Portland: City of books

 

Did you read that? four stories that take up an entire city block !

I think this is Portland State Bookstore.

Powells again.

And today, because I am a nerd-burger of the highest order I took a public tour of the Portland City Library. All the photos are on some other device. I marvelled at the beauty of the building, and admired the dedication of the staff, I visited the fun and noisy children's collection and loved looking at the original book illustrations. I felt very cultured and learned until I fell down the stairs (twice).

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Life vs blog

Life is going faster than blogging can follow right now

There is so much to see

And such a little bit of blog-time.

I apologise in advance for the possibly very dull slide-night of photos you may have to endure on my return.

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You gotta fight, for your right ... to party !

Or just crash a party at quiltmarket like me ! Technically I am not even sure whose party it was but I got to hang with some awesome people who I can't link to and then a sweet random man watched me walk up the street to make sure I got to my motel safe.

My internal clock is a disaster, and once again it is the early hours of tomorrow and I feel like I should be eating dinner. Today was a great day at Quilt Market, I talked ( no surprise) to anyone who stood still for 2 minutes.

I saw and chatted to a heap of famous folk, and even took a photo of Bari J's breakfast for you but it is on my phone and my phone and ipad aren't on speaking terms.

I am uploading to flickr so you can go and have a look over there (vintagericrac), lots more booth photos and I still not even halfway through the market floor.

I was determined to get an early night tonight and in a way I am...its early morning.

Night folks, I'll try not to snore.

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I didn't get far

Today I escaped my booth and walked ONE short aisle of quiltmarket

There is just so much to see, and I promise there will be more. I am going early tomorrow to have a wander before the show opens.

I was beyond excited to see Lisa of the Red Thread represented so well. (can't figure out how to link could someone add it in the comments for me). Her Hello Tokyo range looks great ! Lisa and I met at Stitches and Craft many moons ago when we were neighbours. Her work is delightful and she is worth following on any and all forms of social media.

Famous Folk 3: Met Bari J last night and had a great chat. She is lovely of course and this morning I saw her sweeping her booth floor. ( See... sweeping her own booth, can't get much more real than that). I wanted to take a sneaky photo but you know I'm too professional .

Famous Folk 4 : I was walking along and saw a man and he seemed familiar so I smiled a vague smile and thought "oh he must be a dad from school" ...... dad ? oh that was quiltdad !!!!! So I did a quick about face and walked past again just to be sure. Then I raced back to the booth to tell Jemma who replied "quiltdad hey, so I guess he is some dad who makes quilts?"

My daughter is a craft heathen.

Weird stuff 2 : The light switches are the opposite to Australia so everytime I leave a room I turn the lights on ! It's quite dementing.

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Its not pretty but it's 1am

This is about a 1/4 of the line of people lining up for sample spree.

( people were in the line at 3.30 for an 8 pm opening time)

This is what sample spree looks like before it is set-up.

After sample spree opens, it is all a blur but let me tell you those crafty chicks can move.

Outside in the line, they might all look like mild-mannered crafty folk, but once those doors open, it was like a stampede. For future reference, do not get in the way of a quilter and the Moda booth.

There are heaps of photos on instawobblies if you use it. Just search the quiltmarket hashtags and see it all.

Oh, I'll show you the giant swan tomorrow.

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Craftsy to the rescue

Look over there on the right – see all those tabby things (made by a dear friend meg), well one of them still causes me grief.

The free patterns tab leads to tutorials and downloads and I get a huge number of emails from people for whom the download simply doesn’t (download that is).

So I struck upon a plan and I am going to add each of these (or most of them) to Craftsy. Craftsy is completely seamless in its downloadyness. Are you already a craftsy member? (it’s free). If you are you can find my shop and follow me if you like. (I guess that would mean you might get a notification when I add new stuff but I am just guessing)

So far I have added the party turtles and the pocket-bots – all completely free of course,  now with added downloadyness !

Just click on the photo and get downloading.

Now, who’s next ?

Ingrid, and Donna and Jodie and Mary (all the people of the internets)

Today is the first of May and in 13 sleeps I will be heading to the Spring Quilt Market in Portland Oregon.

In 13 sleeps I will be going on my very first overseas adventure.

I can’t believe that this is actually happening

In case I don’t get a chance before I go, I just want to say thanks;

For hanging around and being awesome and saying nice stuff and having far more faith in me than I deserve.

(Of course if it all goes horribly wrong, I’ll be blaming each and every one of you)