I've been busy!

Last week was one of those weeks where I barely had time to breathe, let alone take the time to compose a coherent blog post. No matter how hard I try to plan, everything seems to happen at the same time around here.

A week ago (on Sunday) we had our Santa Bucks auction here at the store. Customers had been earning "funny money" along with their purchases for several months. The top 40 "earners" were invited to a live auction to spend their bucks on everything from stationary sets designed by Deb Strain, a Moda designer to fat quarter bundles and even a queen size quilt! Many thanks to Jim, our Store Managers husband who did a stellar job as our auctioneer and managed to keep everyone bidding and having a good time. It was great fun - lots of work, but we love our customers!

Tuesday and Wednesday I was in New York to present artwork for my next fabric lines. I spent Monday finishing up the details and left for the airport at 4:30am Tuesday to catch a 6am flight. Believe it or not, I had a collision with a deer on Greentree hill. We live in wooded suburbia and I manage to collide with a deer who decides to cross a 6 lane highway with cars traveling at 60+ miles per hour. Three cars were crunched by that deer. For the record, the deer hit me, but that made very little difference to my husband who pointed out that the deer does not have auto insurance. I made it to the airport and my gate, plopped my overnight bag on the floor, and was turning off my cell phone when the woman standing next to me drop her entire cup of coffee right into my laptop case! Deer ping pong and a soggy hard drive are NOT the best way to start a business trip.

Back in the shop for the weekend and our Holiday Open House. This year we kicked off our series of Holiday Demos at the annual event. It's always a fun time and I love sharing quick and easy ideas with the crowd and watching the "lightbulb" go off in their head when they realize "I can DO that - and GET IT DONE!". You can see the details of a few of those items on the joint blog where I work with other shop owners at http://www.myquiltvillage.com/. While you are there, post a comment on the site and you will have a chance to win one of our Old Man Winter button pillow kits! It is THAT easy! Just post a comment! You need to hurry, the comment has to be posted before midnight Nov. 20 to be eligible for the drawing.

To put a cap on my weekend, we hosted the cast party for our daughters Drama Club production of "Front Page". If you have ever wondered what your house looks like with 84 teenagers inside, here is a shot of just our entry hall.

The kids are great fun. They eat us out of house and home, like their music VERY loud and have more energy than I can ever remember having after midnight, but we really enjoy having them at our house. Lindsay is a senior and will be off to college out of state next year. It is going to be very quiet at our house.

Last night I was the featured speaker at The Quilt Company East Guild meeting. What a delightful group of men and women. Their meetings are well run and very welcoming. They have an excellent plan to include beginner quilters into the fold and an amazing success with community service both through the guild and by individual members. My favorite part is always Show-and-Tell and they didn't let me down! Kudos to the hardworking members of The Quilt Company East Guild!

Don't forget to post a comment at http://myquiltvillage.com/ and oh yea, thaw that turkey!
Karen

I thought I would share a little publishing magic with all of you today and it might help you with your last minute gift ideas. Quite some time ago I created a holiday version of this Easy Striped Table Runner as a free handout for Timeless Treasures. The project is so much fun that it has become one of their most requested handouts. We decided to update the instructions using a new non-holiday stripe and these photos are of the piece in progress. Making the actual runner is light years easier than taking the step-by-step photos! I actually have to take several photos of each step to make sure I get a good one and I have to take each and every step so that there is no confusion! The process includes putting the white table on the floor so that I can stand on the chair, hold the camera directly above the project and snap the shots "blind". Then I have to edit my toes out of the photos, color correct the best ones and send them on to New York. Isn't my life glamorous? I'll bet you thought some fancy schmancy studio was involved.

This runner makes a wonderful last minute gift! It only has FIVE seams! The trick is to use a stripe fabric and a 60 degree equilateral ruler. If you can't find the ruler, you can use the 60 degree lines on your regular ruler, but the specialty ruler takes all the guess work out of measuring. Once the top is assembled, the instructions have you put the top right-sides-together with the backing and stitich around the outside edge, pillowslip style. Personally, I prefer to quilt first and apply a binding, but if you are short on time, that pillowslip style works just fine. You also don't have to mark any quilting lines, just follow the stripes!

The instructions for the runner are available as a free download on the Timeless Treasures website at http://www.ttfabrics.com/ Click on "patterns" in the menu bar. Once you get the listing, take a look around, you will find the instructions for some great projects and all of them are FREE! The Bejeweled Table Runner uses the same equilateral triangle shape as the Easy Striped Runner, if you have the ruler, print them both!

I am FINALLY catching the holiday spirit! We managed to get the tree and the house decorated over the weekend. The tree has been up and lit for well over a week and I was beginning to think it looked pretty good without decorations. I love the lights and our tree has a ton of them all "professionally" wired in place by me. Years ago I decorated trees for a chain of Christmas stores. Starting in August I would begin to light artificial trees, wrapping the lights from the trunk, out each branch and back into the center. The cord is well hidden and you never see any "wires" draping from branch to branch. It's beautiful, but it takes HOURS to do and you can calculate 100+ lights for each foot of tree. Our 10' tree has 1200 lights!

I had so much help with the decorating that much to my families delight, I decided to spend the afternoon baking cookies. The chocolate chip (my husbands favorite) were finished, when he asked for "those ones with the Hershey Kisses". I told him that if he would run to the store I would make fudge too. Even though the weather was wicked, he agreed and I made him a very precise list. Unfortunately he FOLDED the list and only got the items on the "top half". Chances are he had forgotten his glasses and I should be happy that he remembered the Kisses. That man can fix anything, thinks nothing of a home improvement that involves a bulldozer, is willing to do the family laundry and will clean anything, but when it comes to cooking, he is clueless. The bad news is, no fudge, the good news is, I got out of the kitchen earlier than I had planned.