Getting ready for vacation

Over the weekend several people approached me and let me know that they read this blog and how much they enjoyed it. I would like to thank anybody who said that, or the people who recognized me and started talking to me. It touched me deeply. From New Zealand to Canada and other places… thank you!

My son has asked me a couple of times “So, are you famous?” when I would head off to yet another patchwork and quilt event, or had a quilt accepted into an exhibition. I always answered, no, of course not, because I never thought about myself as that. But the past weekend … it might at least change my answer to “well, I guess some people in the quiltworld know who I am”. But he is 14 now, he is not going to ask anymore.

In any case, I really loved being at the show and seeing many people and a lot of interesting and good quilts. I was highly impressed with the quality of galleries this year, and the winner quilts as well.  There are certain reasons why I can’t write about the show in detail, though, so I am not going to.

When I returned, I had a window seat on the plane and was amazed at how small Munich airport looks from above.

We are on our last week of school before summer holidays, and I have to confess that this set of three weeks has been slightly on the challenging side. Not in terms of subject matter but in terms of the surroundings in class, but I am not going to complain. I will just say that I am glad that it’s only a couple of days left and then the big adventure of this summer. I am really excited about going to South Africa as the Representative for the German Patchwork Guild, carrying the German part of the ‘Interchange’ exhibition. If you want to see the quilts before I write about the show here, you can check out the Instagram account @patchworkgildedeutschland where I will be posting about them in the next few days.

Up til then I am biding my time. For one thing, I need to carefully plan my packing. The exhibition is taking up most of the large suitcase, and I don’t have an extra piece of luggage. The plan is to go with overweigth luggage, which is a lot cheaper than checking another piece. But of course that puts severe limitations on my personal luggage allowance.  The hardest part of which is the fact that I have to limit the number of stitching projects that I can take along!

As I have had a bit of beginnings of tendonitis in my right arm I have decided to refrain from taking any knitting. Only a little bit of easy hand stitching. I want to figure out where I can enter the “Daily Somethings” eventually. But for that, they need to be finished, so this trip is a good opportunity to concentrate on that.

And the number of books. Very limited of course, too. I do have an e-reader, but I just don’t like the feel of it. So I am allowing myself one or two real books to be taken, to be passed on when I finish them, and the e-reader as a back-up for later.

Now this afternoon we were let out of school early to be working on a project which we need to write a short paper on and give a presentation about in September. But I spent all afternoon doing everything but… I sewed a couple more of my blocks that I am putting thin lines through.

And I wound into skeins the fibre advent calendar which I finished spinning and plying during this past Tour de Fleece.During spinning the last few days of the calendar I was rather dissatisfied with the amount of undyed sections that appeared in the material when opening it up, due to the fact that the color had not penetrated completely. I even complained to the maker (and I am not one to complain quickly, and I have dyeing experience myself, if not on wool or silk.) At that point it seemed to alter the character of the color completely. Now that it is plyed it is not quite as noticeable and I am not dissatisfied with it any more. Will have to figure out what to knit from it when it is washed and dry and wound into balls.

So my school project still is far from finished. Oh well. There will be other ways and days when I can work that out.