Quilter's Sampler debrief

Saturday night, after an always amazing day of 7 hours of dance dress rehearsal, Mr. Quilting Hottie and I hosted our wine club. We like to feel important and hoity toity, so we call ourselves GNEWS - Greater New England Wine Society. I know you are impressed.

It's a group of 6 couples, most of whom can boast that one or both representatives hold an official alumni card from the engineering department of WPI. The notable exceptions are Mr. QHH and I, who represent the artsy and "who knows what because he refuses to tell me succinctly even though every Christmas I ask for a 20 word or less description of why money is deposited in our bank account every two weeks" working people of America. To the credit of the rest of the group, which actually does include one other sewing enthusiast, I am usually at least asked in passing "So, how is the quilting business?" which is very sweet of them as I know they probably think I am crazy for spending so much time doing something artistic for (less than) scads of money.

Imagine how cool I felt Saturday evening, when Steve, one of the techie wonders of the world and a truly great guy, asked "So, how is the quilting business?" and I was able to say "Great. I was just this week a featured instructor at a quilting symposium, actually. Have I mentioned how famous I am?"

I did leave off that last part. But to his credit, Steve filled it in.

For those of you who missed the return after 12 or so years of A Quilter's Sampler, let me tell you - it was a lovely event and I hope it is brought back for many years to come. Lots of classes and lectures and demos and vendors made it a fun experience of just checking out new ideas and techniques. I was very blessed to have a nice little crowd for my "Plays Well With Others" lecture debut and holy cow people were even taking notes! It was pretty cool and from the response I am confident that this will be a good second lecture for me.

NEQDC was able to have a booth in the vendors mall, and five out of six of us were able to help man it throughout the show. Since it is so rare that we get to be all in the same place at once, we figured five was good enough for a group photo, but we borrowed Linda from www.redbarnonline.com, our across the aisle neighbor, to stand in for Barbara.

We're excited to say we will see Barbara this weekend at the New Hampshire State Quilt Guild meeting, where we are all featured speakers and will resist the urge to wear the latest in head bag fashion. However, maybe it needs to be clear that we WILL be wearing some fashions - I just spell checked and the suggestion for "NEDQC" was "NAKED". Nice.

Friday evening we all got to attend Linda Hahn's lecture "Don't Quit Your Day Job....Yet" and it was a great look at all the things one must think of when attempting to have a career in this crazy business. While I am proud to say that after 7 years I am able to contribute to the household finances, it was a long road, and her lecture really brought home that there is no panacea, just a lot of hard work. I don't ever expect that my wine club will go from "Engineering couples and an artsy wacko" to "Mega-Famous Quilting Star and her minions" but a girl can dream. And keep working hard.