We Take Ourselves With Us

First stop in Chicago is Harold's Chicken Shack ! Late lunch prepping for a later dinner. We're the only folks here (well, it is 3 pm) and we squeaked in for the very end of the lunch special. Harold's is open til 5 am, so lunch runs long.  And, they're crazy friendly!! So, our first hour in CHI--we're eating at Harold's, sitting by a box fan & watching the Cubs. Life is good!

Chicago is.  The kids haven't been back to Chi-town in about 8 years.  Penn was a toddler still in diapers, chasing birds in the Lincoln Park Zoo ; Harper was a slightly taller, more vocal toddler, charming the folks in Millennium Park .  We were watching the weather screens in MSI-Chicago as Hurricane Jeanne smashed into Florida and--unbeknownst to us at the time--brought a massive tree down in our yard back home, clipping the corner of our house and crushing the kids swing set.  Ah, well, memories! I've been back lots since and love Chicago.  So, when Ned's library meetings called him to the city of the big shoulders , we all decided to follow for a short summer break. Follow us as this time we eat, museum, zoo and aquarium ourselves through ' Ye town :)

I had one more class. The teacher was solid--upbeat, knowledgable, approachable--and has designed a ruler and technique for making flying geese that I both bought and really will use. Yet, with all that going for it, this was not a good class. Why? Bad machines: All the sewing machines at Quiltweek are provided. This is awesome, except when they're awful and the machine instructor is even worse. One class out of three had this convergence of events. Guess which one. Yep. We were doing a quilt that required a precise quarter inch seam allowance and involved lots of sewing of pointy edges. And--even according to the sewing machine helper--this particular model does neither well. Wait, what? So, everyone's fabrics were getting chewed up and their blocks weren't aligning. Ugh. Bad students: One can sense a problematic class climate ahead when 1) students start over sharing personal family issues with strangers; 2) students proudly state that they don't se...

I lived in the South for 30 years, the majority in a part of Florida often referred to as "South Georgia" (for all sorts of reasons which do not belong on this blog). So, for the life of me, I cannot understand why the food in Paducah is so lame. Represent the South, y'all! Shame on you :( I'd have thought it was just me if I hadn't heard the same complaint echoed around me. There's a low-level country fair collection of food tents at the convention center, a few middling BBQ spots, a couple decent locally owned places, and low-mid end chain restaurants galore. The service at most of the chains was terrible; we even walked out of the Outback after our waitress disappeared on her own personal walkabout for 30 minutes. The Outback! The place that invented the intrusive server who tries to join your party. Here's a short list of the non-terrible stuff we ate: --The cheapest food tent deal was also one of the best: roast pork and mashed potatoes wit...

Paducah has 4 separate vendor areas onsite at the convention center, and then there's dozens more vendors scattered throughout the city--including the supercool AQS "hurt books" sale, where books are $5 ( including a good number one can buy for 5-6x more on the sales floor). Here are some random observations about the shopping: --Prices do vary booth to booth by 2-5 dollars on items, which was surprising to me. --Some booths are rocking awesome style & super friendly staff. Others are chilly and sterile. And it doesn't correlate to price. --Almost all the sewing machine salespeople are hardcore deal closers. It's worse than a used car lot. I was trying out the smaller quilting machines thinking I could get a buy-in point that would be less than the cost of a car. Whew--was I wrong (with one exception). But it was hard to extricate once I sat at a machine. Ick! After playing around with it & researching online, I did buy a stripped down "2...

When I reviewed the program months ago and saw Gwen Marston was teaching at Paducah this year, my heart raced a bit. Gwen has been so influential in quilting--pushing quilters to find their own style and be guided by color, arrangement, and energy of design. Well before the newer crop of modern or contemporary quilters and even before the (unfortunate) advent pre-cuts, do-it-all sewing machines, and self-regulating, programmable long arm quilting machines that can quilt for you in your sleep, she was going back to the simple and eternally complex roots of quilting, filled with make-do beauty and patterns born both of necessity and desire. In so (sew) many ways, she is the precursor to the modern quilting faction (Schmidt, Ringle, et al.). And, it turns out, she's totally awesome! Funny, thoughtful, generous, gracious, kind and quirky while also being a solid teacher full of constructive criticism that lands softly and effectively. She could name drop with the best of them if...

Looking at the quilts (and the vendors!) at Paducah, I felt like the little girl in the AT&T commercial who wants more. So, here are more! (Some are close ups to show detail--and a steer!)