Today we drove over to Colfax to do some shopping and drop off that shop sample I did. We did our grocery shopping (mostly veggies - the garden's petering out) then came home. The roosters got a reprieve from slaughtering til tomorrow because it was too late to mess with it. Dinner's on the stove (meatloaf, fried potatoes, maybe something else - I'm not sure) being cooked - by me for a change! - and Mike's working away on his computer. After dinner I'm going to start on my nephew's quilt. All in all a pretty ho-hum kinda day. Aren' t you glad you asked? LOL.
Two days ago, I created a quilting mailing list, called "QuiltingFrenzy". I created it because the mailing list I have been on since September - "ACozyQuiltBee" - has been going through some growing pangs and has decided off-topic stuff is maybe not-so-welcome. QuiltingFrenzy is a very off-topic-friendly type of list, and is growing rather quickly. We're already up to 24 members, and counting. It warns that it could be high-volume, which it is, and often off-topic, which it is. And I love it. I'm having a ball. I've even created a website for it (a sub-site of this one, at least for the time being). So if you have some interest in quilting (or at least don't mind the occasional quilting-related post.. LOL), you can subscribe to it. Just go here.
Besides that, there hasn't been much going on that anyone would really be interested in. Some time back, I bought Sew Precise - a foundation-piecing pattern program that only runs on Windows 95/98. So Mike loaded Win95 on a computer for me, and I have it downstairs in my sewing room. It's very handy, and I can monitor chat and email from it if I feel like it.
I've been sewing on a shop sample for Becky's, after I finally finished all of my other obligations for swaps and other things. Mike went into Spokane today to take some more certification exams and passed them with gently fluttering colors. He thinks he squeaked by on two questions. :) But hey, passing is passing, right? ;) He didn't really study, anyway, as he's been very busy on the authoring/editing front. He has to keep me in fabric somehow, ya know? ;) While he was in Spokane, he bought me a big jar (yes, a jar - one of those old-timey Mason lid-type thingies with the snap-shut lids) of CHOCOLATE. Chocolate bars, hot chocolate mix, and chocolate squares. Yum!!!
Today I went into Colfax for a quilting class with Pat Magaret and Donna Slusser. They are famous for their work with Watercolor Quilts. I've been taking a Monday night class with them called Quilting Basics & Beyond, in which they teach you the basics of quilting, including how to make some of the better-known block patterns. I have one more Monday left of that class this session (on Nov. 22nd). Today's class was called Fabric Tapestries and was all about how to use color, and how to recognize differences in color, etc.
I was late leaving for the class (it started at 10, it was 9:30 before I remembered it), so I was in a hurry to get there. I was speeding. Of course, today HAPPENED to be the one day since we've lived here that there was a police officer cruising the highway, so yep! I got a ticket. :(
I'm still bummed about Amanda's not being here, so there's not much else to report. I'm going to go downstairs and finish up some quilting stuff that I've started and need to send off on Monday.
WARNING!! This is a very, very long diary entry. Read at your own risk. :)
Amanda left today. She got here Wednesday night, October 27, at about 7:30PM. I hardly know where to begin. Well, I guess I'll start with how she got here.
I had only given her directions as far as Endicott (not all the way to the house), so I kept waiting for a phone call so we could come get her and show her the rest of the way. At 7:30, we heard a knocking on the door, and it was her. I flung the door open and she said, "Please tell me you're Dana." I said, "Thank GOD!! How did you get here?" I was being very manic, because I had been so worried about her. It took me awhile to calm down; I was sort of bouncing all over the place. I just kept saying, "I'm so glad you're here!!!" She was kind of wiped out from the drive, but I didn't know her well enough yet to see it. So we started bringing in her Rubbermaid containers full of fabric so we could wash them. We got 3 or 4 loads done that night. Meanwhile, we came upstairs so she could check my email and see what was going on with our quilting mailing list.
At about 1AM, we both decided it was bedtime. I showed her the guest room (aka mobil home) and she went to bed (she ended up sleeping on the couch and never used the bed). I stayed up a while longer and got the fabric dry. I got to bed about 2:30AM or so. The next day, I went into work without her. I had to work at Becky's all day, and we were going straight from there to Quilt Camp. She was going to come in later, after she woke up and packed the rest of her fabric. She showed up just after lunchtime. She helped me at the store (folding fat quarters, putting bolts of fabric back) and did some major mega-shopping. That girl was in quilter heaven!! :)
We left from the store at 6PM on the dot, and drove like bats out of hell to Potlatch, Idaho. We ate dinner at the Lone Jack with some of the other gals from Camp. I had steak, Amanda had teriyaki shrimp. Then we drove to Camp. At first, we thought we were in trouble because we were the last ones in line to pay for dinner, and we didn't know where the camp was. But we found a carfull of ladies who were also going to camp, so we followed them. Amanda just barely had enough gas to get there; we didn't fill up anywhere, and she only had $4 worth when she left Colfax. We unpacked, picked a room, and just sat there. We had Quilter's Block! Amanda started working on putting together an Americana quilt she had started, and I started making friendship stars for a swap we were doing on our mailing list. There are pics of all of this on the Quilt Camp page, btw.
