I'm On

Me: "Where's Mommy?"
Sophie: "Wite dere!"

Me: "How'd I do?"
Sophie: "Goot!"


I get the thumbs up from the 2 year old!

LATE BREAKING NEWS: I'm on TV this weekend on CLTV. The show is called "Your Money" and it airs again tonight at 8pm on Channel 53 (in my town.) If you are just joining us, you can read more about it here, here, and here.


I have sent out an APB so if you live in the Chicagoland area and I have your e-mail address, chances are good that I have e-mailed you already. I'm sorry for the late notice, but I got home late last night from Paducah, and didn't know I was on this weekend until this morning. If you live anywhere else, there may be a video clip on the website, I'll let you all know if they put one up.


This year our annual Paducah trip consisted of me, my mom, and Sophie. Sophie is an old pro, this being her 3rd year. Here she is holding court from the cart, directly mom and me which fabric is "MINE"!














She has learned how to hand the fabric to the cutting lady and tell her how much she needs (ok, she does the handing and I do the telling).



















The start of a stash. Do I know how to start them young, or what?!

Colander Quilt

I showed you last week that I had a little colander quilt basted and ready to quilt in case the CLTV guys wanted to film me free-motion quilting. They took so much footage of me quilting that I actually got most of it done!

I asked the producer when the show would air and he said it might be the weekend of the quilt show (this weekend) or, more likely, it would be the following weekend, because he wanted to send a cameraman to the show to get some footage.

As he was leaving, he called out over his shoulder, "I'll let your people know the air date and time of the show."

My people.

Apparently, I have people. Who knew?!

I haven't heard anything yet so I assume it will be next weekend, but I am taping it this weekend just in case. It's on CLTV (channel 53 where I live), and the show is called Your Money. It's on Saturday and Sunday at 10am and 8pm (same show running 4 separate times.) I'll keep you updated.

Free Ticket to the Chicago Quilt Festival

Hey guys,
I have an extra ticket to the Chicago Quilt Festival that I will gladly give away to the first person that wants it.

I would have to get it in the mail to you today by 6pm for you to get it tomorrow and go to the show Saturday or Sunday, or if you are local you are welcome to drop by and pick it up from me.

E-mail me emily(at) emilyquilts (dot) com if you want it. Don't leave a comment--I have no way of e-mailing you back from the comments.

Is there anything I can say about this woman that hasn’t already been said? Probably not.

Funny. Profound. Rock Star. Love her.

Listening to her speak, in a room full of knitters who are all knitting and laughing and nodding…there is something about that evening that makes you feel that all is right with the world.

Shout out to blogless Laurel, who met us there and blogger Jen, who went with me! And to Angela, who I was delighted to see! Happy birthday, Miss Angela, I hope it’s a great one!!!

We arrived at 6:30 and the room was already crowded. After greetings all around and I looked into my knitting bag, I realized with horror that the 2 skeins of sock yarn I had brought to work on were missing! (Not missing as in gone forever…. I was pretty sure they must have dropped out in the car when I was rummaging for the map.) But still—here I was at the biggest knitting event of the season, and I was missing my yarn. Do I go out to the car? At this point, we were seriously penned into our seats. Those seats were squished together closer than people in the pews on Easter Sunday and there weren’t really any aisles. I looked at Laurel and asked—should I climb over all these people to go out to the car or should I wind up my emergency skein? Yes my friends, I had brought an emergency skein. You know, just in case I knit 2 whole pairs of socks during the evening and ran out of knitting. You never can be too careful.

Laurel voted for using the emergency skein and I trusted her judgment. The only problem was: it wasn’t wound. Fortunately, there was a handy dandy chair back a mere 1.5 inches in front of me, and the person occupying that chair didn’t mind. She was, of course, a knitter.

It took me the entire hour of waiting for Harlot to wind the ball, but I cast on the sock as she started to speak, turned the heel as we were waiting in line for the signing, and was zipping down the gusset as we got up to her table. Zipping might be an exaggeration; we were in line, snaking around the aisles of Borders for 1 hour and 45 minutes! But we were knitting! And talking to other knitters!

Moral of the story people, and I don’t have to tell you this: always bring your emergency knitting. You just can’t have too much back-up.
-----------------------------------------------

Thank you for your words of support yesterday! Here's a little update on the CLTV visit:

I hung 2 big quilts in my living room on stands.

