A visit to England

While we were on family vacation last summer I received a pleasant surprise: an e-mail by Denise Davies, secretary of QGBI, the British Quilters’ Guild. She invited me to come and teach at their April 2013 annual meeting in Nottingham.

Who would say no to that! Especially with that much planning time ahead - my husband can block a certain part of the month from anything outrageously time-consuming on his side, making it possible for me to go away despite the fact that a then almost eight-year-old might need special daily attention.

Denise mentioned that the British Guild would in time advertise the fact that I will be in the country, so perhaps another teaching possibility could be arranged for before or after that particular weekend, making it worthwhile to travel that far. We are still negotiating exactly which workshops I will be offering as the QGBI’s workshop format at their convention does not really coincide with my usual workshop schedule. Basically I have designed my workshops as two-day-events, whereas the QGBI-meeting is characterized by half-day or at most one-day workshops. But it should definitely be possible to come up with something for a shorter occasion.

I’m very excited – although I majored in English and even got a Ph.D. in English Linguistics, I haven’t really been to England itself that much. A couple of short visits probably add up to just about five weeks of my life that I’ve spent in England. Instead, I lived in the United States on several different occasions (adding up to a total of more than four years), and traveled through New Zealand on my bike and on foot (adding up to not quite three months). So England somehow acquired a status of white spot on my personal map, which can definitely be modified. For that I am already planning a trip to the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham next August, but Nottingham is a place I’ve never been to before.