quilts…

A tale of two quilt stores (or three or four…)

I don’t write a lot about my work life, which is in retail sales. However, I have recently acknowledged out loud that I will be approaching my 20th Christmas season. Which means I have gone through at least one other “it’s the economy, stupid” cycle. (Or competition. Or is it customer service? Or simply over-saturation?)

The competition theory can’t be argued. Once upon a time I worked at the ONLY branch of Bath and Body Works situated inside the five boroughs of New York. Yep, us on Staten Island, we WERE the New York City store. And it was good. We had, of course, loads of customers who worked in Manhattan. But they came to us—after work, on weekends, and shopped.

And then the company decided it was ready to join the Disney-fication of Manhattan. It opened a huge store in the mall under the World Trade Center. It was a BIG store back then for them. I was one of the employees that helped them to set up before opening.

And they opened. And then, terribly surprisingly to the “Powers that Be,” but not at all to ME, my sales went down. Alas, not only did my sales go down, but for a time, those on their lunch hour in the Towers would pop down to BBW and purchase. Only to decide over the weekend that the scent was wrong, or some such. And since they were headed to the mall ANYWAY, well, they made us their return center. Ultimately, it led to my leaving the position because I was unable to maintain a +30% volume from the year before the WTC store opened.

Yeah.

Not much to do with quilting, you are right. I am getting to that (come on, you KNOW I blether on forever!!!)

Timmy and I took a trip to San Diego over the summer. And my girlfriends and I took a jaunt to some quilt stores in North Carolina last week. I Googled quilt shops in California, because HE Googled Car Museums. I found a bunch. And one, I even found had a Car Museum on the next corner. Bingo! It was out in El Cajon, and so we set our GPS eastward and headed out to the hot part of town.

We arrived a little after 4 pm. The sign said they closed at 5 pm. Now, being in retail for so long (and having had the opportunity, mostly repressed) to harass people out of the store so we can get on with it, I was aware that I couldn’t meander to the degree I might normally.

The store was FABULOUS. I am talking probably the nicest quilt store I have ever been in, bar none. HUGE, but comfortable. The color stories set through out, the overall feeling was like I had found my home away from home. It didn’t take long at all for my arms to become filled to over-flowing with bolts of fabric. I’m talking maybe 20 minutes and I had spent over $100 in single yard pieces. I was in LOVE.

And then I got to the counter, and the love affair was over. A cursory “Hello” was uttered to me. Not the simplest acknowledgement of any kind to any of the fabrics I was purchasing being one of their favorites, or very popular, or what are you making or …..well– or anything. I could have been at the deli counter at a supermarket.

Now if you’ve never bought fabric that might not shock you. But when you are buying fabric, even at Joanne’s’ where I had worked for 4 years, there was usually an interaction. After all, one Fabri-holic to another, you know, we find comfort in the fact the people in a quilt shop *UNDERSTAND* our addiction. They feed it. They caress it.

They usually comment on a color combination, or wonder what you are going to do with it (ANSWER—Did I have to DO something with it??)

So, while I stood in my solo contemplation of my lovelies being cut to size, I spotted a color combination I hadn’t noticed yet, and said to the cutter as I was picking up my sizable stack, “I’m just going to go and see if I can’t find a bit of that green…it would be awesome with this selection and I hadn’t even noticed!”

Her response—“Well, you have a few minutes yet. We close at 5.” Not, “Which shade of green? You can find them in the room to your left.” Not, “You are so right!! That would be beautiful together.”

Nope, ‘just hurry the hell up so we can go home.’

Double yeah.

Now, I have thought on mentioning the name of the shop. But since I want to write a nice little anecdote about another shop, and want to mention THEIR name, I feel I probably should. After all, I have told a lot of people how unhappy I was with the treatment I received at this California shop (Rosie’s Calico Cupboard)

Now, a few thoroughly enjoyable experiences.

