Long Weekend in Nebraska

Last Wednesday I headed over to Lincoln, Nebraska to visit the Nebraska Service Center as part of their open house through NAFSA: Association for International Education. For those of you who are not in tune with all of the fun workings of the immigration system in the United States, the Nebraska Service Center (NSC) is one of four service centers in the country that processes immigration applications. It's where we send our applications for students applying for a work permit following the completion of their studies. Anyway, it was super cool in this very-nerdy-I-heart-International-Education way. We got to meet the director of the NSC, hear about some new things coming out, have a long discussion with some of the supervisors and get a tour of the facility. It was a great trip, and even better that work flew me out there for professional development!

One of the main reasons that I was able to go is that my parents still live in Omaha, therefore I had a free place to sleep and a promise of food and water. So on Thursday, the Momcat and I drove down to Lincoln for the NSC open house. While I attended that, she went to some stores and antique shops. After lunch at a local microbrewery, we started headed back up to Omaha, stopping at a quilt store and some antique stores along the way. I purchased a few pieces of fabric, but what I really wanted was this

Giant Metal Rooster.


Who wouldn't want this?

The Momcat and I spent a lot of time going through stuff in my room, which still had a lot of things from my childhood. We ended up with about 3 bags of trash, and 6 bags to take to Goodwill to bless someone else. It felt really good to sort out all of my stuff.

After all that hard work, we spent Friday shopping and then going to Archiver's for ScrapMania!


Momcat worked on her album from our trip to Paducah,


and I worked on our wedding album.

We had a great time!

On Saturday we spent some time with Daddo, worked on some secret projects for my Advent Swap Partner, and looked to see what furniture/stuff I may want to take to our new house! Daddo wisely hid in his office during much of this process.


So thanks, parents, for a great weekend! It was fun to see them both, and great to work on projects with the Momcat. A good way to get into August, which promises to be a CRAZY month at work!

While I was gone, the N-boy went to the Farmer's Market and even took a picture of the bounty on his phone! Yummy fresh and local food!


One last shout out for the day-Happy 21st Birthday BabyBrother! It doesn't matter how old you get, you'll still be my IckleBabykins!

AQS Friday

Happy Monday everyone. It was a long day at work and I remember turning to a colleague this afternoon and saying, "I wish it was Friday already." Well since it's not Friday and won't be for a bit, we'll just think about AQS Friday instead.

Friday morning we had a class bright and early, so we got a great parking spot! Woohoo! The class was "Crown of Jewels" with Klaudeen Hansen. This is a paper piecing class. I'd taken a class on paper piecing before at the Jinny Beyer studio when I lived in DC, but the Momcat had never tried it before. I think paper piecing is one of those things that isn't necessarily difficult, but you do have to think about it. It's very easy to turn the piece you're working on the wrong way and cut off the wrong thing! It was fun to be able to show the Momcat a new technique.

After class we put our things back in the car (yay for having the car close by!!) and headed back in to see more of the vendors. You have to understand that there were just vendors EVERYWHERE!! We also finally took the time to look at all of the quilts on display. There were so many beautiful quilts! I really enjoyed looking at the larger wall quilts-especially those that are art quilts. They really did make me think about quilts and quilting in a new light, which was great for my whole inspirational/motivationa/mojo-ing experience.

On the way out of town that night we ended up back at Hancocks of Paducah's. We found some great pieces but this is probably not the best place to go when you're tired. It was pretty overwhelming and both Momcat and I were ready to get some rest. She pointed out that we should probably eat some dinner first, so we headed back in to Toucan for another meal. Can you tell we really liked it there? For dessert we split the yummiest key lime pie....It was a great way to end the day, and it was nice to have a bit of time to just sit and relax. I think Momcat was also quite happy to see me eating and almost enjoying the food as she'd been quite concerned since I'd lost some weight. So Momcat if you're reading this....thank you for feeding me!

Tomorrow I'll wrap up the AQS madness with Saturday's tale, which is good becuase if you're reading this I'd imagine you're tired of the AQS by now. Although how anyone could ever be tired of quilts, vendors, fabric and keylime pie is beyond me.

Getting my mojo back, part 2 (The AQS!!!)

I think that the trip the Momcat and I took to Paducah for the AQS 25th anniversary show came at the absolute best time possible for me. In addition to the re-organizational changes she helped me make right before we left (which meant I had space for all of my goodies when we returned), I think it was just really good to get out of town for a while and have a change of scenery.

We drove down to KY on Tuesday night after I left work, because when I was planning this trip I somehow didn't notice that this was a SEVEN hour drive. Way to go me. We got in very late, but got in safely and didn't hit any of the Chicago traffic we were worried about. Wednesday morning we got up reasonably early and drove into Paducah (we were staying in Mayfield), parking at the city park where the Eleanor Burns Quilt in a Day exhibit was set up. There were two huge barns full of fabric and notions and patterns and lots of happy quilter people!They had just started the free show, so there was lots of happy noise and music too. Momcat and I wondered around for a little bit and just looked in awe at all of the pretty things and people there. While we were waiting for the (also) free shuttle bus to take us down to the convention center Momcat started talking some of the other quilters. We met a very nice pair of women who had been to the show for several years and filled us in on all of the very imporant details: Like don't forget to have the strawberry shortcake from the boy-scout vendors!

