7:00am
Ugh! After a terrible night's sleep, I am up at 7am and trying hard to convince myself that I really do want to make it to my first scheduled lecture this morning. Margaret Rolfe is lecturing on "Two Hundred Years of Australian Quiltmaking", and I'm registered for it. Considering how poorly I have slept thus far (in a strange bed, minus my dear husband, and without a fan in my room for white noise, not to mention the elevator's dinging outside my door), I might as well get up.

A quick note on hotels providing coffee pots in their rooms: They seldom provide enough sugar for people who actually use it in their coffee. Of course, in my case, they forgot to replace the caffeinated coffee in the basket. When you're as tired as I am, decaf just isn't going to cut it. I mean, why bother?

Donna Lawicki has warned me about how hard it is to actually get breakfast at Au Bon Pain - ("I'll have a scrambled egg on a bagel." "I'm sorry we're out of that." "Okay, I'll have a plain bagel and some bacon." "I'm sorry we're out of that, too.") I've decided to just grab a Coke for my morning caffeine and a couple more Nutri-Grain bars and head off to catch the shuttle. Even though it's early, there are already a bunch of ladies waiting for it. It's going to be a busy day at Festival.

8:15am
My lecture doesn't begin until 9am, so I am very early. I am happy to just be able to sit on the floor outside the room and let my tired brain wake up a little. A Festival staffer won't let us in the lecture hall just yet, so one of the ladies waiting to go in decides to appoint herself the door guardian. Along comes two ladies who try to enter the hall, and they are told by the new guardian that they may not enter. One of the ladies identifies herself as the lecturer, so she is allowed inside. The guardian now feels more than a little sheepish for not knowing the lecturer.

9:00am
The lecture begins on time and is very interesting. Margaret Rolfe is an Australian quilt historian, and author of several books, including The Quilter's Ark. One of the quilt slides she shows is a quilt made by author Jane Austen. Quilting was the pasttime of ladies and Austen was a lady. Rolfe talked about how Australia has its roots as a penal colony, and how some English ladies took it upon themselves to teach the convict women en route to Australia how to make quilts. Not only would it provide them with useful skills, but it would also keep them out of trouble.

There were a few very funny quotes from quilts. My two favorite sayings were, "When a woman throws herself at a man's head, she seldom hits the mark" and "There will always be an England, as long as Scotland stands". One of the most interesting quilt labels was on a quilt made in Singapore by Australian women in a Chinese internment camp during WWII. They made a quilt for the men in the Japanese POW camp, as well as one each for the Americans and the Australians. On the label for the quilt to the Japanese camp, they made sure to say at the end, "It is advisable to dry clean". Seeing that made me laugh. Here are these women held hostage during the war, and just like quilters today, make sure to let the receipients know how to clean the quilt properly.

10:00am
One lecture down, and two to go. I have three hours until my next lecture, so I head downstairs to do some shopping and looking around. Of course, I head for our exhibit first of all. Yep, it's still there, and it still looks great. Time to spend some money. At some point I bump into Chanin and her sister-in-law who has driven in from San Antonio to join her for the day. We go around looking at exhibits and vendors together.

1:00pm
We're hungry, so we head up to the third floor in search of some lunch. I am SUPPOSED to be in a lecture right now, titled "Quilts of Illusion", but I am having too much fun looking at stuff and chatting with Chanin. A quick note on buying lunch at a convention: Don't do it. I just bought a simple taco salad and a 20oz Coke and paid $9 for it. $9!!! The thing is so infested with jalepeno pepper slices, that my mouth is on fire just thinking about it. I have to scarf it down fast, so I can get downstairs by 2pm.

2:00pm
After finishing lunch and stashing my backpack at the Sack Sitters booth, I head downstairs for my Quilt Angel time. I have volunteered to help out for a few hours by being a white glove Quilt Angel in our Y2K exhibit area. Here's the deal, I hang out in our exhibit and talk to people about our quilts for three hours and in exchange, I get a great Quilt Angel pin. Perfect. I probably would have paid THEM something to be able to do that. Without the white gloves, it would just have been some weird woman (me) stalking people in the exhibit area, following them around and spouting facts about the exhibit. That way is FAR too scary an experience for most Festival goers, hence the official Quilt Angel sign-up.

