Where to start?

It's been a while. A busy while. And posts have been written in my head but never on my 'puter

I know you all are just bursting to know all about the Puyallup Expo. Well, I just say it was a blast. For the Seattle weather in March, the weather was ok. A little chilly, a little rainy, a little sunny, a little breezy. Yep, Seattle in [insert your favorite month here]. I "only" attended on Thursday and Friday, took a few classes, and did a boat load of shopping. For whatever reason (I refuse to blame myself for this) my camera battery was completely dead - so I have NO, NOT ONE, photo of the Expo!

My best class was a serger class: "Getting to know your serger" I believe it was called. We got to use the Babylock Imagine which was awesome. NAYY, I have a Bernina which is a fantastic machine, but that air threader was like magic! Like an automatic garage door opener or a self timer on a coffee pot. Probably good I DON'T have one, I'd spend all my sewing time rethreading it just to watch it do it. And the wave stitch is pretty cool, though not a deal maker like the threading. **ahem**, sorry, I wandered off for a threading second. The class was great, we got a nice book with nice directions, fabric samples to try out the technique, hands on help. It was a great intro to the real capabilities of a serger. Most of what we learned is available on any serger - only the wave is BL or high-end model only.

My other classes were all lecture format. Interesting but not really blogworthy. The notions class was fun though. Just a little, tiny bit enabling. Just a **ahem** little. Funny thing was that I'd already bought about 1/2 the stuff she showed us, on my first booth stop on Thursday. Great minds and all that.....

Karen took many more classes than I did, so that meant I had lots of **yea!** shopping time. I did take some photos when I got home and played around in my sewing room. Zippers were a big item this year. Fun and fancy and not available at JoAnn's. So I picked up a couple, including a pack from Vogue for $7 for the bag of them. I bought long ones, for the most part because they're much easier to shorten than to lengthen. And fun fun fun notions: Notions that photographed very poorly. But include binder makers, a threaded needle keeper (at 6 o'clock), some markers from the Japanese notions shop, some glass head pins, an aqua Grabbit, double hole machine needles (who knew they made these?), and so on. Back to closures are buttons, buttons, who's got the buttons? I got the buttons: That also didn't photo well - but are fun and lovely. The two cards are old glass buttons. And finally I went a bit overboard with folder elastic. But I'll get over it, I'm sure. And a couple of panels to quilt. Don't yet know how I'm going to do them - but I'm sure it will be fun and interesting some rainy weekend. That's the last of the shopping.

We did a little driving around, had a bit of wine, a bit of food and some catching up. Then I flew over to the Richland area for a couple of days.

Look out Expo, here we come!

I'm sitting at a hotel bar right now near the Seattle/Tacoma airport. Karent will be joining me in a bit and tomorrow morning we will hit the Puyallup Sewing Expo. I went to the one in Novi a couple of years and thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. This will be Karen's first venture into such a venue. We both have classes scheduled for early tomorrow morning and I have worked lots of shopping time into my schedule. On the hunt, primarily, for trims and notions though if I find a nice piece of faux fur... Emma Seabrook had some in Novi that I'm still sad I didn't buy. But since my fabric closet is full I really don't want to add to it right now. (Yeah, I know, check back later to see how strong I was when faced with row after row after row after row after row after row....).

I got a few photo's uploaded last weekend, though I didn't have time to post. Now I have loads of free time since Seattle's weather has just turned typical (yes, that means it's raining right now oops, spoke too soon, now the sun is shining through the rain - there must be a rainbow somewhere!). So, without further ado (and I am a big ado-lover):

The brown slacks that have been pining away on my table after the big pocket adventure. Or, in other terms, proof that I CAN and DID to those dang pockets. And why they couldn't just be skipped (though Lord knows I would have at one point). A bit of wonkiness at the waist band, but not too bad. The buttonhole went in first time and that may be a first. And a peek inside. Though the wool is pretty lightweight and (I think) blended with silk, I wanted a less heavy waist band. SOOOO glad I did this or I wouldn't have had enough fabric to do the pockets (3 times). Plus I love a bit of bling inside. I still have more of this fabric, too. I made a nightie out of it last year.

And, I've kept this under wraps. But I have a new addition to the family. Well, the sewing family. Introducing...... Lizzy. When I was kid and in trouble my dad would call me "Lizzy" - so when I heard that yelled, I ran. Oddly, he also called me that on the few occasions it fell to him to wake me up in the mornings. But now that he's gone, I think Lizzy needs to come out of hiding. She came from JA's the last time dress forms were on sale. Free shipping. She's not the highest tech form you'll ever see but I think she'll work well for me for a while. And, high on my list, her waist length was able to adjust enough for me.

Ok, I suppose I've rambled on enough for a while now. Even the dog is bored.

No, wait, she usually looks like this when I sew.