What a week-Scrap, De young, Joe, Asilomar, Quilt Show and Camille

I have had the craziest week!

On Wednesday, Sue (my friend, C&T author, and colleague) and I went to San Fracisco.  We made our first stop at Scrap in San Francisco where you go to a quite dodgy area of town,

approach a non-descript warehouse,

and rummage through piles of unbelievably well categorized surplus craft items.

The idea is, that if you are a teacher, you can sign in at the front and collect a whole mass of items for pennies on the dollar.

The warehouse is freezing cold, but full of goodies.

I came away with a  handful of items but it was just great to see these kinds of resources available.
Then we were on to the De Young Museum to see the Amish Quilts Exhibit.

And we snuck in to a mini-lecture by the fantastic Artist in Residence, Joe Cunningham.

Thursday I went down to Asilomar for Session 3 of Empty Spools Seminars to visit the quilters teaching there that week (Don Linn, Mary Lou Weidman, Deb Karasik, Marcia Stein, Grace Errea, Libby Lehman,  Elly Sienkiewicz, Thom Atkins and Ruth McDowell and the Artist in Residence, David Taylor) and to see the work of their students.  It’s a long drive, but the setting is so beautiful

and the work is so amazing,

Beadwork of Thom Atkins

that you leave feeling re-invigorated.

Finally, on Saturday I was on The Quilt Show at Alden Lane Nursery in Livermore, CA.  I was launching Stash and playing second fiddle to the delightful Camille Roskelley (seen here going through her tutorial with The Quilt Show staff and Alex herself).

Camille is such a genuine person and is a delightful ambassador for both quilting and Stash.  Did I mention that is why I was there?

Not only was I there to help out Camille (who I think is bursting at the seams to tell blogland today about her upcoming book for Stash) but also to talk to The Quilt Show viewers about the new line of books for C&T: Stash.  Camille was an absolute pro so I doubt that she has been plagued over the past two days with thoughts of all of the things she should/could have said as I have!  I talked about some of our upcoming Stash authors and showed viewers/Ricky a selection of projects from the books.  It was my five minutes of fame and was more than enough for me.

But amongst all these fun field trips this week, the best part of the week was meeting Camille’s husband Jarom.

He and I stood side by side for the best part of an hour in the back of the filming room as we watched Camille do her stuff!  And then I caught this glimpse of him out of the corner of my eye.  It was such a great moment to witness, because as I stood next to this wonderful guy, as I was spastically cheerleading Camille on, he was just…solid.  Quietly watching his wife with every expectation of her success.  Completely proud, completely confident in her and not at all phased by the surreal notion that he was watching his wife film a TV show.  And every once in awhile, Camille would quickly search him out with a subtle scan of the room, re-connect with him as they smiled to one another and then, with renewed calmness, carry on with the task at hand.

And at that moment, I could not wait to get the heck out of Dodge, banish my car keys and re-connect with the family I had hardly seen all week.  I stepped through the door, my husband came to meet me with a hug and questioning how it went, I looked at him, felt a renewed sense of calm that I had been missing all week, the kids came running over, both wanting to chat at the same time, I took in the joy of being there with one deep breath and settled in to build lego and play with trains for the rest of the day.  Home.