Houston, we have a problem

I've always wanted to say that and mean it. Blogger is giving me hissy fits and will not open the browser to be able to upload quilt pictures. I'll keep trying to the Houston Quilt Show pictures are going to have to be delays just a wee little bit.

In the meantime a silly little story.

I left the house last Wednesday around 11am and returned Monday morning around 8am. During that time the boys were in the house alone other than someone coming in to check on food and water. Naturally, Bert hid so he didn't see anyone all week. When I got home Chief greeted me at the door and yelled at me for being gone so long. That was Monday, this is Thursday night. He will not leave me alone and is in absolute fear that I will be going away again. Every morning he stares out the window when I leave and every evening he's at the door waiting. Right now he's sitting on my left arm as I try to type this. Bert has been pretty much the same. Very vocal about me having the nerve to leave them alone and pretty much hovering around me constantly. Nice to know I'm loved!

Now, send good vibes to blogger so I can post pics!

Houston Quilt Show - part 1

As I mentioned last post, I went to Houston for the International Quilt Show. If you've never heard of it here's a few facts.
This year according to Biz Trade Shows web site there were 549 vendors and over 60,000 visitors. It's 4 days of classes, vendors, quilt competition and special displays and held in the George R Brown Convention Center which is big - it's really big - seriously big. The basic set up is 3 areas on main floor. The right side is more quilts than you can imagine. The rows are very deep and set up A thru Z. Then the middle section is the vendors. Same really deep rows and set up 100 thru 2000. That's 20 super deep rows of vendors of all kinds. After that on the left is the food court. When we finally made it all the way to the food court I almost cried because it was so big and the food vendors were on the far side - we had more walking to do! All around the far side and up the 2 sides were tons of vendors with high quality foods - taco salads, baked potato bar Philly cheese steak, BBQ, sandwiches, fudge, jerky, a cupcake truck and so much more.

The vendor area is bigger and longer than you can see. We didn't make it through the whole area but did hit most of them. My friend bought some shoes with special airsoles but they didn't quite fit my feet (drat!). We both got some moisturizer that I have never seen before but is the absolute best stuff I've ever seen. Lo lo body bars are an all natural product shaped like a bar of soap but seriously good moisturizer. I have terrible dry skin on my front calf from the car heat and after 1 application and 2 days it was still nice soft skin.

OK, commercial over. I also picked up a sample pack from Hobbs. They are 18x18 pieces of every batting they make bundled together for $5. I grabbed one the first night which was a good thing cause they were out when we went past the booth on Saturday. I plan to make sandwiches from the same fabric, maybe different colors, and try quilting to see what batting makes me happiest.

I also got a few other things but the main reason for this trip was to see the quilts. Quilt sightings started at the beginning of the trip before we even got to Houston. Our first was was just south of Des Moines, Iowa in Madison County. The same as the "Bridges of Madison County" fame. We turned off for a quick gas stop and spotted a barn quilt about 1/2 mile from one of the bridges.

 



So - we got to Houston after driving about 18 hours and arrived on the north end in time for breakfast, Since our hotel room wouldn't be ready till 3pm we headed straight to the convention center and spent 4 hours walking around. I took a bunch of pictures but we'll save those for a moment. It ended up being about 30 hours without sleep and I got a bit loopy before we finally called it a night.

Friday we headed to NASA (Johnson Space Center) and Galveston. I haven't been to either for over 25 years and my friend has never been south of Iowa so this was a great adventure. We saw all sorts of space stuff and got in on a talk by Dr LeRoy Chiao, astronaut and incredible speaker.

After many hours of space stuff and a few t-shirts and other gifts finding their way to the car, we headed to Galveston. Little did we know it was a motorcycle gathering weekend. OH MY WORD! I have never seen so many motorcycle and so much black leather in my life. According to the newspaper there were over 500,000 motorcyclists over the weekend. My friend wiggled her toes in the Gulf, we drove around checking out the damage still around from the last hurricane and we decided it would be better to head back to the main land for dinner.