I won't bore you with all the details of what we worked on at camp, but we accomplished ALOT. We did make one excursion out of the camp, on Friday night, and I'll just copy what I wrote to the mail list about that night:
**We made an excursion Friday night (remember that empty gas guage?) to get gas cans and munchies. (The word "munchies" now makes both of us collapse into hysterical fits because of this story.) We decided while we were in Moscow (the closest big town) we would stop at Joann's. That's where she got the inkpad and some batting. Then we headed back for Potlatch. ("Potlatch" is a hysterical word, too. ROTFL) At least, we THOUGHT we headed for Potlatch. In fact, we went the wrong way on the highway. We were cruising along this 2-lane highway, when all of a sudden we saw LOTS of lights and noticed we were suddenly on a 4-lane highway. Amanda asked, "Are we on a four-lane highway?" (pause) I said, "Where are we?" Amanda said, "This is Lewiston!! I remember this!" (sidenote - we ran over a dead deer right before this... we got to later run over it again, wheee!! fun in Idaho.) I said, "Hm.... we musta gone the wrong way!" (insert lots of teasing from Amanda here) We turned around, (bump bump squish squish) and headed to Moscow again. We realized when we got into Moscow (again) that we had forgotten the munchies. So we stopped at this corner gas station and decided to shop. We invaded this poor little podunk gas station that was being manned by this poor little girl (about our age) in the middle of the night. Within 3 minutes, we had picked out 3 huge bags of chips, a Snapple, a Sobe, a cream soda, a pack of gum, and countless packages of candy. We got to the checkout and found that Amanda had already started drinking the Snapple. The girl asked, "Would you like me to throw that plastic wrapper away for you?" Amanda said, "(glug glug) No, hang on a minute. (glug glug)" and she handed over the empty Snapple bottle. The girl just looked at us like, "These chicks are on dope." So then we ask, "Which way is Potlatch?" (We both giggled just now when I typed that word.) She pointed us in the right direction and we said, "OK, cuz we have to get back to our quilt camp." She just looked at us like, "Yeah... SURE you do...." Two twenty-somethings raiding a gas station in the middle of the night for junk food, claiming to be quilters. I'm SURE she believed us. So I hand over my credit card to pay. She ran it through and I was busy packing the munchies into a bag, so I told Amanda, "You sign it." The girl looked totally blank, so Amanda did. Then we left. On the drive back, it occurred to me, and I told Amanda, "I bet she thinks we're on dope and have the munchies because of that. Who would believe that we're really quilting out in Potlatch?" Then I thought about the word "Potlatch" and it's obvious connection to the word "Pot" (i.e. dope) when I told Amanda we were just hysterical. Now you know why we call ourselves "The Crazy Potlatched Quilters."**
We stayed up all night at camp. In fact, Amanda stayed up (and woke up) later than me just about every night. She was still awake in the morning when everyone else was waking up. She'd go to bed around 5 or 6 or so. We were the last ones to leave - at 6PM on Sunday evening. We came back to my house (after stopping at Becky's to do some shopping, of course) and decided to have Quilt Camp II. The next day we moved the dining room table into the living room, brought in a sawhorse from the garage, and laid a door across the end of the table and the sawhorse (to make a longer table). It took up half of the living room. We sewed and sewed and sewed for the next 5 days. It was some of the best times of my life. We laughed so much our bellies hurt. It was just like having a sister my age. In fact, I lost count of how many times people asked us if we were sisters, and told us we looked enough alike to be sisters. We can sometimes finish each others' sentences, and we think alot alike. Scary, isn't it? Have you ever met someone, and you had this instant bond? Like you were instantly comfortable with them? That was us. There were no awkward silences, no uncomfortable moments, nothing. It was all completely relaxed and FUN.
But now she's gone. :( She left this afternoon. She got packed up today, and this afternoon we drove into Colfax. We ate lunch together, took a few more pics at the fabric shop, and then she left. I'm so sad, it's hard to describe. I already miss her so much. She says she'll come back sometime after the holidays, and I can hardly wait.