South Carolina Galaxy & State Fair Judging!

Through a mutual friend I made a new friend who lives in South Carolina -- Joyce G!  Joyce does absolutely stunning machine quilting and just quilted two lap quilts for me -- which I'll show you when I get the binding finished.  Anyway -- Joyce made my Galaxy quilt and quilted it and it's wonderful!  She was kind enough to send me a photo. 

I think it looks great!  BTW:  The black image at the bottom is Joyce's dog Rocky.  I hope he likes the quilt as much as I do!

Greg and I are heading to Ames today to visit Reiman Gardens.  I really want to see their rose gardens and the butterfly house.  Unfortunately, we're under another "heat advisory" until Wednesday night so it's going to be beastly hot.  Thankfully, they've got several buildings that have A/C so we'll have places to get cooled off.  I know conditions won't be ideal but this is the opportunity I have so I'm going to grab it!

Actually, we're visiting The Gardens on our way to Des Moines for the night.  I'm judging at the Iowa State Fair tomorrow -- which is my very favorite quilting gig!  I'm a little nervous simply because I've been told that they've received a record number of entries this year.  That's wonderful!  Last year there were 860+ entries in the quilting categories -- everything from centerpieces, table runners and miniatures to king size quilts!  .....this year there are even more??!!!  Holy Buckets!!  This is gonna be FUN!!!  I'll keep you posted!

Derecho

About 10 days ago we awoke to a siren sounding at about 4 a.m.  Pretty frightening to wake up to that!  Our area got blasted with very powerful straight line winds which I've since learned is called a "derecho."  I've been told that in our area the winds reached 139 mph!  We were very lucky.  We lost some very large tree limbs, our patio table was smashed and we had a couple days of clean-up work but really -- considering the damage in the surrounding area -- we're just fine.  One of my cousins lost the roof on her home, a family from our church lost their entire home (which was only 8 years old), and several farmsteads lost every building on the farm.  They're not even able to estimate the livestock or crop damage yet.

I honestly didn't get too shook up until we took an early morning drive to check on an elderly relative.  There were power line poles broken off and scattered across the country road like twigs -- one after the other after the other..........  Power lines laying all over the roads and in the fields, trees broken off (not uprooted, mind you -- BROKEN OFF!) and pieces and parts of building and farm equipment scattered all over the place.

It was a number of days before the folks out in the country got their power back and of course, this time of year the heat and humidity were terrible.  

I'll say it again.  We were VERY LUCKY.  We had some huge branches on our roof but they didn't do any damage and our patio table was smashed.  Big deal.  No one lost their life that we've heard of and that's a true blessing.

Here's our poor patio table.  I have no idea where the milk jugs came from but they ended up on our deck.

Overdue Update

I've decided that I'm a terrible blogger.  I get so busy "doing" that I don't even think about "posting" until long after the fact and I never seem to have a camera with me when I need it.  I'm sorry.  I'll try to do better!  Okay. 'Nuff said about that.

Looking back.........  we were getting ready to vend in Paducah when I posted the last time.  We had a wonderful time -- as usual.  I've said it often -- Paducah is my absolute favorite show!  I LOVE doing that show.  This year the show turned out to have some real challenges associated with it.  The whole town was getting prepared to be FLOODED!  We arrived in town with a little trepidation because we knew the situation was getting very serious and we weren't sure, at that point, whether the AQS would even be able to hold the show.  Silly us!  In a matter of 36 hours Bonnie Browning and her astonishing corps of people managed to relocate several HUNDRED quilt entries, several HUNDRED vendors and I-don't-know-how-many classes.  Add to that getting new maps printed AFTER re-routing all the various free bus routes that transported people to all the new venues.  It was a Herculean Feat and I don't know how they managed it.

I know there were a handful of disgruntled vendors and I imagine there were a few attendees who  decided to stay home but overall -- it was a really outstanding show!  The attitude seemed to be that "we're all in this together so we might as well have a good time!"  It was absolutely great!  We didn't even have any bitchers or complainers show up in our booth -- which is REALLY unusual!  (It seems like there are always a couple of those no matter where you go.) 

All in all -- the show was good (albeit a lot more exciting than we anticipated!), people were wonderful, sales were just fine, the food was great and once again we had a wonderful time in Paducah! 

Here are a couple of photos of our booth in Paducah.  I should have gotten our sign in the photo!  Never thought about that!