Field Trip

Jane and I have been having too much fun to blog. So sorry. We just got back from a week at Empty Spools Seminars at Asilomar Conference Center. We ended up in class together with rockin' Rosemary Eichorn, collage artist, teacher, and lecturer extraordinaire. We learned a ton.

If you've never been, we highly recommend it. If you start putting aside about $50 every two weeks you can go next year, and it is totally worth it. Just think--no shopping, menu planning, cleaning, cooking for vie whole days. The beach is right across the street. And you are in the company of quilters and master teachers. It is almost too much fun.

For five glorious days we showed up for class at 9 a.m. and stayed until at least 4 p.m. Rosemary is a generous teacher, and introduced us to a huge variety of techniques to use on our unique quilts. We played with Angelina and Crystalline fibers, painted Tyvek and used heat to make it bubble and shrink, and foiled to our heart's content. Shiva Paintstiks, fabric paints, fusible film, you name it, we tried it. We bravely went where we had not been before, and had a blast in class. And while we worked Rosemary often read snippets from some of her favorite books about creativity.

I have to admit to being a bit cross-eyed today at work. Last night I woke up at 2 a.m. (it's a funny time of life, if you know what I mean), and started reading Writing Down the Bones. It's a book Natalie wrote about the process of writing, and I couldn't put it down. I read til 4:30 a.m., then woke up and couldn't wait to either write or quilt. I worked a bit more on the quilt I started in Rosemary's class. It's a "vision quilt" that will help me through the process of writing my first novel. Yes, it's about quilters. Among the photos is a shot of a cottage where my main characters meet for a romantic weekend. Stay tuned.

Jane finished her table runner, and it is gorgeous. Photo to come. Stop in to see it, OK? In the meantime, here are some scenes from the past week. Come see us and we'll tell you more.

Our UPS guy, Shane, has been busy bringing us boxes. Some of the newest attractions include Eric Carle's The Hungry, Hungry Caterpillar from Andover; new designs by Dena Fishbein; Budda Party by Free Spirit; Anna Griffin's Sierra; and we restocked on lots of our favorite Kaffe Fasset's. Stop by and we'll also tell you more about Asilomar.