We started out our quilt trip by collecting my NJ friend from the train station in Richmond so we could have a quick hit of quilt shopping before we left for North Carolina. We stopped in at Quilting Adventures, and of course she was bowled over by Joyce’s selection. We had a couple of wonderful impromptu chats with other women roaming about and found a fellow Staten Islander in between the bolts of fabric (maintaining my belief Staten Island is the center of the universe for some odd reason—or at least it plays well in the Game of Six Degrees of Separation)

A lovely little place where we spent Saturday morning was called “Knit One Smock Too” in Winston-Salem, NC. They have only the smallest of selection of quilting materials, as you can you tell by their name. My friend, a NY transplant, had us down last week for a fun-filled “quilting” weekend. (We did NO quilting, other than quilt shopping. Which is as my husband expected.) ‘Us’ being me from Virginia and our friend from Red Bank, NJ.

This shop was small, and it offers a variety of needlework arts. We walked in and the atmosphere screamed ‘Welcome.’ A few women were sitting around a table chatting about starting a Sit and Stitch. A woman came in and sat down with her project, stuck on a stitch and just knew someone would take the time to talk her through her difficulties.

We oohed and aahed through the store (we are NOT stealth shoppers) and the owner quickly, politely and without us feeling like she was hard selling, showed us add-ons to projects, and even suggested, with sincerity, that if we came down again, to call her and she could schedule a PRIVATE CLASS in any of the items we were drooling over. It was a place I could imagine stopping by of a Saturday morning with coffee for everyone and just settling down to hang out and be amongst kindred spirits…

Oh YEAH!

We also went to Maryjo’s, a large fabric store, which doesn’t have the atmosphere, but was dizzying in its array of all things bolted. And while they were not chatty, they were friendly and the customers were too….

Why was I writing this? Dunno. It just was something I had observed. And I was lovingly folding all my new fabric and it all seemed to come together in my head.

Retail this Christmas will probably be hard. I am already having to explain to my powers that be that really, the customers who COME to my counter, they mostly leave happy, and with a purchase…but I can’t make them COME to the counter. And that seems to be a point of disagreement on their part. I know I do my level best and make an effort to find the good in the customers I deal with. And let me tell you, from the other side of the counter, if you have never been there, it’s not the easiest thing to do. And I feel I have trained my staff in a similar fashion. So, it’s now waiting on you, the consumer. The one thing I can’t control.

So, yeah.

INFO dumping…

I have about a half dozen thoughts, that could be posted tonight, but I don’t know if I’m really in the mood to flesh any one of them out at the moment, so I think just a random sampling of what’s rolling around in my head would be enough (or possibly WAY too much for some)

So, without further ado and with absolutely no order to the listing….

1-flowers/animals…

2-writing

3-quilting

4-joy?

5-anniversary

6-computer

Last week Timmy and I went to the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden and I had a blast taking some lovely floral shots. That you can’t see. Because of(let me see) # 6. The computer. Right, recall that computer I got from Joe for my birthday? It’s great. Wonderful (no, Really Joe, i MEAN IT, Thanks!!!) However, it and I have had a difference of opinion on where I store software, whether I wanted all 110,000 messages sent to my new OUTLOOK, etc.

But now, basically, I am good to go. Except for the monitor which is small (I didn’t think it was, I thought it the size of a house, but the SCREEN part of the monitor is SMALL!!!) and the fact that my Photoshop Elements claims a file is missing and won’t upload. So, I just ordered myself Elements 6.0 and when it arrives, I will be able to share images (I mean, I COULD…but I shot in RAW, and they are HUGE…..)

Ok, that was the flowers, part one. Part two is that I planted seeds on Saturday last, and so of course the deluge came. I am relatively certain that most of my seeds were washed away, and I will see them in the gully (sorry Timmy) or in some unsuspecting neighbors yard. I am talking something like 4 inches of rain on Sunday, ok?? A little tiny seed probably didn’t have a chance. 

