Getting in Touch

Posted by Nadine

with:

My gamer side. Yeah, like you couldn’t tell from my absence what I’ve been doing for the last two months! The addiction to World of Warcraft rages on. My Night Elf Hunter promptly took a back seat to my Death Knight at level 55, and I’m working on the slow journey to level 80 with the Death Knight. And along the way, I’ve made a few more characters, so I have my own small case of alt-itis. I don’t have the veritable army of alts that my mother has, but still, if I make more than two more new characters, I’ll have to make them on a new server since I can’t have more than ten on the server that I play on now. Then they’ll be the poor relations, since there won’t be any of my other characters over there on the other server to share gold. Gold makes it all so much easier…big surprise…
My family more often, both the immediate members and the ones far away, as we play WoW together. I see my youngest daughter and husband more, since we all play in my studio together on separate computers. Sometimes we adventure together in-game, or help each other kill the difficult monsters. I talk to my mother, aunt and cousin more, though it must be noted that the conversations are mostly game related and take place in the in-game chat window!
The taxes. Ugh. Big UGH. But it’s not like you can just not do them. 😐 (Though at the moment, it’s tempting to make a try for the “not doing them” technique, and see how long I can stay under the radar on that.) And I have all that business stuff to make it 150% more complicated this year too. Yes, I’m whining. It’s my blog and I’ll cry if I want to!
My chauffeur side. I spend way too much time driving lately. GuitarGirl has graduated from high school, gotten a new job at the Commissary and started college classes, so my taxi duties have quadrupled (or maybe quintupled) in the last few weeks. Not that I don’t enjoy driving my car as I’m still in love with everything about it even though it’s over three years old. It’s just an awesomeness that I’ll never get over probably. In fact it’s the only thing that makes the taxi duties tolerable at all, but I still would rather pass on it and never leave my house unless I felt like it and there was good shopping on the other end of the journey, tyvm. On top of all that, it’s a bit freaky to have a child in college. I’m just sayin’.

But not in touch with: Continue reading →

Motivational Difficulties

Posted by Nadine

I’ve been trying to get back into the swing of things here, with very little success. Ever since I got off the plane on Tuesday morning, I’ve been trying to “get it together” and “get back to normal” and I can’t figure out why I’m not getting there. I just don’t feel like doing anything. Except reading. That’s about it, truly; I just feel like reading books. Which makes me feel like a total slacker…

Perhaps it’s because I’ve spent the last year and a half or two years being horribly busy all.the.time., with never enough time to do all the stuff that had to be done, much less all the stuff I wanted to do. So even though I now have some breathing room, I can’t for the life of me figure out what to do with it.

Maybe it’s because I know that there are still so many things I need to be doing right now that I just can’t even figure out which one I should start on. And that’s not taking Christmas or the impending house move into account either. Continue reading →

AQS Quilt Expo wrap up

Posted by Nadine

Wow—what a bad blogger I have been! Time has gotten away from me, and ten whole days have gone by without a blog post, though I won’t admit to being a complete lazy slacker since there were extenuating (and exhausting) circumstances to contend with. And now that I’m home there’s so much to tell, I’m left wondering exactly where to start!

I headed toward Des Moines, Iowa for the AQS Quilt Expo on Monday, 26 October after visiting with family in Nevada and Utah since leaving Quilt Festival in Houston. I say “headed toward” since of course, American Airlines couldn’t quite get it together and get me where I needed to go on time and with luggage in hand (for the second time in 10 days, no less)! Those turkeys stranded me in Dallas overnight after flight delays caused me to miss my connecting flight by 10 minutes, and then they wouldn’t give me my stinkin’ luggage! Perhaps they didn’t understand that I’m not the wash’n’wear girl, and never have been. So off I went to some not-so-great hotel near the DFW airport without anything to wear and not even a toothbrush. Yeah, I used to carry all that “what if I get stranded” stuff when I flew, but after 9-11 it all got too painful and I never needed it anyway, so now I don’t. Lesson learned.

I did finally make it to Des Moines a day late, but still in plenty of time for the show. I met so many interesting and FUN people at the show, students, vendors and other quilting professionals alike, that it would be hard to share it all without spending days at it! There were happy students in my classes and they left good evaluations of the classes with AQS, so I think the workshops were pretty successful. Shame on me though: I had my camera with me, but never had time to take any pictures during my classes! Too busy teaching, I guess! Continue reading →

See you at the AQS Quilt Expo Des Moines!

Posted by Nadine

For the last week, I’ve been visiting family in the States, since I didn’t go all the way back to Germany between Quilt Market/Festival in Houston and the AQS Quilt Expo Des Moines. I’ve been at my parents house relaxing for the last few days after visiting with my uncle and aunt the weekend before. Believe me, the peace and quiet has been sorely needed after the craziness and constant activity of Quilt Market, and I might finally be over the jet lag! But I’ll be back on a plane on Monday headed for Des Moines!

Will you be at the AQS Quilt Expo in Des Moines? I’d love to meet you!

I’ll be teaching workshops, presenting a couple of lectures, signing books, showing Inchie quilts and just having FUN! And I just might have some yummy German chocolate stashed in my suitcase too! I’m just sayin’! Continue reading →

The Business End of Quilt Market

Posted by Nadine

The rest of Quilt Market and Festival was about the same as the first parts: crazy busy! A few of the goings on:

More book signings and demos at the AQS booth and also at Petersen-Arne (a large quilting supplies distributor). Again, lots of excited quilt shop owners and managers took home free copies of Inchie Quilts, and placed orders for the book and the InchieSee & InchieDo Viewer Tool & Ruler Set, so don’t be surprised if you see Inchie Quilts at a local quilt shop near you very soon!

I chatted with Doug Kreinik of Kreinik Manufacturing Co. about creating some custom sampler packages of beautiful metallic textured threads for embellishment purposes. I use Kreinik threads and cords when I embellish Inchies (search for Kreinik at InchieQuilts.com to see Inchies embellished with Kreinik threads). It would be great to have some packages with a variety of different weights or textures in coordinating colors on hand for Inchies. I’ll be working with Kreinik on these sampler packages this winter, so watch for these coming soon to the DWQ Studio. Continue reading →

Quilt Market Report: Book Signings and Dinner with Moda

Posted by Nadine

After I managed to get through the Schoolhouse presentation and the vidcasting on Friday, Saturday was a bit easier. On Saturday morning, I was scheduled for a demo and book signing at the AQS booth, and AQS very generously provided many copies of Inchie Quilts for me to sign and give away to shop owners attending Quilt Market. I visited with a number of excited shop owners and managers and introduced them to Inchie Quilts, so you can look forward to seeing Inchie Quilts and the InchieSee & InchieDo Viewer Tool & Ruler Set at a shop near you!

AQS had scheduled me for another lovely book signing and demo at the E.E. Schenck booth (E.E. Schenck is a large quilting supplies distributor) later in the day on Saturday, where I met another whole group of nice quilt shop owners and managers. The E.E. Schenck Company was a wonderful host, and even made these cool “tickets” for my presentation (photo at right)! What fun! Again, AQS generously provided numerous copies of Inchie Quilts to be signed and given away to Quilt Market attendees. Continue reading →