Oh. Did I mention I saw Marie Osmond at Quilt Market yesterday? The scene was thus:

I’m chatting with someone interested in the book. Then there’s a group of about six people walking down the aisle, orbiting around teeny-tiny woman with dark hair flowing in big ringlets over her shoulders and down her back. The person with whom I was speaking said, “That’s her, isn’t it? Marie Osmond? She looks great - and I think she’s, like, 60 years old.” I watched as Marie and her (handlers? entourage) peeps passed by… and walking about five steps behind her was a woman carrying a pillow, much in the fashion of a ring-bearer at a wedding.

Except that the pillow (and the person carrying it, by extension) was there to transport one of Marie Osmond’s dolls - just a few steps behind her at all times, apparently. It wasn’t this exact doll, but it had the same expression. Yes, indeed. I’m a little frightened of these kinds of dolls. I don’t have any weirdness associated with clowns, heights, velvet, condiments - and I’m not actually terrified by china dolls. I just find their vacant expressions mildly disturbing.

So that’s my story there. I also bought some cool fun things. Melissa Averinos of Yummy Goods led me to a booth where they take antique and vintage “things” (china, lace, crazy quilts) and transform them into interesting jewelry and whatnot. I got these pendants:

It’s an old typewriter “tab” key, and then an antique china (I think) letter “E”. It’s about 1″ square in real life. I don’t have enough silver chains for them both, so I might have to invest in some pretty ribbon… or more silver chains.

I love the colors of these beads. The light doesn’t quite do them justice and I might photograph them again later… or make some jewelry with them and then photograph them. The sky’s the limit.

I hope to get some good photos in next week or two so that I can update the blog header. It’s time.

So, I’ve spent the last two days in Houston, Texas, attending Quilt Market 2008. It’s a work trip, and I didn’t know quite what to expect beforehand. I guess I sort of expected a lot more of the “traditional” quilting audience… and I’ve been pleasantly surprised to see something quite different and meet people who are just cool as all get-out.

Now, here’s the full disclosure part. I don’t normally write about work stuff on here because, well, I don’t want to be “a publishing marketer who blogs.” I’ve been keeping up with this for much longer than I’ve been working where I work, so it seems like this should be “me” and not the work version of me. If that makes sense at all. It might not. I’m quite tired.

The point is that I’ve been attending in my capacity as the marketing manager for a book published by Wiley: Seams to Me by Anna Maria Horner. You can buy it pretty much everywhere online (and get autographed copies from Anna via her online store) and you should read her blog (and not because I do… she’s got a great writing style and a fantastic eye, so every image is just a pleasure to behold. Maybe even something to aspire to?).

So - over the last few days, I’ve been hanging at Anna’s booth, interacting with buyers and wholesalers and distributors and just fans of Anna, helping her out with answering questions about the book while she signed copies and talked with her legions of admirers (seriously.) I also got to meet some of her colleagues/friends - other incredibly creative designers who are also well-known in the industry and just super cool peeps to boot.

For example, Heather Bailey of “Hello My Name is Heather” blog fame (and many many other things including fabric designs, patterns and patented hair ties which I will be ordering shortly). She’s lovely and fantastic and so nice. We sat next to each other at dinner last night and sang They Might Be Giants lyrics together. Good times.

I also had time to chat with Melissa Averinos of Yummy Goods blog fame. She’s fantastically funky and seems to have the charming touch of the wacky that I sometimes feel I have. Sometimes. She’s got a store, a new line of fabric called Sugar Snap (I need to order some and learn to sew, truly), as well as some cool finished goods (cuff bracelets I’m going to try and score tomorrow), as well as an incredible sense of taste. She runs a shop (also called Yummy Goods, I think) on Cape Cod and was showing me some of the things she found at Quilt Market that she’d be ordering up to sell in her shop. If Cape Cod was closer, I’d totally be shopping there. Yes, indeedy.

And, of course, I’ve been spending the most time with Anna Maria Horner - a human dynamo, really. New line of fabric, new book, mother of five… and a super funny, superbly warm and generous Creative. An aspiring designer stopped by the booth to say, “Hi” and tell her how inspirational she is, and it turned into a bit of a career counseling session complete with portfolio feedback (since the designer had it with her). Also, Anna made me a gorgeous skirt using some of her newest fabric line (NOT YET AVAILABLE IN STORES! I feel all exclusive and on the inside). I’ll photograph it later since it’s wrinkled from having been worn and sat on all day. Here are some photos of her award-winning booth:

More later. Internet connection through the hotel is a little dodgy and uploading photos appears to be an issue. Either that, or the laptop doesn’t like my multi-tab habit. These things happen.

Update: here are more of my pictures from Quilt Market on Flickr.

The view from the 19th floor of my hotel.

Oooooh. My hands are raw from climbing. RAW. I didn’t climb very well tonight. I felt heavy like lead and stiff like wood. Still, I’ve been going with some regularity. And that comes with battle scars.

And allow me to gross you out with a close-up of… cracked skin!!!

(I’m sort of proud of it actually. Especially that it’s my left hand. That’s the hand attached to the gimpy wrist. This means I’ve been USING that wrist and getting somewhere with it. Truly.)