In any event, it was all part of my annual effort to prove I AM NOT A PESSIMIST!!! I insist on planting, I am sure success will be mine, this time. I forget, except intellectually, what it feels like in the summer, at 103 in the front southern facing yard. I forget that the weeds are barely capable of surviving the voles/moles that are tunnelling through our entire front yard. ( I know there is a difference between the two creatures, but if I google them I will have to look at some icky creature. Its ok, thanks)

I determined after 4 years ( I AM teachable) not to spend too much money on plants, because it seems they just cant make it. I bought seeds. Except for two plants. One of which was stolen. Yep, yanked up right out of the garden a gaping hole left. It was either a vole/mole or a squirrel because they left the name tag.

 Speaking of squirrels. I am thinking of opening a spa for them, right here in my back yard. Location, location, location!  I watched a squirrel yesterday collecting seeds from the scene of the crime the day before, when he or his cohorts were caught hanging by their rear legs, and swinging their bodies up at an unnatural angle in order to stick their head into the bird feeder. The cheap bird feeder I bought when I decided we would see how the birds liked our yard, which they have promptly broken by all their acrobatics.  Well, the jury is out on the birds, but the squirrels are guilty!!! 

After said squirrel gorged himself on stolen seed, he pranced into my screened in gazebo, stood on the adirondak chair and stopped for a drink of water that had pooled on the side table. Then he proceeded to climb up onto the corner shelves of the gazebo, and stretch out for a nap under the shade of the roof.

 Ok, so WRITING. I finally have completed an outline for The Big Chill,  my fan fic in progress for over a year. It’s down to 6 songs. I know (kind of) whats going to happen in each of them!! hooray!! ( wow, I finished a thought in 3 sentences!!)

Onto quilting. Ah, quilting. My other love. I have started three (shush, you DID NOT hear that) projects. And have made headway on a fourth. I am working currently on a Wild Goose Chase made entirely of batiks and black. I have one-third of the blocks finished.

I started (although I swore I would wait)  on my Sylvia’s Bridal Sampler quilt. Two blocks so far. But there are 140. So I have some time yet to go. Eithne and Robin think they will join me on this journey.

And of course I FINALLY started on the challenge quilt Eithne proposed. I have 1 of four named blocks completed. Waiting on receipt of the other 5 block names.

And then there is the TQP challenge, 2008. Which as a challenge goes is easy. Using your initials, choose three colors and make a quilt. Wonderful. Easy-peasy. Except I designed the quilt. And then messed up the measurements and cut and stitched 24 nine patch blocks too small.  No, not really too small, just too small for me to do do the alternating block as a paper pieced block. I am ready to shoot myself after the first 2/3 of one block!!! So I re-drafted the pattern to enlarge that block to 10 inches from 6 so that I would still have hair left when I was finished.  I do have to master Paper Piecing if I expect to get through Sylvia. But — easy steps.

Joy?– Or control? What causes, in this day and age, with all of the incredibly serious, earth changing events currently at play,…. what causes someone to lose their minds over the minutiae of life? Is it because they truly DON’T have any worries?? They know of no-one suffering a great illness, or worrying whether their job is secure, or has family in Iraq, or, or, or…..

Today, a customer called me. (I custom frame art) She had brought her art BACK to me to re-paper, because the BACK of the frame was wavy, bubbly, whatever. I agreed it didn’t look awesome as far as that all went, and  was flummoxed by the adhesive not sticking. I re-did them myself this time, so I KNOW what they looked like. Mind you, the frame was great, the stitching, etc, not a single complaint on any of the 5 pieces. But she swore the ‘only’ thing she could see whenever she walked by them was the gap between the paper and the frame. (I know, WHERE are they hanging anyway?? AT what angle is she viewing them?)

Her husband picked them up the other day. We looked them over and found them acceptable. Today she got home from her vacation and called me, yelling at me, wanting to know what I could do to fix them, what kind of a guarantee did we have, what kind of materials am I using? You get the picture, right? Remember, from the front they are PERFECT. It’s not as if scraps of backing paper are sticking randomly out. It is the back. The side that faces the WALL. 

