IQF Adventure with Kathy

This is a story without photos, sorry!

My sister Kathy and I went to the Cincinnati International Quilt Festival on Friday, as I mentioned last post.  The adventure began when we spent some time getting lost downtown before finally locating the Duke Energy Center.  We were on a four lane wide, one-way street, getting ready to turn right into a parking structure.  There was a nice little red car in front of us.  The driver had to open her door and step out to take the ticket from the automated machine.  She then got in and tried to move her car forward but was at an odd angle and was going to go up over the curb.  She got out and said she didn't know how to fix that.  Kathy put on her emergency flashers, got out to direct the lady in backing up and the lady tried but still couldn't turn into the driveway.  She was afraid to go over the curb.  She ended up handing her keys to Kathy to have her pull the car forward!  Meanwhile, I'm sweating bullets in the passenger seat of our vehicle, but luckily no one (and no police) came up behind us.  We proceeded up a few levels for an empty parking spot and the lady began to park right beside us. She got out and had Kathy help again by taking the keys and pulling her car into the narrow parking spot next  to a cement pillar, joking that she would need to find us again when it was time to leave.

The gal explained to Kathy and me that she was not a quilter, but her friend had written a book and was signing it in a booth, but she only knew the booth number and not how to get to it.  Kathy, in typical fashion, told the lady that we would take her there.  We introduced ourselves and learned her name was Donna, as we headed over the skywalk to the building, chatting and laughing all the while.  Inside the convention center, we could look down onto the Festival floor, but of course the booth we were looking for was directly beneath the skywalk.

Kathy and I went to buy tickets and look for open classes and got separated from Donna, who was using the facilities, but we met up with her again at the show entrance  We headed to the booth for Back Door Quilts, where we met her friend Brian Haggard signing his book, Crazy-Quilted Memories.  Brian turned out to be a really fun guy, an interior decorator and muralist in addition to book author.  Kathy, in her usual exuberant way, told how we came to be at his booth, asked a lot of questions, bragged on my blog, and we had a great time hearing stories behind his photo transferred family pictures and the lovely embroidery and embellishments he used.  I bought a book which he signed beautifully with an illustration.  We finally made our goodbyes and Kathy gave a literal shout-out of "This is the coolest book I've ever seen!", to entice the masses to come look.  Brian thanked us for "helping his crazy friend" Donna, which of course got a laugh.  We did not see Donna again and when we left, after 7 pm, her car was gone.  There did not appear to be any red paint scraped off onto the concrete pillar so we assumed she did just fine backing out :)

The postscript to this story was Saturday, at the end of a long and fun day of Festivaling, Kathy and I cruised by the Back Door Quilts booth on our way out, to take a look at Brian's samples hanging there. The booth right next door was selling felt balls and as we were looking over those,  got talking to the booth vendor.   Once again Kathy was her exuberant self and the vendor said, "Oh, you were here yesterday at the book signing, right?"  I had to laugh--I have a memorable sister!