I am having a blast. People don't bother to read the printed material, so most are unaware of what makes the quilts so interesting. Each quilt in our exhibit has an interesting story behind it, and I am very excited to be able to share those stories with everyone who comes by. I simply look around until I see someone taking a particular interest in a quilt, I go over and start my speech, "Did you know that all the fabric for these quilts was traded entirely over the Internet?..." With each telling, the crowd starts with one or two people but grows to a good-sized group. People are fascinated.

It's a good thing none of the official Festival Staff are anywhere around. They would have a fit if they saw me letting people under the ropes to have their photo taken next to one of our quilts. Heck, I put this exhibit together. I know everyone trusts my judgement with their quilts, so I let the quilters under the ropes. They want to be able to point to their siggy in the quilt for the photo. Why not. By the end of the day, I have broken quite a number of the Quilt Angel rules. I hope they don't take my wings away.

The oddest thing which happened to me was when I spoke with a Japanese lady with a media badge on. She asked me to re-explain the exhibit. I gave her a piece of paper with our web address, my e-mail address, and my name on it. She gave me her business card, which was entirely in Japanese, except for the handwritten words "Quilt Japan" on it. Is it a magazine? Who knows. She takes my picture in front of my quilt, and asks if the story of the exhibit is on our website. I told her it was. I have NO idea if she understood the explaination I gave to her, since after every other word, she would say, "Okay." Personally, I studied Spanish for a good while, but I was always better able to read it than understand it spoken.

I have helped more ladies find their siggies in one of our quilts. They are so excited to find their own or a friend's name in our Siggy List in the scrapbook. I think we have inspired more than one Swapper to go home, pull out her squares, and actually finish her Y2K quilt. I am glad I bought a little notebook, since I have given out our web address and my name and e-mail address at least a dozen times or more today. I hope to receive photos of some of the Y2K quilts they have completed.

6:15pm
I was only supposed to be "on duty" until 5pm, but I just keep finding people to talk to. I am having so much fun, but I am dead on my feet and have a lecture at 6:30pm. Since I am feeling a bit guilty at skipping the other one, I decide that I want to make it to this last one. I turn in my white gloves and pick up my Quilt Angel pin, feeling very satisfied at a job well done.

6:30pm
The title of this last lecture is "The Relationship Between Drawing and Quiltmaking". I can't remember the lady's name, but the thrust of her lecture was that quilters could stand to learn a thing or two from thinking the way artists' think, giving consideration to Line, Negative Space, Perspective, Symbolism, and Light and Shadow. I didn't really enjoy this lecture as well as the one this morning. It somehow seems a bit pretensious to discuss quilts in this way, since a large number of the slides of "quilts" she showed, seemed more to be pieces of textile art rather than quilts. I don't really call a small collection of pieced bits of fabric, wrapped in chicken wire to be a quilt, but maybe that's just me.

7:15pm
The lecture was supposed to run until 7:30pm, but the lady rushed through it. She finished in 35 minutes, and quickly headed off to attend the Silver Star Salute dinner saluting quilter Roberta Horton. (I saw Roberta Horton in our exhibit earlier today, and I had to suppress the urge to tackle her and tell her all about our quilts. I didn't think she'd appreciate that.)

I am so sore and tired. Wouldn't you know that this would be the night I have to wait a half hour for the shuttle? I just want to get some dinner and soak in a tub.

9:00pm
Back in my room. It feels SO good to be back. After a bath and a sandwich, I just kick back to watch a little television. I'm going to meet Chanin and her sister-in-law in the lobby in the morning and go to breakfast together.

10:30pm
I call home before bed to make sure everything is running smoothly. All is well. I can't wait to get back home tomorrow night and sleep in my own bed.