Life Without Margins!

Sometimes, once in a blue moon --- there is just no way to possibly put it all into words ---

Everything that I saw and experienced at MQX yesterday impacted me in so many ways --- from the people who came to talk to me that I either knew from previous visits with their guilds, or quilters who joined us on cruises, or stranger-friends who stopped to introduce themselves and welcome me to Rhode Island, or mentioned they were blog readers, or book owners, or magazine column followers---I am just so touched by everyone’s kindness and open friendship!

Fran, Nancy and I left Westerly around 9:30am and headed back to Providence eager to see the show.

Tina was already there waiting for us ---we all met up and spent the morning viewing a good portion of the show before breaking for lunch at The Cheesecake Factory.

Goodness gracious the size of those oriental chicken salads! I think ONE would have fed all 4 of us!

After lunch we browsed the show some more, before it was time to head on over toward Portsmouth for my evening guild meeting.

One quilter who wishes to remain nameless stopped us in the hallway on our way out when we were leaving……opened up a box she carried with her after telling me she was hoping she would run into me at the show --- and gave the three of us our choice of handmade stilettos, as a gift….just out of the blue. It blew me away! But this is what quilters do….

I chose the blue one with the big beads…..I might not lose that one!

From MQX we drove to Portsmouth. Drop the bags at the hotel, grab a quick dinner ---yes---we ate AGAIN! ---and off to the church we went to set up and make everything ready. From one thing to another with no space in between ---- where I gave a lecture last evening, and will have a workshop today, and tomorrow ---Sunday afternoon I fly home. I'm running out of steam!

I took so many photos at MQX but because the guild meeting wasn’t over and cleaned up to get me back to my room til close to 10pm, I found myself too tired to even THINK of going through all the photos to edit them down and get them ready for a slide show for you.

My margins right now are non-existent. There is no time to prepare photos to post. I have to be ready to leave for class this morning at 8am ---

Last evening instead of editing photos at 11pm, I was online trying to arrange air flights to go to Illinois in May --- and because I was so tired, I forgot that I was looping that trip with an Ohio trip together…..and I totally screwed up buying my tickets online----and spent an hour or more trying to cancel that and add a leg -----I’m still not sure if it’s resolved.

Because there are no margins, I’m having to purchase airfare at 11pm when I can’t think straight and mistakes happen.

I have not sat at my sewing machine for more than 2 blocks this trip so far --- because there have been no margins of time ----

Margins are like shoulders on the road --- a little room for lee-way, a bit of breathing space…..did you ever drive on a road that had no shoulder? Did it make you feel uncomfortable like you were afraid your tires were going to go off the edge? I am feeling kind of that way ----and I spent so much time on hold on the phone trying to deal with the stupid airfare thing –the tires of my sanity are feeling very close to the edge.

So today ---I’m taking a bit of a breather from a travelogue of a post with a ton of pictures, and not stressing it. I’m going to teach a class. There may be an ipohone-o-gram popping up later ---or maybe not.

I’m in search of margins ----wherever I can find them.

PS----while on hold with the airlines ---I went through the listings of the 80+ people on the “What’s On Your Bed” post! Some I had to remove --- because they linked to their whole blogs, not the specific post they wrote about the quilt that is on their bed, and since they’ve added new posts on top of their bed quilt post --- it was impossible to find the bed quilt posts. When I do a linky,, you need to link to EACH SPECIFIC post, not just the whole blog address, okay? So if you don’t see your link there anymore ---try again, and make it post specific…it helps us all to find the post you were trying to share.

It's FRIDAY! Enjoy!