I hung smaller quilts and recent drawings on my design wall.

And I had a small quilt top basted and ready to be quilted so they could film me at the machine, working.

I had yarn bins filled with undyed yarn and dyed yarn so they could see the "before and after".

And I scattered more yarn around the studio for "atmosphere".

You may remember that part of my panic in having 2.5 days to pull this together when I only had a few skeins left in the shop. Well, thank you to my friends Carla, Jodee, and Lisa, who came to my aid with their respective stashes of Sophie's Toes to fill my bin and make it look good. Thank you ladies! As to why this yarn wasn't wound and on the needles yet, well, no questions asked. There might be a skein or two in there that I have saved for myself. For quality control purposes, I assure you (hi honey!)

Ok, last up: what did I wear? Don't laugh, but this was for me, a huge issue. I spent some serious time on the phone consulting my sister, who came through with great advice! Thanks sis!

She advised me that for this show I needed to look "cool" and "hip" and that it was also important for me to wear something I had knitted, preferably out of my own yarn. I settled on a black tee shirt and my purple corduroy jacket. But I didn't have a little scarf or shawl to match. I'm knitting a Chevron scarf to go with the jacket, but it's not done. And then, about an hour before they were going to arrive, I noticed Carla's Chevron scarf that she had donated to the cause as a sample of my yarn. I called her to get the ok to wear it and she said "of course!"

She made a shorter version and used 1/2 a skein of Sophie's Toes color Magical, and 1 skein of Claudia's Handpaint.

I loved wearing it and am totally motivated to get mine done.

Vacation Photos. (If you want some quilting content, skip to the bottom.)

This is where we were last week for spring break. We went to visit my dad and his girlfriend who have a farm in Middleofnowhere, Tennessee. She raises horses and donkeys, and with 9 horses, a mule, 5 donkeys, 3 dogs, and 2 barn cats, there was plenty to keep the kids busy for several days.

They all rode horses! Two year old Sophie is fearless! Even she got up on big Coyote and didn't want to get off!

One of the most special things for me was watching my middle daughter Molly around the horses. She really blossomed and was so natural and happy with them, in a way I rarely see. When she was the only one to get the shy donkeys to come to her, she was dubbed "the donkey whisperer."

Ok, back to reality.

Here's one of my most memorable moments. I was sitting at small kitchen table dishing out lunch for 3 kids. Chaos, as usual.

My cell phone rang and it was a PR lady for the Chicago Quilt Festival. She and I had been in touch for the past few weeks regarding a special exhibit at the show "In Full Bloom" and she had interviewed me for a press release that she sent out to local newspapers and tv stations. She started talking about a tv station that had picked up on her press release and wanted to come to my house next week (this week) to interview me and film me working. I got up from the table so that I could concentrate and started to walk outside where it was quiet. I opened the screen door and, cradling the phone on my shoulder and watching the kids behind me at the table, I pushed open the door with my shoulder.

Apparently, there was a wasp just waiting there, right where I smashed my shoulder against the door. So, I've got pain shooting into my shoulder as it stings me and I'm trying not to say "Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch" and I'm trying to talk coherently, and it's not even so much the pain as the squeamishness I feel that I HAVE JUST BEEN STUNG BY A FREAKIN WASP and now it is kind of a blur but to make a long story short I asked to call her back, I came in and gave the details to Dave as my dad was rubbing some mysterious but in retrospect, awesome, ointment onto the sting.

I needed to get across to Dave that I would have 2.5 days when we got home to: totally clean my pigsty of a studio, totally clean my disaster of a dye studio (AKA corner of the garage), have some kind of quilt project to work on (hah!), have some yarn dyed since I sold it all the week before we left for vacation, and also, in general get the house back to normal after a week's vacation in the middle of nowhere, that involved stepping in a lot of horse poop. And that I would really, really, REALLY need his help and support in order to pull this off.

He said: Go for it.

So, I have spent the past 2.5 days doing all of the above, enabled by Dave and almost a dozen giant Rubbermaid bins, which are temporarily housing a ton of studio clutter in our bedroom upstairs. This morning CLTV news is coming to film me for a segment promoting the Chicago Quilt Festival, and I will give you all the details of the air time and date when I know them.

For now, please wish me luck!!!