It was a great trip!! Rose gave me an unexpected treat- lunch and the afternoon in Washington, D.C., hoping to see the famous cherry blossoms, but we were a week too early, though there were a lot of other blooming trees and daffodils out. We couldn’t get very close to the Capitol, they were assembling a motorcade,
so we walked over to the U.S. Botanic Garden and enjoyed the hundreds of orchids on display as well as all of the other exhibits inside the Conservatory – it was pretty cold and windy outside so the tropical atmosphere felt nice!
After that we went to the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian which was very impressive! A special exhibit on display there is art by Brian Jungen who make things out of common items like this Whale skeleton made out of those cheap white plastic lawn chairs.
It was getting late but we managed to squeeze in the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History as well, where I really enjoyed seeing the Gems and Minerals and the Hope Diamond.
Then it was time to catch the train back to where we had left the car which for this country girl was an adventure in itself!!
The AQS show in Lancaster was the main reason for the trip, but the next morning we went to the MCC (Mennonite Central Committee) facility where Rose volunteers every Wed and helped with preparations for the big annual quilt sale which will be later this week. I hand sewed sleeves on a couple of wall hangings, cut a bunch of 5.5″ squares and started the marking of a large quilt. After lunch we toured the facility where they are hard at work preparing things to send to Haiti and other disaster sites round the world. Then we had a little show and tell where I showed some of my work. I do think they enjoyed seeing something very different from what they are used to, these ladies are wonderful hand quilters, doing traditional work.
By late afternoon we had to leave and head out to the show for a quick look around before grabbing something to eat and finding the venue for the evening lecture by Karen Stone. When we found “Burlingame Fire” we discovered that it had a Third Place ribbon!! That’s always pretty cool!
The show was on three floors of the Convention Center, downtown and this is it’s first year. There are things that will need tweaking, but all in all, it went well. Some areas were poorly lit and there could have been better signage/information as to where things were. Parking was far away and you needed to take the free shuttle buses back and forth. The vendors were mixed in with the displays and I managed to spend some of my money and return home with a heavier bag, though I did not find the “rock” fabrics I was looking for.
By Friday we had seen everything we needed to at the show, so we spent that day running around. Visited Hershey’s Chocolate World for the factory tour- yum!
More tomorrow!