Well, the dogs (that's Oliver to the left and Tillie to the right) didn't eat the camera, but it has been AWOL for months. I mean months! As age, and I know this is very sad, has impared my ability to immediately recall where I put anthing at home, I've attempted to keep items in the same place, and to always, always put things away where they belong when I'm done with them. Well, this plan ungloriously crashed and burned when it came to the camera. After wandering through the house looking and looking until I thought I was going a bit bonkers, I came up with a plan.
I cleaned my desktop off - the camera could have been buried under a pile of papers. I moved into the dining room and looked through the drawers of the small commode where we keep table runners and flower vases. I searched the small cabinet where I normally store decorative seasonal items, the large cabinet where we display our teapot collection......
We've had a number of open houses - our house is for sale - so I was racking my poor brain trying to figure out where I might have tucked the camera away in a last minute fly through the house!
I checked out the oak cabinet in the living room, my little drop front secretary in the corner of the living room....
Keep in mind that I had already done surface searches throughout the house. I pulled up all the cushions on chairs and couches, looked under beds and all the furniture. I think I crawled throughout the entire house before I conducted the cabinet searches. When I opened up any of the cabinets, I had to pull all the contents out, go through them and reorganize everything. Just to make sure I hadn't accidently covered up the camera with a stack of other junk.
My last two stops were the red bedside cabinet in our bedroom, and the cherry linen closet in my bathroom.
Good news .... I found the camera! But which cabinet?
Be the first reader of our sad little neglected blog to correctly guess which cabinet the camera was hiding in (only one guess per reader) and win a little four pack of Amy Butler fat quarters! I'll be posting the winner on Sunday (the 20th of Dec) morning.
Next we have a set of 40 charm blocks of batiks with six pre-fused appliques. We bought an Accucut Studio and a mess of dies - what a difference accurate cutting makes in assembling a quilt. And I have to tell you, our customers LOVE the pre-fused appliques.
The next two goodies are a four pack of Prints Charming's amazing poplin fat quarters with that incredible citron color. Which, by the way is one of the colors, along with grey, for the year - learned that in a class at Market! Next is a lovely handcrafted bar of the most wonderful soap you'll ever use. A friend of the Bird makes these hand moulded bars of soap that have just the loveliest scents and they lather up so beautifully. Your skin feels so smooth after using these soaps.
Another trend we noticed was fabric designed for home decor. Amy and I were spending a gloriously inspiring moment resting on the setee in the Vicki Payne booth. Vicki designs for Free Spirit Fabrics, and we'd love to carry some of her fabrics. 
This last sumptious display is by Serendipity Studio. The pattern covers from this pattern maker don't begin to illustrate how beautiful this clothing and the bags really are. We noticed over and over again that many of the clothes, bags and quilts we saw were far more interesting and lovely than the photos of the items on the pattern covers. Just goes to show 'ya - you really can't always judge the book by it's cover!
If you didn't get to comment on yesterday's post for a chance to win that fabulous fat quarter of fabric, you can make a comment today to win this cute little packet of 4 fat quarters of Lecien fabrics from Japan. Now we know this isn't our usual bright, wild and crazy fabric, but we love the silky hand and detailed attention to the smallest prints that make Lecien fabrics so incredible.
This is a picture of Amy on the first day of market. We were all just tuckered out from the drive, and 6am came a bit earlier than what we were emotionally prepared for. She'll probably want to kill me for showing you this photo, but what good is a mother if she can't make you want to pull your hair out from time to time.
We decided this time to have our pictures taken with the "famous" quilt designers we met at Market. We think the quilt patterns from "Lizzie B Cre8ive" are marvelous. The designers are sister's in law - both named Elizabeth, with the nickname of Lizzie. The quilts they design are bright, happy and whimsical. We'll be adding more of their quilt patterns at the shop, so be looking out for them. In case you don't recognize her, our newest employee, Deb Blackburn, is on the far right. 
I'm sure you'll immediately recognize these two famous Amys. The tall really thin Amy is, of course, Amy Butler. She had lots of new patterns, loads of new fabrics. We felt a little bit like throwing ourselves prostrate at her feet and begging for the creative thinking blessing. If such a blessing doesn't exist, we're all in favor of creating it! By the way, we have no idea how the vendors all managed to look so fabulous all the time. Mostly we felt exhilerated while incredibly tired, schulmpy, hot and messy. We don't know what happened to all the make-up we put on every morning - it managed to vanish by about 2pm each day.
Here we are at Sue Spargo's booth. She's designed a fantastic collection of new pillows. We'll be adding these patterns to our existing group of Sue Spargo patterns. Sue was her usual kind and sweet self. She just returned home from a 4 week visit teaching in quilt shops in New Zealand and Australia. That's Kathy, Sue's helper, on the right. Amy and Deb decided to remove themselves from photos for a bit. Something to do with squinty, puffy eyes, I think.
