QuiltCon is over for another year. Actually, it’s been over since late Monday afternoon, but somehow a couple days slipped by without me sitting down to write about it. As in the first two years, it was just me and Mel. For a while it looked as if amandapage might be joining us, but that didn’t end up working out. Perhaps next year–neither Mel nor I have been to New Jersey, so maybe we’ll talk Amanda into hosting us. (I’m kidding. Mostly.)

Mel arrived Saturday afternoon. After a late lunch, we began the playing with fabric portion of the program. I’d show you pictures of what we did, but it’s not ready for public viewing quite yet. I’ve got some stuff to do on it before I ship it to Mel for her to do some more stuff to finish it up. If I’d known Mel was bringing me a cute little quilt as a hostess gift, I might have done a little more to make the house nice for her stay so as to deserve such a present. As it was, the bunnies were still dusty and the perma-crud still graced one of the toilets (hard water, how I hate thee), but that didn’t keep us from having a good weekend.

Of course, it wouldn’t be QuiltCon without shopping. Sunday we went to The Quilting Season in Ypsilanti (Ypsi if you’re local or lazy) because it’s one of my favorite shops (of the ones that are still around–I’ve had a couple favorites close over the years) and also because it’s one of the few quilt shops nearby that’s open on Sundays. I like to encourage that sort of thing–stores being open when I can actually get there. (I’d link to their website, but they don’t seem to have one.) Monday we journeyed to the far side of Ann Arbor to visit Viking Sewing Center, which is not exactly a quilt shop but always has lots of quilting cottons–I have never been there when they didn’t have more bolts of fabric than would fit on the shelves. (Writing that, I wasn’t quite sure why I don’t think of Viking as a quilt shop. I finally decided that it’s because the fabric isn’t the first thing one sees upon entering, because it’s stashed in the back of the classroom and off in two rooms behind the extensive sewing machine displays. I don’t think their mix of products and services is all that different from other stores I definitely put in the quilt shop category–the difference it what hits my eyes when I walk in the door.)

Now it’s back to the mundane–work and chores and stuff. I’m hoping to break that up with a trip (or two–wouldn’t that be something) to the movies this weekend, but we’ll have to see.