An Auspicious Start to Kindergarten and Sugar Creek Surprise!

So, yesterday, as we were walking out the door to head to my daughter's kindergarten orientation, an earthquake shook our house!  We were walking through the garage and I heard the bricks and mortar in our chimney crunching as various lawn implements that were hanging from hooks in the garage started swaying.  Whoa!!!  What is even more amazing is that the epicenter was in Mineral, VA.  Who has ever heard of that place?  Me!  My parents live in that very zip code on Lake Anna.  They've owned a lake house there since I was in high school and formally retired there several years ago.  Everyone is okay (there is a nuclear power plant on the lake), but it sure was an interesting chain of events--is the universe telling us that the world is going to be rocked by my super-wonderful daughter? 

Here she is checking out her new classroom.

And, in a stroke of luck, we happened to be dining out Sunday night next to Joanns, and lookie what I found:

I am kind of curious to see how people review these fabrics.  The lady who cut the fabric had to remove two sections that had pulls in the weave and I thought overall it was less soft, thick, and satiny compared to the first line of fabric.  But that's just me...

Package from SC

Look at these pretties that arrived in a box from South Carolina this afternoon.  A big thank you to my sister-in-law Robin!!!  My Joanns has had the same exact 5 DS Quilts prints since May.  I finally broke down and bought a few fqs on Etsy, but then I got the brilliant idea to ask all my family members who live in various locales on the East Coast to check their shops for me.  And lo and behold...my sil found 15 of the prints at her Joanns!!! 

I am teaching a quilting class (!!!) through Parks and Rec starting in September and plan to use these fabrics as my example.  I think it's a nice compromise between designer fabric and affordability, so that students can feel free to shop at Joanns or at the LQS.  Quilting can be an expensive hobby!  I also happen to follow a blog by an Australian, and DS Quilts has 10 Australian-only exclusive prints in this line.  So, we are going to be swapping some fabrics!  How exciting! 

Well, I plan to do a little sewing in the next two weeks to get items completed for two swaps I am participating in, but other than that, my sewing machine will be kind of quiet.  My oldest daughter, Beatrix, starts kindergarten...sniff...and so we are going to commemorate this big step with a vacation to Niagara Falls.