Weekend Roundup

Where is everybody? It seems traffic to my comment box is down.

Oh well.

I excused myself from work on Friday and went with several members of my quilt bee to the Quilter's Heritage Celebration in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It was my first time attending a large-scale quilt show. It was fun to go on a road trip with my quilty friends, it was cool seeing some really neat quilts. This won Best of Show, it had some really intense machine quilting in it. Maybe some day I'll get close to that good.




I liked the colors on this one:



But, oh my goodness, look at the quilting: (click to enlarge)



It was interesting to me to see all different kinds of quilts and to notice which ones I was attracted to; am I making the kind of quilts I'm attracted to? No. I'll have to re-evaluate my skills and tastes. I might even have to learn a new thing or two.

The trip to the show would not be complete without a stop, or several, at the vendors and local shops. I set a loose budget and stayed loosely within it. ahem. I bought some silk thread, a lot of cotton thread, sewing machine needles and a straight-stitch throat plate I've wanted for a long time and some fabric. But by the end of the day, I didn't spend nearly as much as some of the others in my group, for example, Dr. J bought a featherweight, and other's shopping bags bulged more than mine did. It was a good road trip.

Armed with inspiration from the show, Saturday I was anxious to sit down to quilt some with my new threads, but just pieced some blocks instead. I'd dropped my "big" machine off at the shop for a 75K mile check-up before I left for spring break, but evidently, my shop has the best Bernina tech in the area and the wait for service is three and a half weeks. So I used my 51 year-old Singer 99K instead. She's got a nice stitch, but I'm not used to her so the comfort curve was a tad slow.

Saturday night Dan and I went to the Ramshead Tavern to see Paul Kelly with some friends. It was a nice show, his music is so comforting and melodic. Fern and Kevin stayed home alone and she had gotten her brother into his room for bed by the time we got home. Thumbs up to her.

Sunday I got up for early church and Dan took Fern to an ice skating competition at a neighboring rink. (Think a lesser version of sharks and jets....) Her team got third out of three, they some problem with the music, but I don't think that factored into scoring. Now they've got Districts in Richmond in two weeks to get ready for.

I left before the judging was announced, Kevin and I went to a birthday party for one of his buddies from after-care. It was held at a Tex-Mex restaurant, not one of Kevin's cuisines, but he did OK, ate a ton of chips and a quesadilla, called it pizza, so all was well. The party lasted a long time, three hours, mostly because the service was so slow. Our waiter wasn't very attentive (Kevin was the last one served long after everyone else got their food!); I'm guessing because the tip was already included in the bill, he had nothing to really "work" for.

After that, I took a nap, mourned Davidson's loss (I love a good underdog) and listened the the boos as Dubya threw out the first pitch of the Nat's game. I'm still and O's fan, thankyouverymuch, so I did enjoy hearing Jon Miller's voice even if it was for them.