I think I mentioned that Steve did the majority of the driving on our trip to Baltimore. Two days each way, about 11 hours a day. I drove 4 hours, max. The rest of the time I worked on my Macbook Air*, my iPad (to connect to the web, check and respond to emails…), and on my iPhone (making calls). If you didn't know already, I do love my Apple products.

What did I do? I put these two ePatterns together and got them online. Both have been out of print for a long time. Many of you will recognize Stars in the Garden…

And just in time for next Christmas, Reindeer Playground. This one was in our book, A Piece O' Cake Christmas, and it's on the DVD Learn to Applique The Piece O' Cake Way. 

AND I worked on my AAQI challenge quilt. In fact, I embroidered on it through most of Jeff's graduation. I don't think I'll ever go to a graduation without handwork again. I'm really loving it. I still have 2 borders to applique and then I need to quilt it. I should just forget sleeping altogether but that's not going to happen.

*Side note: We bought a cool car adaptor like this a few years ago. It plugs into the car's power port (or cigarette lighter for those of us old enough to call it that). You can plug a regular power cord into it. It will even accept a 3-prong power cord. That's how I kept my laptop running.

And, for those of you who've read this far, I am getting fabric in. I'll be putting it on the site over the next few days. Watch the menu bar for Fabric. I orders a few Christmas prints that I just could not pass up. There are some fun dots coming and one big print. Soon I'll let you know about the big print of the every other month club!

Jeff is now Dr. Goldsmith. No more being the student, now he’ll be the teacher. In NYC. At Columbia! We are oh so proud of him.

We took photos before, during, and after.

The actual graduation ceremony was only 2.5 hours long. I embroidered on my AAQI quilt during most of it. Quietly. I gotta say that for me, this really made the long, long minutes of names of people I will never know go by quickly. I’m so glad it wasn’t dark.

His name was called, he got a piece of paper, shook some hands, got his hood. Done!

Here he is, after the ceremony with Ciprian, his advisor. Ciprian did so much to teach and help Jeff. It was very nice to get a chance to shake his hand (and take his picture!).

Tonight we’re going out to dinner to celebrate. Tomorrow we head back to Texas. Every day is an adventure, is it not?!

I don't always have to carry all of my bobbins with me. Sometimes I only need a few and I carry them in a little zippered bag – but they unwind and tangle up…

I found these little Bobbin Bikinis that will be on the site soon. They are like ponytail holders, but small. Wish I'd thought of that, but since I didn't I had the good sense to buy a bunch of them so we can all have them!

Sent from my iPad

I'm leaving for Kansas City on Wednesday to attend Spring Quilt Market. I'm going to look for new notions and fabric. I'm hoping to make available a variety of wonderful dots on the Piece O' Cake website.

My question to you is, if I were to find a few wonderful large prints, prints that I myself want and will use, who of you might be interested in them? For example, this amazing print by Brandon Mably for Rowan…

Or this luscious print by Heather Bailey for Free Spirit…

Both of these are pieces that I bought at a quilt show recently and they are waiting, in my stash, to be used. I will either use them in applique or on the back of a quilt but they would also be fun in a pieced quilt.

 I know that when I poll the quilters in my lectures, most say that they don't buy this sort of print. But surely there are some of you who would if you could just find them. Or who would happily let someone else find a few cool prints for you.

I've considered starting a yard of the month club – although knowing me it might be the yard every-other-month club. If you think you'd sign up for something like that, let me know in a comment. If I get enough 'yeses' I'll buy some big prints along with the dots.

FYI – did you notice the twitter links on the blog, over there in the column on the right? Christopher taught me (again) how to tweet and use Instagram. Im planning to send fun photos from market. 

If you sign up to follow me on Twitter, know that I am not going to bombard you with tweets. If I manage more than 2-3 a week, I'll be doing good. That said, there will be more from market.

My mom wants to make her own Welcome to the North Pole quilt. How fun is that! Luckily I have a fair amount of fabric for her to work from. I have kept a variety of small scraps of fabric that I always mean to use but then forget I have. Those are now Mom's. She has started the Ice Cream Cone cottage…

This is interesting because mom has not appliqued much at all and I teach applique. But neither of us wants this to turn into a 'teaching experience.' Mom has her own ideas about what she wants to do and I answer technique questions as she has them. Like how to do doors with cutaway applique. (FYI – click here for a video showing you how.) My mom has a naturally nice stitch which makes me happy!

Watching mom is reminding me again of how much work it can be for a true beginner to absorb all of the details that can go with hand applique. I love having beginners in a class and I do my best to make sure that they have a good experience. I will try even harder from now on!

I have written lately about cleaning out for a garage sale. Mom decided to join in the fun and she came up with more costume jewelry for the garage sale. After the bag of jewels was taken away, she remembered that she hadn't seen the little diamond stud earrings that my dad gave her years ago. 

She thought that maybe she had given them to Elanor with some other small earrings a few weeks ago. No, she had not. Then I got to thinking about the little rhinestone studs that I had removed from Elanor's bag of jewels. Surely they weren't in there. I had one pair that looked likely but Mom didn't agree.

I had to get a CT scan on my head last week and I had to take off my presumably fake diamond stud earrings. I put them on the counter and forgot about them until the next day. I figured they were cheap studs and I just let it go.

Yesterday, a week later, Mom and I were in the car and I got to wondering if those could be the missing diamonds… Yes, they were. The jeweler said so.

Notice that the ones on the left have a bit more clarity, even at a small size? Would I notice that if I didn't know they were the real ones. Probably not. But they look a whole lot more exciting in my ears now than they did last week!

I thought I'd share this with you because if your mom, grandmother, aunt, or sister has something like this stashed away, will you recognize it if you have to sort out their worldly possessions? 

FYI - Turns out that I have a bit more of a sinus infection that is going to have to be dealt with at the end of May. Not a big deal but I'm glad to have had the CT scan because otherwise my physician would not have seen it.