We arrived at the convention center and got all checked in with the registrarion desk. And then we went into the first and one of many vendor hall in the main area. Oh my goodness! I had looked at the list of vendors online, but I had no idea whatsoever that it would be so busy! We had time to wander around for an hour or so and saw so many festive things, but it was almost to the point of being overwhelming. I bought a few novelty fat quarters (continuing my odd obcession with halloween fabric and adding to the collection for the planned cat quilt) but didn't do too much damage. More on the vendors later, as we managed to go through this main hall several times.

After a lunch outside of BBQ sandwhiches we went to our first class on Machine Quilting with Sally Terry. Sally was a wonderful instructor and a very nice woman. In additino to learning about her five shapes of machine quilting and how to look at a quilting pattern and figure out how to do it, we got to try some hands on practice with the handiquilter HQ 16s in the room. I'd always wanted to try a longarm, so it was super exciting. The only bad thing is that we found out how much some of them cost. I'm proud to say that neither the Momcat nor I purchased a $7000 longarm machine.

Here's a picture of my some of the Momcat's quilting:


And here's a picture of us with Sally Terry (in the middle):


During the class we met two other women from the same town I live in, and one even works at my same company! How crazy is that??? Afterwards we headed towards downtown Paducah for some dinner before attending the AQS 25th Anniversary Show. We ended up running into the same two women again, and ate dinner with them at an excellent restaurant called Toucan, which had an excellent Greek salad. It was a beautiful evening, and it was nice to sit outside and get some fresh air. After dinner Momcat and I walked over the the Four Rivers Carson Center for the show, which was pretty cool. I think the best part was seeing the DVD they'd put together of the last 25 years, including the 25 previous best of show winner. The speaker was so-so, but very energizing. And I like seeing people get the awards for this year's show.

At the end of the first day we were exhausted. When we got on the bus to go back to the car, we got very concerned looks when we told the bus director people where our car was. Apparently both Momcat and I had missed the part where it said that the park closes at 8:00 at night and here it was almost 10!! Oops. I may have worried a bit, but Momcat remained calm. Luckily when the bus got to the park the gates were still open and the nice driver drove us right up to the car. And Fluffy (my car) was not the only one in the parking lot! Another group had done the same thing and got off the bus with us to collect their car.

We finally made it back to the hotel and collapsed into bed. But I think the most important thing is the energy and excitement I (and I think Momcat, too) felt after just this one way. We saw so many new things, and different techniques and met such nice people that we just felt inspired and wished we'd brought our machines with us to pull out in the hotel room!! Later we learned that many women did just that!

Tomorrow's episode: Stack n Whack, Quilt Museum, Hancock of Paducah's (round 1) and more vendors!

Getting my mojo back, part 1

My first dishcloth! For BabyBrother's Easter Basket.

2009 has been a very tough and unpleasant year so far, and it is really only within the last three weeks that things have started to look up. I don't think I'll go into the details today, but my husband's very serious health problems have literally torn my family apart. I am thankful for the support I've received from friends, familiy and support group. And very very happy that things are finally starting to improve for us all.

Due to the unpleasant-ness of the year, I hadn't really been working on any of my hobbies since January. When I was home (at my parent's house) over Christmas, my mom (Momcat) and I had a great time going to Archiver's and working on our scrapbooks. Momcat worked on pictures from a vacation that she and Daddo (I'll let you guess who that one is) took to Estes Park, CO and I worked on my wedding pictures. Nevermind that I've been married for almost three years, I was very happy to work on things. But then when I got back home after Christmas and everything fell apart I couldn't work on anything. N-boy got very sick and eventually moved out, so I didn't even want to look at anything that had pictures of us being happy. I didn't work on the baby quilt for the baby born last September, or any of my other projects. It was unfun, to say the least.

Then Momcat suggested I put all of my ongoing projects away and start a new project. So I did, knitting BabyBrother a dishcloth as part of his Easter basket. Gee, that was nice. So I started another dishcloth and began thinking about other things I could do.

Then Momcat came out to visit me for a few extra days before we headed down to Paducah for the AQS show and we rearranged and organized all of my crafting area. I'd inherited some fabric from my grandmother and had all kinds of projects and things stuffed into boxes and corners. Unfortunately, I didn't think to take any pictures of the "before" but here's what if looks like now in the after:

And with Momcat's help I made this from the pretty Michael Miller fabric. I've got one from each season to put up, and blue curtains to go behind them, as well.


So that was step one to being a more productive person. Tomorrow, the insipration of the AQS show.