So, the question I leave you with…. is this person truly that Anal? Does she really think this is an IMPORTANT issue?  Or is her world spinning so fast off of its axis that THIS is the only thing she thinks is within her control?

Anniversary… SIX, yep count’em, SIX years ago Sunday  we got married. And we agree we are so well suited. Indeed I went out yesterday and bought Timmy a gift. You see he has recently taken up Golf.

And today, I watched as he emptied out his trunk when he got home. Yep, I stood there and watched him pull out of his trunk a golf bag. And not ANY OLD golf bag, but indeed the exact one whose twin is currently hiding in the guest room, now apparently awaiting return…

Yep, we belong together!

The Ides of March….and other ramblings

well, no this has NOTHING at all to do with foreboding,  but Happy Ides of March sounds off, don’t you think? …And I am about two days too early for St Pat…but then again, I am Irish year round–not to mention a Patricia and  a Green,  so Happy St Patricks Day early….

I see my last post was for Dad’s birthday…that seems so long ago, until you figure that was way close to the end of the month–oh, heck; yeah its been a long time since I have updated.

 No real excuses. I celebrated my 43rd birthday with considerably less fanfare than my 42nd…(42 being the meaning and purpose of life and all that… you can check out last years blog for how I spent my day)

As an early birthday gift, every year I spend the weekend before at the Mid-Atlantic Quilt show in Hampton.  This year I finally made the leap and purchased a ‘real’ machine. The Viking Sapphire 830, with a 10″ throat, for me to hopefully be able to master machine quilting this year.  Thanks Nana, who left me a small sum of money, that I used for the purchase. I wanted to buy something she would approve of with the money, and not allow it to fritter away on those silly bills.

And as a late birthday gift, my brother-in-law Joe gave me a computer. Yep, really. He tinkers with them (hey it keeps him off the streets) and he cobbled together a pretty nifty set-up with a monitor that needs its own room…but free is free, and greatly appreciated….and I have almost found enough room in my studio for it. That has required the wholesale shifting of almost every item in there. Good practice for spring cleaning.

Speaking of spring cleaning, you know that my husband is reminded often that he did NOT marry me for my domestic prowess. (as this is a PG place WHY he married me is NONE of your business  LOL) I maintain that housework belongs at the BOTTOM of any list of things to do. I have a sign in my kitchen that reads “A clean kitchen is a sign of a wasted life!”

But did you know that housework is dangerous; possibly even fatal to electronics? Last week, like the good wife I am, I decided to do laundry (and NO, it wasn’t ONLY because you had to climb over the dirty stuff to get into the bathroom). Well, Timmy had been out in the garage playing cars, and had tossed his dirty clothes onto the pile. I was doing towels and sweats and in they went.

Lo and behold the next morning, who is muttering all through the house, trying to figure out where his Nano went?  Now, just let me stop for a minute and tell you that Timmy is just this side of OCD about emptying his pockets.

Yep, you guessed it. I washed Nano.

Turns out the gods were with me, and it’s not a particularly rare thing to have happen.  I googled washing your nano of course and discovered it was probably most thoroughly dead, but sit it out for a few days to dry before you bury it was the advice I located.

And do you know it worked? About 4 days after it’s tumble through the machine (it was rescued before the dryer) Timmy plugged it in and it worked! Catastrophe averted.

But I’m still a little leary about housework.

So, what else do we have going on this spring? *(yes, the nice thing about here is it’s mostly spring…my daffodils are almost GONE already)

Heading north next weekend to catch up with family for Easter, Connecticut here we come.  Spend a day in Manhattan, and possibly pop by Dad’s house on the way back to see how he’s doing. 

 Give a good thought to him when you have a chance— he just had some lung cancer surgeries, but he’s fiesty and ready for battle…. you can catch up with him and keep a closer eye on his life by checking in at http://countryjoesblog.com/ , since he shares more readily with people there whats going on medically.