The 26th Paducah Show is Now History

Wow, what a busy week. We moved the quilts into the Convention Center on Friday, April 17, and it has been a whirlwind ever since. Judging took place on Saturday and Sunday; the quilts were hung on Monday and Tuesday...and the vendors set up then too; and the winners in the quilt contest were announced on Tuesday evening. The show opened on Wednesday and closed at 5 p.m. on Saturday. It was a busy week of quilts, quilters, classes, special events, and best of all - seeing quilters from all 50 states (plus Wash. D.C.), and 14 other countries around the world.

Wednesday was a very early morning - I was up at 3:45 a.m. so I could pick up Sue McCarty, the Janome Best of Show winner, and we did live broadcasts from the Expo Center from 5 to 7 a.m. Quilt Judge Libby Lehman joined us for the broadcast too. From then on, it was nonstop. We had three great evening performances on the stage at the Carson Four Rivers Center - Kaffe Fassett, Eleanor Burns, and Ricky Tims.

Kaffe Fassett and Liza Lucy sign a copy of their new book, Simple Shapes, Spectacular Quilts, for me.

The National Quilt Museum had their annual quilt auction on Thursday. I was the lucky bidder for two quilts and a really neat ironing/cutting board cabinet from Tracey's Tables. Ah, now I will HAVE to clean up my sewng room.

So today is Sunday. Wayne was up early to go to the Pavilion to help the last few vendors load out. He, Kelly, and John will be there for a little while this morning doing that. And me, well I went back to sleep and woke up at 10 a.m. What a luxury after all my early mornings this past week.

So what's next? Registration is underway for the Knoxville show that will be July 14 - 17, and we'll be finishing up the registration materials for the Des Moines show, October 6 - 9. And we are working on all four shows for 2011. I hope to see you at one of our shows soon. For all of the latest information, you can go to the AQS Web site, http://www.americanquilter.com/ or check out the blog.

Have you entered one of your quilts in an AQS Quilt Show? You can't win if you don't enter...just ask Sue McCarty, our Janome Best of Show winner this year in Paducah. This is the first time she ever entered one of the AQS quilt shows!

Ice in Paducah - January 27

The rain and sleet started last night. By 5 a.m., our power was out. Guess we were one of the first to call because the power company was here by shortly after 6 a.m. As we sat here in the house with no appliances running and no noise, we could hear the branches of trees breaking and falling to the ground. That was just the beginning. By 7:30 our power was restored. But the limbs have continued to fall. Here are some photos of our yard that looks like a war zone.

This is a major storm - last night the media called it the worst storm in two decades.

We only live about a mile or so from the office and Wayne took me to work this morning. All day long we could hear trees cracking in the woods near the office. Our power flickered on and off most of the day. Oh, did I say that I was the only member of our quilt show staff who made it in. I fielded calls for registrations most of the day. Then the power went out at about 3 p.m., so I came home. Guess the cell towers are iced over too because I had no bars on my cell phone and we were having trouble making outside calls with our office phones. Billy was finally able to get a call to Wayne to come get me. When I got home I grabbed my camera and shot some photos in our yard. You can get a larger view by clicking on the photos.

Even as I sit here typing, I can hear more limbs falling in our yard. Wow, there was a big tree that just crashed to the ground in the woods by our next door neighbor. And we have more sleet and snow to come yet tonight. This isn't supposed to end until about noon on Wednesday. More damage is on the way.

We are okay and have power for now.

We have a whole grove of trees along our left property line. Many, many branches have fallen from these trees. They just can't stand the weight of all that ice. It must be at least 1/2 inch thick. As pretty as the ice looks, we will have a big mess to clean up.

See how the trees have broken and fallen over into the neighbor's yard. It doesn't look like it damaged the fence, but now we've lost all four of the big pine trees that separated our yards.

This view from our back porch shows one pine

trees that has its limbs dragging clear to the ground, the next one is broken off at the roots and flopped our neighbor's fence, and smaller limbs that damaged our gutters on the back of the house.

This is the view of the back yard from our porch. Limbs are continuing to fall. I don't ever remember seeing icicles like this on our clothesline since we moved to Kentucky.

Fall Trip to the Elk & Bison Prairie

Wayne and I always love to take a trip to see the leaves. Yesterday we invited Andi Reynolds, our new Executive Book Editor at AQS, to join us for a trip to the Elk & Bison Prairie at Land Between the Lakes (that's between Kentucky Lake and Lake Barkley) about 40 minutes from here. They have 32 elk and 69 bison on the prairie and I think we must have seen all of them.

We go so we arrive their about 4:30 p.m. when the animals start moving to the watering holes and feeding. You can also go at 7:00 a.m. but that's too early for me.

If you come to the Paducah area, it is a nice drive to get there, and the drive through the prairie is picturesque. We usually drive around at least three times because the animals move from one grazing area to another. We've been there enough now that we know most of the spots to look for them. I hope you enjoy my photos of our day at the Elk & Bison Prairie.

While the color in most of our trees hasn't been very vibrant this year in this area, the reds and yellows show up nice behind this elk. You can see how tall the prairie grasses get too.

This bull elk had a pretty nice rack.

Here is number 32 and her friends grazing under the trees. All of the elk have been tagged.

This group of females couldn't decide which way to go. The bull elk was way off to the right, and I think they didn't want to get too far from him so they went across the road and back again. We did get to hear one good bugle from one of the bull elk. I guess he was protecting his ladies.

We see other animals there too. Yesterday we saw a pair of turkeys just walking through the tall grasses. We also saw a pretty heron...but I was too slow on the trigger to get his picture.

Here's part of the herd spending the afternoon soaking up the sun. There were quite a few small ones among the group. Several were having fun rolling around in the dirt.

Sometimes the traffic had to stop and wait for the bison to cross the road. This one stood there for quite a while...like he was saying, "whose road is this anyway?"

This big fella was walking right along side our car...I was standing up through the moonroof on our car so I could shoot photos. Don't you wonder what he was thinking seeing this woman in a red sweatshirt taking his picture?