The Polka Dot Debutante

A friend invited me to a lecture by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, a knitter who writes books about knitting. Now, I've never read her books but several people have told me that they are wonderful and very funny and that she has a great blog. So I checked it out and thought, good fun, why not. Well apparently Stephanie is the ROCK STAR of the knit world. The lecture was at the World Forestry Center and it was packed! Standing Room Only packed. She was very funny and I really enjoyed her lecture. She talked about the stupid things non-knitters say to you when they find out that you knit. (Reminds me a lot of the quilt world as well) Funny stories about what other authors say when they find out that she writes "knitting humor" and does quite well at it, thank you very much. It was quite funny.

I enjoyed looking at the crowd as well. So many beautiful sweaters, so much knitting going on. This woman next to me was knitting like crazy and never once looked at her hands! I was so jealous. And during the question and answer period at the end of the lecture, one fan came up and sang a song. Awesome.

A very creative, wonderful friend of Susan's, Kaaren Beaver, invited us to a catered dinner before the lecture. We got to meet interesting, creative women and eat really great food. What more can one ask for? :) Many thanks to Kaaren.

Usually I'm so careful about drawing out my designs on graph paper when I am working on a new quilt. I really admire women who just start make parts, put them up on the design wall, and somehow make everything fit together, but I tend to be more of a planner. Quilt designs fit together like a puzzle and so the pieces need to be the right size. It just makes sense to me to check your math before you start cutting out fabric. Right?

Well the one time I decide to just fly by the seat of my pants, I get a reminder of the importance of math in quilting. I wanted to try something fun with the leftover rectangles from the Sushi Rolls quilt. I just love that Bow Wow Chow Mien fabric and was itching to use those cute little rectangles. I decided to add colored triangles in the corners so I would get these diagonally lines of color. Well it worked just fine until I started sewing the rows together. Here's what I got.

Got those great lines of colored triangles but the sides of the piece don't line up at all. Turns out I should have checked to make sure that the length of the rectangle was twice the width. But I didn't. :( So now I'm going to have to whack off the sides in order to straighten it out. Then it will look like this.

Every year the Oregon Potters Association puts on a show called Ceramics Showcase at the Oregon Convention Center.

It's one of my favorite art shows of the year. There are over 300 ceramics artists participating in the show. And my favorite artist is James DeRosso who creates wonderful ceramic monsters. I've been adding to my collection for 4 years now. One of these days I will be able to afford one of the really big ones, but this year I added this cutie to the group.

If you've never been to the show, put it on your calendar for next year. It's always in the spring and there are other fine craft shows at the convention center at the same time. The Oregon Hand Weavers guild is there along with the Jewelry and Metal Arts, Oregon Bead Society, Glass Arts and Wood Turning. It's really fun, usually bad on the pocketbook, but fun.