Wine and Wool Festival

After I visited the quilt show Saturday I continued on down I-94 to Jackson.  The Sandhill Crane Vineyards was hosting their second annual Wine & Wool Festival and my friend Tanya was vending there.  I'm not buying any fiber these days but that doesn't stop me from sampling and buying some wine!

The vineyard is such a pleasant setting for a little show and the weather couldn't have been better.  Tanya had whipped up a stash of her great bags and brought along her beaded stitch markers and handspun yarn, too.

 I stepped inside the tasting room and cafe and tried several of their wines.  I loved their glass light fixtures:

Isn't this the most perfect little spot to have a bite to eat and glass of wine??

I especially like this photo -- it looks more like a painting to me:

And I did buy a few bottles of wine, all white except for their Port in a Storm.  I am a sucker for great packaging and the port is very tasty, too.  And yes, the bottle IS slanted!

More Quilt Show Photos

Here's round 2 of the photos from the Greater Ann Arbor Quilt Guild show that I attended on Saturday.  It probably seems like I always post a lot of pictures from the quilt shows I attend.  But when you think that there are over 200 on display, it's not so many!

I always love a pretty Ocean Waves quilt and I really liked the rose colored fabric choice in this one:

This cute vase of flowers had won a 1st Prize in its category at the AQS show in Paducah:

This small wall hanging of a dragon had excellent quilting but the dragon itself is not flat -- wonder why?

I loved this next quilt.  A group project whereby a photo was cut into sections and each member of the group worked on their own little piece before bringing it all back together as one quilt.

Here's a closeup of one section.  One friend commented that it looked a bit like a part of a woman's anatomy, but she's going through treatment for cancer so she's a little fixated on that right now.  I'm thinking it was just a squash or maybe a cucumber, with an eggplant behind it. :*)

I liked this next one especially because the quilter chose a black polka dot fabric for the sashing:

Subconsciously, I think this yellow wall hanging inspired my fabric choice later when I was shopping!

This amazing, amazing wall hanging was actually the artist's first attempt at a miniature.  The red and yellow squares are about 1/2" pieces.  Incredible precision!!

This last wall hanging is for my friend Mary, who loves to ride her bicycle.  Someday I'll get back on my bike Mary, honest I will.

If you want a chance to win an unbelievable Dream Studio from AQS go here and enter.  I did and hope I win but if not, I hope YOU win!

A Beautiful Day

Yesterday morning I headed out early to the Greater Ann Arbor Quilt Guild show. There were over 200 quilts on exhibit and lot of great vendors.  I saw several members of GLHQ there, some who are members of both quilt guilds -- dual citizenship, I guess!

Here are some of my favorite quilts.  This first one uses colors I have in my stash, ready to be used sometime soon.  It's a quilt-as-you-go quilt, a technique the quilter apparently did not care for but I think the result is quite striking:

Be sure to click on the one below to see the detail.  She used the same fabrics in the swirl to make small appliqued circles.

 A close up of the quilting in the above quilt:

This quilt below was very interesting.  The quiltmaker began in the upper left corner and worked her way down, adding sections at various angles.  She ironed very lightweight fusible interfacing to each section to stabilize and prevent stretching on the bias edges.

 And here's another quilt by the same maker, Ginia Forrester:

That's enough quilts for today.  I sure enjoyed the show and will post more pictures from it tomorrow.

One Man Band

This is too cool!

I actually understand  the REAL lyrics now.  OK, don't lie, you didn't get them all either before now!

Cleaning Up

Today is my first official day of re-retirement.  I've been in the Craft Cave for days now and I'm making some headway.  Ever notice how things sometimes have to get worse before they actually get better?  Here's where I started this time.  Much of the yarn in the first Expedit went out in my sale two weeks ago, leaving bits of yarn here and there.

A good chunk of the yarn in the second Expedit remained behind this time.  Next sale more of it will be heading out the door to someone else's stash, I hope!

Remember how sometimes you have to be shamed into changing your situation?  It looks like a disaster struck, because essentially one did.  I was pulling yarn out willy-nilly for my sale and there were many casualties tossed to the floor.  Thank goodness yarn doesn't break!

I have a grand plan and you'll get to see the results tomorrow, hopefully, once I've got everything in place.  I still need to find a spot in the house to store the yarn intended for the next sale.  This messy, can't put my hands on things room will be ship shape after spending a mere 5 days on it.  OK, so it takes me a while to make up my mind on things but it will all come together, eventually.

Busy Weekend

Boy, for a re-retiree, I sure am tired.  I'm officially re-retired if you ask HR.  Seriously??  Whatever.  I can tell you it's a nice feeling knowing I can sleep in tomorrow and putz and do whatever I feel like.  So there!

Yesterday my Chicken friend Kathy and I went on a mini shop hop.  Actually we did very well -- hitting three quilt shops and one adorable children's shop.

Our first stop was The Quilting Season in Saline.  That's Sa-LEEN, not SAY-leen for those of you who live outside of my corner of the world.

Check out the blocks on the ceiling from their color workshop:

I found this really cute focus fabric in the sale bin and choose the coordinating fabrics with help from Kathy:

Next we headed around the corner in the strip mall to grab some lunch at the coffee shop.  We had to stop at My Urban Toddler, the children's store to check out their sale and we both found some wonderful items.

Our next quilt shop was Quality Quilting in Ann Arbor -- such a fantastic shop!  It sure didn't look like much from the street as it was on a road with small industrial-type buildings.  Good thing we didn't let that dissuade us.

They have a bird feeder outside their front window and there are non-winged visitors who help clean up the debris:

Kathy was mesmerized by the threadwork projects that Norma teaches there.  She'll be heading back over there for a class soon.  Maybe I'll tag along and shop a bit more!

One of the reasons Kathy wanted to hit this shop is a pattern that they sold that she just HAD to have and she bought their very last copy:

I found lots of great fabric and many things were 20% off that day.  I loved this sample they had made up from an Eleanor Burns pattern:

And I found these fabrics to make baby quilts.  You never know when you'll need one!

We had time for one last shop so we headed to Pinckney to Jennifer's Quilt Shop:

We wandered around and around the shop and I finally put these groupings together:

In case you're worried that Kathy didn't find anything she liked, don't be!  She did some excellent stash enhancing, especially at Quality Quilting.  I just didn't take any pictures of her purchases -- darn.

We had dinner outside at the Tiki Lounge of the Zukey Lake Tavern, a pretty cool place to eat on a hot day and the view's not bad either!

I don't know about Kathy, but when I got home I was whipped!  All that shopping is HARD work!!