Thursday, June 12, 2008

Hello again

Wow, more than a week with nothing new to say…. How is that possible? I could blame it on being busy. The summer newsletter deadline was Tuesday. The Western PA Shop Hop started Wednesday and that alone takes more than a weeks worth of prep. I should be working on art work for my next line of fabric, but it’s been hard to concentrate lately. I managed to scratch my cornea and I was just a bit cranky while I was waiting for it to heal. If you ask my family I think they will tell you that it was more than just “a bit” cranky, but if they want to complain, they will have to get their own blog. Thankfully the eye seems to be better.

Speaking of family, yestreday was my daughters last day of school, the end of her junior year. It has been a magical year, one of those ones you hate to see end. According to her, as of 12:30 this afternoon she is officially a senior. Now it’s the race to the end, packed with college trips, applications, special events and all the trappings of a senior year. More importantly, this means that I have, assuming perfect attendance, exactly one hundred and eighty four more school lunches to pack in my life. Figure in a few snow days and a bout with the sniffles and it could be less. Hallelujah!

The Western Pennsylvania Shop Hop got off to a great start! We saw lots of happy hoppers, the weather cooperated and everyone seemed to be in a very good mood. The hop has a party theme and our store is celebrating New Years. Deb answered the phone all day with “Happy New Year from The Quilt Company” which made the person on the other end pause for a moment, but it certainly added to the fun. Hosting the hop is a little like having house guests for 4 days. You love having them, but you don’t get much accomplished except for entertaining and you do your best to keep everything neat and tidy. That makes sewing a little difficult. I try to stay on top of the computer work and visit with everyone at the same time, which means that no “real” work gets done until after hours and if the hop is successful you shouldn't have enough energy to work after hours!
But the store looks good! Because I shared my messy photo, I thought I should share the "cleaned up" version too.




The table runners on the wall in photo 2 are the samples of our store kits. The ones on the counter top are from the new "Let's Do Lunch" book by Terry Atkinson. The staff each made a runner to match their dishes and the customers have been having fun guessing which one is which. That's the trunk show from Karen Snyder's "Fat Quarter Fun" book, hanging on the wall behind the railing in photo 3. My customers LOVED her first book "Bundles of Fun" and are really going to enjoy this one too. Photo 4 is of our batik room and photo 5 is of the one classroom that we will not be using during the hop so we have pushed the tables to the wall and are using it as additional display space.
Time to HOP!
Karen

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Karen, I love your shop! The fabrics look wonderful & I NEED to be in the middle of them. LOL
Linda