As I said we spent Thursday afternoon and all day Saturday at the Quilt Festival. Here's a couple non-quilt items and I'll start showing you some quilts next post.

 

 

I still have several hundred pictures to sort thru but hopefully I'll get that done tomorrow and post some quilt pictures.

Whatta Week!

I didn't want to post I was going out of town for a special event because I'm basically paranoid that someone will read my blog and decide it would be a lovely time to visit my house and remove some of my clutter. But - I got home today from a wonderful week in Houston and after I get some sleep, do some laundry and have lots of kitty cuddle time I'll be posting pictures - lots of pictures!

I went to Houston Wednesday for the International Quilt Festival. I haven't been there for 10 years and lucked out. A friend said she would love to take a suicide trip with me. We drove straight down - 18 hours including potty breaks and arrived Thursday morning. We went immediately over to the convention center and walked around several hours in a daze.
Friday was NASA and Galveston and Saturday back to a very full day at the quilt show. Sunday morning we headed back to the Twin Cities and arrived this morning after driving through rain all night.

I'm tired but very happy. I took over 400 pictures, talked to an astronaut, bought some fun things and have a head filled with ideas for new quilts. Details and pictures to follow. (and I will get some pictures of my finished projects from the retreat).

Oh- my friend who came with - she's made one quilt in her life and had absolutely no idea what to expect. I was thrilled to be there but it was so much fun to watch her realize quilting is an art form and not "just" something to put on the bed. I see a new quilter in the making!

Fall Knitting Retreat

Last weekend was my group's fall knitting retreat as I said in the last post. We are a group that got together from Ravelry and have been knitting 2-3 times a month since early 2008. It's an informal group, no leader or program, just friends getting together to knit, talk, complain, laugh, and sometimes eat. The past few years we felt the need to get away and have an extended time together. Someone in the group will find a place to rent an hour or 2 away and off we go.

This time was a converted church about 2 hours away near Mankato, MN. It was set up so each side was independent with sleeping for 5 a living room, kitchen and huge bathroom (I forgot it get a pic of the one on our side). We moved the chairs from one side to the other and camped out on the one side. Up in the balcony area was a computer with wifi and 2 craft rooms. really a nice set up! We always bring too much food and it always tastes great.

I ran up to the balcony to get a few pictures. Here's the eating area with the tables from from sides pushed together to fit us all in.

 

 

With all the chairs and couches pushed into the room we were all comfortable knitting and chatting.

 

 

The far end of each side had mirror images of these stained glass windows. When the sun shined they were absolutely beautiful.

 

Here's one of the craft rooms tables, chairs and lights ready for quilters or scrapbookers.

 Over the computer and in one of the craft rooms were a couple quilt wall hangings.

 

Saturday we headed out to Mankato to visit Mary Lou's yarn shop. Back in the day Mary Lou's was in St Peter and was the Brother Knitting Machine Distributor for our area. Every quarter all us dealers would head down to St Peter for a 2 day meeting to see the new products and share ideas with each other. When St Peter and Mary Lou's was damaged by a tornado we all headed down there to help clean up. I hadn't been down to see the new shop so this was a fun adventure.

 

The shop is in Old Town portion of Mankato and filled with all sorts of wool and other fibers to knit with. I came home with some fingering weight that will end up being a shawl.

 

 One of the odd things about Mankato - just outside the shop the sidewalk had a very strange poem. It was between the yarn shop and a bike shop. I just don't get it!

Finally, Sunday I headed home to see the boys. They spent the weekend alone doing what boy like to do - have pretend fights.

Wondering what I knit and worked on over the weekend? Well, keep wondering. I'll show you pictures next time. Enjoy a great weekend.



I'm Alive - really I am

I just noticed the date of the last post. It's been almost a month. I was thinking maybe a couple weeks but obviously I follow my cousin's theory of time measurement. However long ago you think something is - double it and you're probably closer. So my couple weeks ago is in reality almost 4 weeks. In my defense, its been a busy month.

