Houston IQA

I am home from Houston…. I had a great time!!!! Only one glitch, was the headache I got from carrying the laptop to and from class. It ruined Saturday totally for me. But after a bottle of Tylenol, a nights rest…. (and a massage at the show) I was good as new by Sunday morning.

Meeting my friends was the best!!!! Trisha and Wolfie!

Lisa Sipes - Trisha - Wolfie!

The only hard and fast rule was getting to the convention center… on time. Of course the rain storm on Thursday morning…. got in the way of that. I was late for my class. The last time I attended Quilt Fest the car I had reserved was gone, so they upgraded me to a mini van. So I didn’t really put much stock in getting the car I reserved, and of course this time we got the true economy car, that I reserved. We got a Nissan Note…

I thought for sure it would drown a couple of times on our way to the convention center!!! There was so much water on the road, rain still coming down in buckets and no where for it to go… Water was pouring off the overpasses, huge standing puddles on the highway and roads, coming down faster than the wipers could clear the windshield. For some reason, the “fast” setting on the wipers was not all that fast….

We stayed off site, out on the west side of Houston in a very friendly Fairfield Inn by Marriott. The staff was the most friendly ever. Greeting us each time we came to the lobby. Always smiling and asking if we needed anything… at all.

I took 2  classes…. Navigating/Charting my Course to Creativity with Lesley Riley. We created a journal…. and did a bit of exploring…. some exercises…. that may prove useful… some where in my creative process. But since I don’t seem to be truly inspired most of the time or have a personal vision for my ‘quilty-self’, I don’t think it will help me much…. I am also not a journal keeper…. I would probably find some really fun ideas… down the road, but I am just too self-conscious about a journal… to keep one. One thing I did discover…. after traversing most of the continental USA is that Lesley Riley lives and works just across the Potomac River from me in Maryland!

I also took a class on EQ7. This program has eluded me since loading it in 2010. It is not intuitive in the least, even though it is on the Windows Platform. It was a great class and now that I have a basis… for the tools and how the program functions… a bit… I may actually use it. This was another case of going around the world to see the instructor. Barb Vlack is a master in the program and comes from the Chicagoland too. Oh well, we do live and learn don’t we?

I will post more about the show and quilts I saw… later… in the mean time, on Sunday we took a little bit of a road trip. First, because we were a bit early, we took Wolfie to a Michaels Craft store and then to a Joann Fabric Store.

We then made our way to a local sight, the Beer Can house”, but for some reason the curators partied the night before and didn’t see a reason to open the house on Sunday for visitors. NO explanation, just didn’t show up. I called the number and got an answering machine that indicated that Saturday night was some party… Thanks! Next we went south to the Kemah Boardwalk. We spent the afternoon walking around and taking in the area. The number of boats going in and out was amazing… although the water seemed a bit rough….

On the way back to Houston we drove to the Nasa Space Center…. we opted not to go in, but we walked the grounds and looked at 2 of the outdoor exhibits. The Space Shuttle Independence has been moved here, and is still undergoing preparations as an exhibit. It is massive in size! At the front entrance is a little park called the T-38 park and had one of the lunar modules and 2 T-38 jets on display. Pretty cool…. actually.

After 4 very long days… we turned in the glorified roller skate, we called a car and headed for our separate homes. Trish to Wisconsin, Wolfie to Sweden and me back to Virginia.

As always more LATER! Beth