nose to the grind

 

 

Okay everyone.  I am about to tell you no more than 3 things that are in my circle of interest.  'They' say that a person cannot focus on more than 3 things at once, and usually begin to lose interest after the third topic in a discussion. 

1. I just finished helping out at QuiltCon here in Austin. The hard part about being local is that you don't get to go back to your hotel room at the end of the day.  You get to go home to your normal grind.  Kids still need to do homework, and be fed, and bathed, you need to pull a bean or two out of noses.  These things don't happen when your out of town.  When you get back home from being in another city, your children welcome you with open arms, and your husband tells you how simple everything was, and how he cannot understand why you have so much drama when you are watching them. I tell him it is because of the beans.  I put them in the top shelf before I left...and now he is totally confused.  But I live in Austin, so the bean jar is on the bottom shelf, ready for action.

I did get to meet Elizabeth Hartman, Denyse Schmidt, Heather Ross, and Alexia Abegg. They were all wonderfully sweet girls.  I now know that I will have to buy the book 'Liberty Love', 'Heather Ross Prints' and a few patterns.  Denyse Schmidt's new fabric line 'Shelbourne Falls' is so amazing that I will have to cut our credit card in half today, so that I am not tempted to do something to cause a divorce.

I bought another machine.  One that I will have to sell some of my stash to make up for the missing money from the savings account (VVBG).  Or I will have to make some totally awesome pillows or mini quilts to sell...or start an ETSY shop, or become a CEO of a very stupid company. I already own a Janome Memory Craft 6600, and will never, never part with it; but it is a little heavy to lug around to bee meetings, retreats, and classes that I teach.  I love the heaviness of it for home use, as it is a stable machine that doesn't bounce around when you put that pedal to the floor.  So I got a show machine from Janome: 3160 QDC. Great, great price and it is lightweight. I will now have a decent back-up machine for when my 6600 is being serviced. Here she is:

 

well, one exactly like it anyway. It has all of the stitches I need to teach my machine applique classes, and lots of 'stuff'.  So I will be happy when it arrives.

more on Quilt Con later this week...

2.  I have been working diligently on a project for a friend of mine in Flickr land.  Her name is Beca and she is an amazing friend.  We decided to do an exchange of hand made yummy things, and she sent hers on time (the nerve!) So I have had huge amounts of guilt trying to get hers done.  I am not rushing so fast that I do a terrible job, but I am not going so slow either.  I took her project with me to QuiltCon, and one of the magazine companies is interested in doing a pattern for it in one of their publications.  Which means that even if I get it done tonight, they would likely want me to mail it to them so that they can keep it for a long, long while.  I will now either have to hustle to make a copy for Beca or the magazine.  I am pretty sure Beca comes first.  I can't wait to show pictures of that, but it is a surprise!

3.  Goals of the week: get a block fixed that is haunting me right now...awaiting a seam ripper.  Dammit.  I would also like to get a backing done for another quilt for my brother so that I can get it sent off to a long-arm quilter. Finally, I need to put a border on another quilt for a friend's baby.  He outside of the womb, so I need to hustle on that too...oh, and finish binding on a quilt for my sister. Can I do it?

random thought of the day:

'Dammit, I'm mad' spelled backwards is...