sooner or later

All day at work, the suitcase was on my mind. Flew to the store after working till past 9 pm, walked in when someone walked out - I'm sure the doors were already locked. Went directly to MY bag, did not pass GO, then to the case register and charged it. The cashier was laughing to see me again buying the bigger green case. She said she was glad I came back to get it before it was gone! People in the line ahead of me admired my good taste. I was wearing a lime green shirt. Another lady in line was also dressed in lime and we chatted about green. Me gusta mucho cosas verdes! What a sweetie.

I have no idea where I will store this one. It's big enough to live in. I could be a bag lady on the street. A very fashionable bag lady with all my frogs in my green luggage on wheels. No stolen shopping cart for me.

For now, it's beside the Christmas Tree - too big to fit under it. Merry Christmas to me! Thank you to everyone who commented.

A rat ran through the bedroom this morning. The grill king reached for a towel to catch it with. As if....

It's cold outside. Time for all rodents to go find a hollow tree. We will be evicting this little guy this evening. Hopefully. I was just telling a co-worker the story of the last rat invasion while commiserating with her over a raccoon-in-the-attic problem. Nothing is so bad it couldn't get worse.

Perfect time for housecleaning. Swept out the cobwebs, moved it to a new patch of grass and showed it off to the new tenant. The Boogie really liked the playhouse and my granddaughter is too tall for it now although she is loath to completely sign it over entirely. I think it will be an extended lease arrangement.

Yesterday was our weavers study group meeting and I started a felted thingie. No idea what it will be. Just felt the need to punch something. Started off with single needle handfelting and finished up running it around under Nancy's new Janone felting machine. Made fast work of it. Weather was gorgeous and we sat out on Anita's deck and had a great afternoon.

Experimenting this morning with a sun print using a transparency. Also started stitching some fabric ATCs - frogs, of course. Photos later if things look good.

I dreamed someone had removed the shower curtain and I was taking a shower without it and no water was hitting the floor. Must have been because I was thinking yesterday that it was about time to take it down and wash it.... so I did today. Dreams are powerful incentives.

Then I got my hair cut. Just walked in to Supercuts after using my coupon at Hobby Lobby for Peltex and there was an opening with a stylist who has straight, thin hair so I figured I was pretty safe in her hands. She did just what I asked her to efficiently and confidently and I like how it turned out. The grill king commented on it positively. Another item crossed off my to-do list.

Dinner tonight with the kids to celebrate my daughter's birthday some more.

International Quilt Festival

So the jars of fate were on my side! My name was drawn for the one class I would have time to take at Make It University - the delightfully fun part of the International Quilt Festival sponsored by Quilting Arts and ClothPaperScissors Magazines.

Click on the photo to see a few more photos of the fun. I will be adding more later. I took more than 75 photos in the Journal Quilt area. Amazing work there, as always. But this year, I feel like I "know" some of these women, having listened and learned a lot on the QuiltArt Forum.

I met up with a weaving friend, Nancy, and a yahoo friend, Margaret, for lunch and we made more friends while sharing our table with other quilters who joined us. So much to talk about, so much to see. I feel like I need to take a week off from work and really DO the festival next year. I missed preview night (Halloween festivities not to be missed!) and the Friday night QuiltArt reception (traffic horrors which I wish I had missed!) and had to leave early for an event on Saturday night.

Today, my daughter and I go the festival again. Shopping and more photos in my future. Maybe another class if the jars of fate are generous. I'll be wearing my lucky coin purse necklace again today and passing out MEOW Cards. They're sorta copy cats of the MOO cards which I think are cool. The cards have a photo of the coin purse, my email, blog address and the link to the instructions for the coin purse on Handwoven's website. I foisted them off to anyone who commented on my little purse necklace.

One woman asked how long did it take to make the coin purse and I said, well, after you have the two-inch wide wire warp threaded onto your 45-inch-wide, $3,000+ loom, it only takes about an hour to make the whole thing. She was a good sport and laughed along wtih us. I told her if she was really interested I would give her instructions on how to weave it on a picture frame but it would be a little more free-form and less gridlike. We'll see if she really wants to make one badly enough to email me.