(Also, it’s hard to belay when your torn skin keeps catching on the rope. I used tape to cover the ickiest bits.)

“…goes to my heaaaaad…” Tell me you don’t sing along when you hear that UB40 song on the radio. Tell me you don’t.

I did some cooking today (a more healthful distraction than most) and prepared some of this Bhutanese red rice I bought a few weeks ago. It’s delicious and nutty and toothsome (is that a word? and am I using it properly? too lazy to check right now) and I think it’s pretty nice-looking, too.

And suddenly, I am craving red wine. I have a few bottles here, but to open one would mean trying to drink it alone tonight and I’m not that much of a woman. Perhaps a gin and tonic. If I have tonic. Which I don’t. Ah, well. Regular old iced tea will suffice.

Lesson 1: a steering wheel does not make a steady tripod.

But the blurry shot is interesting in a “Lost Highway” sort of way.

I decide to post something like this:

It’s been pouring since around 11 this morning. I’ve spent most of the day doing, well, nothing. I made some biscuits from scratch… had some soup… downloaded the Spore Creature Creator… watched some movies… it’s such a nice break. I even stepped outside in my rain boots to take some rainy day photos, but then the rain came down a little more heavily and the thunder and lightning started, so I opted to head back in the house. But I got this image of a gray, gray, wet day.

And this leaf struck me as pretty, though I couldn’t get close enough to get a better photo and without toppling over and getting soaked… so I did a little image enhancing to make it appear as lovely as it did to my eye in real life.

So I have this nifty plugin installed in WordPress that automatically filters comment spam from the blog. Honestly, I get more comment spam than actual comments - and that’s sort of OK and expected. This isn’t Dooce (as in, not crazily popular - or at all) and I’m well aware of that.

The comment spam I get is pretty entertaining. Today’s selection was “Shakira porn shakira hips don’t lie naked porn video.” Please. At least keep it current. Or marginally modern. (Hey - let me drop some really hip and timely references to Paris & Nicole fighting or to the whole file sharing/Napster thing so I can be equally on the ball!!)

I had a shitty-ass day. Non-stop crappy nonsense that added up (along with hormonal ickiness and such) to major stress and me sitting in my car when I got off the train, resting my head on the steering wheel, breathing deeply and trying not to cry out of sheer frustration that the day was not yet over. But then I got home, ate some leftovers, and baked some brownies (Ghirardelli, from a mix) and had a hot brownie and mint chocolate chip ice cream sundae. All better.

Also nice was opening up my email to see a request from an academic who’s making a documentary and requested permission to use some of my photos of the Schuylkill River in Philly (which he found on Flickr) in the documentary. No money, of course, but photo credit and a copy of the DVD if the photos are used in the film. That’s pretty cool. I’ll take it.

And now it’s late and I should be getting to bed. The stress tension in my shoulders and neck never quite went away, so I’m going to have a rough time of it tomorrow morning.

If the post title compels you to start singing that song by the Killers, by all means, do so. Yesterday was chockablock full of things to do. First, at 11 am, I helped a climbing friend move back onto her college campus; she recently had ankle surgery and is on crutches, so a helping hand was needed. I got sweaty very quickly; it was humid and we got everything moved out of the house, into cars, out of cars, and into the dorm in 2 hours and 15 minutes. Intense.

Then I went down to Princeton to meet up with my friend Sara to pick up something she was holding for me (technically, for my mother - but I was happy to play liaison) and then hang out for a bit. We wandered around the Princeton University campus for a while. It’s lovely. Quite lovely. Drew University in Madison, NJ, also has a lovely tree-filled campus, but Princeton kicks its ass with architecture (in some cases, Gothic - which is gorgeous) and sculptures on the grounds. See below for photographic evidence of the sculpture and the architecture:

"Big Figures" by Madgalena Abakanowicz

Alexander Hall at Princeton University

While in Princeton, I also had some delicious gelato - a scoop each of roasted cashew, Anjou pear and SWEET BASIL. They were all quite good - the flavors were amazing and unexpected (esp. sweet basil). The consistency, while good, didn’t quite measure up to the awesomeness of the gelato I had at the Capogiro Gelato Artisans locations in Philadelphia.

Around dinnertime, my brother joined us since he lives about 10 minutes outside of Princeton. So we went and had some Indian food for dinner, along with a fairly tasty Shiraz - Fools Bay Dusty’s Desire Shiraz from the university liquor store across the street. BYOB is nice.

We walked around a bit to make sure we were all OK to drive… stopped and had tea at a Starbucks… and then went on our merry ways. I got home around 10:30, so it was a fairly long day.

And today is all about cleaning. More purging of stuff. I’ve got two more boxes of books for Goodwill, as well as two bags of clothing… and possibly a whole pile of CDs. We shall see how inspired I am to simply throw shit out. I am quite a packrat, so I know the dangers of deliberating too much over whether or not to keep things. Most times, I just have to tell myself, “NO!” and chuck it.

In the long run, it will make it much easier for me to load a moving truck in the coming months (a search on Craigslist today yielded some decent results, so I just have to prepare myself for “comfortable financial readiness” so I can afford to buy any missing niceties and not screw myself by biting off more than I can chew - as I’ve done in the past).