Lots of iron and metalwork, pottery, large scale sizing and southwest/Spanish mission motifs.

PHOTO OP

Ironwork depictions of the evolution of humans.  Bruce stands first at the end...

Then insisted that perhaps his place was at the beginning.  With a coffee mug?

My brother-in-law Dennis owns and runs the Tubac Trailer Tether, which is the local mobile home park and recreational vehicle campground.  He also sells propane and has public laundry facilities.  He is also a Hoarder.  It started when he began recycling everything, which is great, and then re-using as much of it as possible.  But now .....  well, I didn’t dare take a picture of the inside of his home, but this is part of his patio....   The Tether, however, is neat as a pin ...  Go figure...

This is Dennis’ cat Lola, the resident mouser.  She is, however, very smart and knows to stay close to home at night to avoid the wild javelinas (boars) and coyotes.  

Horse-pulled carriage passes on the street

Festival Begins!  And the crowds arrive ...

We stopped in at Quilts, Ltd. as we always do...

Detail of lovely peacock art quilt

Crosses are a popular Mexican motif

An interesting quilt pieced solely of highly embellished pieces of sari silk.

 Quilts, Ltd. was so busy, it was hard to get in and out!

My sister-in-law Annette (not usually stern-looking!) poses with a wonderful piece of art she purchased.  The woman who does these pieces dries all the flowers, then airbrushes them with color so that they never fade.  The green background is just a piece of tissue paper held to the back for purposes of the picture.  Like the rest of the pieces hanging on the wall, it is in clear glass.  Annette plans to hang it in her bright yellow kitchen.

At The Feminine Mystique, a shop of all women artists that is one of my favorites (and I have blogged about it before here), there were some wonderful things.

More of artist Gretchen Lima’s dolls

Fiber artist Susan Waldron felts her silk tunics and scarves with Suri alpaca fibers.  She owns her own alpacas and dyes the fibers and fabrics.  

A typical outdoor display of pottery and ironwork.

  

DH Bruce (green shirt) and our cousin Kim look at these lovely painted coins.  Kim bought a gorgeous hand-pained coin pendant for her sister.

The Husband Drop-off Point (clever!) was right next to the Daddy Day Care.  Both were well attended!

Friday, February 11, was perfect.  It was warm, clear and the sky was achingly blue.  Cousin Kim and I spent the entire day outside - it was just too beautiful NOT to!!

The local historic church which is part of the Presidio. 

 The Presidio dates back to 1752.  The town of Tubac sprang up around it long before the United States was even a country.  And the first newspaper in the southwest was printed here.

 I had to snap a picture of some of the stately saguaro cactus on the way home.

 These were taken from the passenger seat at 75mph with my new little Canon camera.