Patience - give me patience!

I had many plans for yesterday. Originally, I was going to take a class.  I didn't sign up in time but I could have signed up here. Then I would have had to bring fabrics and I would have ended up with a UFO so I decided not to. 

Then I found there was a sewing studio where you could sew on your own stuff and I had brought the last project with me.  But with no rotary cutter, I decided not to although I'm sure I could have gotten that cut somewhere in that maze of classrooms. 

The third option was to visit a couple of quilt stores with a couple of colleagues.  I was ready to go at 9 AM, but it was almost noon before we were ready to go. Let's just say that I was rapidly losing patience.  A total waste of a morning and I hate wasting time. 

However I'm happy to say that once we did get on the road, I calmed down and I was good. 

We visited a great shop called Quilter's Emporium. It was home to Joey the Dog who was at Quilt Market. Joey is a rescue dog and just cute as a button.  He was home resting when we visited yesterday. This is one of the shops on the bus tour (we didn't take the bus tour) here and was well worth the visit.  I didn't buy much, but I did buy three things. 

Quilter's Emporium

We decided to go out for lunch right after and had just got back in the car when I decided to check my voice mail. One of the items I had purchased wasn't in the store and would be coming tomorrow which is today. But I had gotten a voice mail that if we were still in the area that the item just came in. Thankfully we had lunch in the area so zipped back and I got  my item. 

There was a massive shop in the same complex which I thought was a gun shop. We decided to stop in. Unforunately it was more like a huge store for adventurers but with camo colored everything. 

Me with a training gun

While they didn't have guns, they have exact replicas made out of blue plastic. Now I would probably have thought that those were prototypes so you could then pick the handgun of your choice, go to the front to get the real thing.  Not so, these plastic ones are for training.  The little handgun in my hand was $65.  We didn't stay long as we had to get moving to the next quilt shop. 

The next one was a shop in a little house attached to a flower shop.  We managed to get in, but the shop was completely ripped apart as they were just leaving for Quilt Festival.  We didn't stay long and we headed back to the hotel where I think each of us had a little nap before we headed over to the convention centre to set up for Festival. 

All I'm going to say is that there was a series of issues, one of them being that our crate that was supposed to be on the floor so we could unpack it, was in storage with our other two crates.  It took a lot of energy to get all that stuff organized, but the structure is back up and we made good headway in getting it prepped for today. Preview is tonight from 5 to 10 or is that 9 PM?  

Once we were kicked out of the convention center for the evening, we had something to eat and then sat around and chatted. I think I ate way too much, way too late and I kept waking up in the night. I'm tired today so we better get things organized with plenty of time for a nap this afternoon or I won't make it to 10 PM.  

Oh my goodness, it's pretty easy to make friends around here. I was standing in the line to get our badges and there was a lady behind me. We said a couple of things to each other about the long, long time and not many staff to help out. Then we went our separate ways. Next thing I knew, we are both in the line at the Services desk and we had a little laugh about that. Later, there we are in the washroom together. Nancy and I are now best friends and as they were leaving for the day, Nancy walked by our booth.  Hugs all around to Nancy and her colleagues.  Everyone is super super friendly. 

Our booth is a bit of a weird duck as we have set up our big structure. We've had so many comments - oohs and aahs about how nice it looks and they can't wait to see what it will look like when the quilts are up. It's pretty funny! Most of the people here have small booths for their products (I mean lower booths). Anyway, the structure has been the talk of the Festival - at least in our little corner of the show floor. 

And if we ever thought the loading docks in Toronto were horrible, the loading docks here are unbelieveable. I'm surprised that no one got hurt. There are MANY forklifts carrying these huge box things to bring in all the small stuff for some of the vendors. There are carts running around with the service people. As we went to look for the crates, I hopped on the back of one of those carts and I had to hang on! We were zipping around stuff, but he knew where those crates were!  Anyway, the loading dock was insane!  People and carts and stuff EVERYWHERE!

On that note, I'm out of here to get ready for the day. 

Have a super super day.