At work one of the things I do is train the New Hire class. It's a one day, cramp as much information as you can type class and afterward I'm pooped. I spend the entire day being perky and excited about the company and service excellence and all sorts of things. It's good stuff I believe in but it does wear me out. Well, my usually 1 class a month has been every other week lately and this month I did 1 one week and 2 classes a week later. One of those classes included driving 2 hours there and 2 hours back. I've also been out at some of our remote locations helping mentor site managers 1-3 days a week (more driving, more being perky all day).

Then I went on a knitting retreat this past weekend (more driving). I had a great time and finished several projects but because I went to my quilt guild tonight I haven't had time to get the pictures out of the camera.

All this to say, sorry its been so long between posts. Sorry there's no pictures tonight. But- I will post with lots of fun pics shortly - maybe tomorrow night if I get my act together.

In the meantime I'll leave you with a joke the food delivery guy told us at one of the training sessions.

A skeleton walks into a bar and asks for a beer and a mop........ (I'll wait till you laugh)..... then someone noticed he wouldn't cross the street. So he asks - why not cross the street? The skeleton says - No guts!

Did I mention he was a really old delivery guy?

Stained Glass Afghan is growing

I've been bouncing back and forth between knitting, quilting, embroidery and crochet. This week I concentrated enough on crochet to get the first 9 blocks of the stained glass afghan finished. I started out planning on using up leftover yarn but after a couple blocks I decided to go for a more planned design.

I've decided to keep the green,black and blue the same and change up the "flower" part of the block. Now I'm thinking I'll keep the remainder of the blocks in gold and have the off white as 4 accent blocks.

Keeping this away from the boys has been interesting because I plan to keep this as cat hair free as possible so it can be used to warm company when the house seem a bit too cold for anyone. Right now these 9 blocks are hiding away in a plastic bag away from cat access.

Today has been knitting - tomorrow quilting. Let the good times roll.

Yes, It makes me Happy

Last post I said I was going somewhere after work to get something that would make me very happy. I did. It does.

Last Saturday I went to Just Sew Studio in Roseville. Well, actually the story starts last Friday. I went over to the shop and asked Carmen (owner) about the embroidery unit for my Pfaff Creative 4.0. After explaining I was looking for something to speed up my quilting and help with making feathered quilting and other "fancy" designs, she suggested I come to the beginner's class Saturday to check it out. I should just bring my machine and they would let me use their embroidery unit. Cost? free. What materials did I need to bring. Nothing except a couple colors of thread, they provided the material. This, my friends, is good customer service. They made me part of their family before I even bought anything from them.

Saturday a group of us met at the shop and made a pillow top. The material they provided was a really nice large weave cloth. We set up the machines, stitched the design, had questions answered and, yes, I left with a Monday visit set up to pick up my new embroidery unit and the software for creating quilt designs for it.

 

Monday night I brought home the unit and software and played with it all week. I've been on free embroidery sites and downloaded a few and read what I could. I went through the book that came with my software and created a few designed to try out. I'm likin' it a lot.

 

This Saturday I was back at the shop because we had another free class. We brought in our laptops and found out all sorts of goodies about the organizing program.

 

There's a website, Embroidery Library, that has lots of its designs on sale every week. They also have a Christmas club for free with lots of goodies. I'll be sending a lot of time checking out the site. I've already purchased a few designs and I'm making a couple pieces that will in included in a Christmas wall hanging.

 

 

These 2 pieces are on different material, both off white. I'm thinking of something with different size blocks and a half triangle border between the blocks of various sized and - well - it's still in the designing stage,

 

The quilting software is 5D QuiltDesign from VMS. Here's a couple first attempts on some leftover material. I put the top, batting and backing in the hoop and gave it a try.

 

 

The left side is a double stitched design, the right is an applique done on the embroidery hoop and the middle is a design I did following the lessons in the book.

 

Let the good times roll.......