A last minute quick trip to Houston - Part 2

Quilt market presentation sessions started on Friday, so we arrived at the convention center without getting lost (I was the one driving, so that explains why were didn't get lost! Although someone else might disagree with that! :)). We picked up our name-tags, met up with some Bernina staff, helped set up sewing machine for classes and then hung around the convention center for the rest of the day.

Saturday we walked and walked and walked the aisles all day. George Brown Convention Center is huge and there are rows and rows of vendors with their individual displays of fabric, patterns, notions, magazines and anything else related to quilting. One thing I do love about going to market, beside the fact of being able to see the newest fabrics and notions, are all the samples that decorate each booth. Just the samples and different techniques used give me so many ideas for various projects!

You can read more on the quilting/embroidery aspects of our trip on my embroidery blog here and here.

Joanna and I

We went back to High Fashion Fabrics Saturday evening since we now knew just how to get there. Actually it was a little different route since we were traveling from the convention center instead of our hotel. But I had planned ahead and that morning before leaving the hotel, pulled up several tabs on Google Maps for how to get from the convention center to High Fashion and then how to get from High Fashion back to the hotel.

It was only a couple of blocks from the convention center so we found it without any problem, but getting back to the hotel was a different story. I had that map on the computer, but for some reason the streets we were passing were not on that map! We ended up driving back to the convention center and then back to our hotel. We discovered that in our map planning for the week, we were so excited to get to where we were going that we always had a map of how to get there, but not always a map to get back. You would think that you would go back the way you came, but in downtown Houston there are so many one way streets that that is not always possible!

There's several things we learned about Houston - (1) their streets are just strange with all the one-way directions, (2) they have really short blocks, (3) they have the longest red lights we have ever been stopped at and (4) they have u-turn only lanes! The u-turn only lanes are quite hilarious because u-turns are legal in Texas anywhere. So why would you have u-turn only lanes??

At the convention center, you have to turn left at a stoplight to enter the parking garage. We always stopped at the light and it would take forever to turn green. In fact we never did see that light turn green - ever. The car ahead of us finally turned left on a red light, which I proceeded to do as well since the light was not changing. We learned later the guy in the car ahead of us asked a policeman if that light ever turned green, because he never saw it change either. The policeman said yes, it did and if you turned on a red light, you could get a ticket. So the better thing was to go to the next intersection (remember blocks are short, so it was only a few yards) and make a u-turn and then you would be turning right into the parking garage. So that's exactly what we did!

Really you can't fault us for all the traffic difficulties we had; it was the city we were in. Between all the one-way streets, short blocks, long red lights and u-turns, the city of Houston was definitely the cause of all our driving around.

Sunday morning we dropped by the convention center one last time to say our good-byes to Jeanne, Debbie and others at the Bernina booth and then headed for home. 12 hours is not nearly so long when you have someone to travel with and spend the time visiting and sharing. Not only did we enjoy the time spent in Houston (except for the driving around in circles part!), but also the encouragement we are to each other! It's amazing to see how God brought us together less than a year ago and how our friendship has grown since then.

me, Jeanne Delpit from Bernina, Joanna

Joanna and I are alike in so many ways; we are both uniquely normal. Not only are we unusually young to be sewing/quilting/embroidery professional teachers and to also be so involved in that as a hobby as well as a business, but even in our personalities and thinking we are very similar. I'm so thankful God brought such a wonderful friend into my life and the encouragement and challenge we are to each other both in our sewing endeavors as well as in our spiritual lives!

We have some fun memories from our trip such as my making plans to make plans (I have a feeling someone will never let me forget that!), stumbling upon Sally's Beauty Supply, driving around Houston and a few other details that only seem funny to us. But as Joanna told me on the phone in the very beginning, she didn't think I would look back on the time spent in Houston and regret going. To which she is exactly correct!