Quilt Market Report: The First Day and Sample Spree

Okay, first things first I have to announce the winner of my (not-so-) little Daisy Chain giveaway! Here we go... the winner is Adrianne (Little Bluebell)! Congrats Adrianne, send me an email with your address and I'll get this little bundle off in the mail to you when I return home to Toronto.

And nextly (not a word I know!), I wanted to let you all know that my first interview for Toronto Craft Alert will be posted later today. I had the opportunity to interview the lovely Tascha Parkinson, an artist in Toronto; the interview is not up on the site yet so I can't post a proper link, but I will come back and edit this post once it has and I'm near a computer. That being said since I'm at Market, I may not be able to post the link for a bit so if you'd like you can just go to the Toronto Craft Alert website and see if the interview is there.

And now for the really good stuff...

My plane was delayed yesterday, but I still ended up in Minneapolis in the morning. Jennifer and Doe were waiting for me when I got off the shuttle and there was lots of hugging and loving going on! We went out for lunch, then hit Target (a place I've never been) and I bought a dress and some awesome Kate Spain napkins; I also went to Macy's for the first time!

We decided to get in line for sample spree super early yesterday - sample spree opened at 8pm and we were in line at 4pm. There were three lines, one for each of the three doors going in, and we were there so early that I was the first person in line outside the third door - woohoo!

Here I am outside the door making silly faces along with the sample sale sign. All of the good pictures where I'm actually smiling and stuff are on Doe's camera... of course the silly ones would be the only ones I have!

Here's one of the second line about an hour before the doors opened:

It was madness once the doors opened! Unfortunately I didn't get everything I wanted (Bliss and Fandango were the two I wanted the most but they were gone by the time I got to the Moda table), but I did get some really awesome stuff and I'll share pics later! You should have seen the way that some of the women were acting - shoving each other, grabbing stuff out of people's hands - it was pure craziness.

After sample spree was Fabric 2.0 - a meet up of bloggers and twitterers at a lounge in one of the hotels. It was a lot of fun and it was so nice to chat with people "in real life"!

Here's John (QuiltDad) and I! John rocks - he came and sat with us for a bit outside sample spree and gave us the low-down on where the 7 Islands table was so that we could get our Heather Ross. We also have plans for lunch today and it's gonna be fun!

Alright, I'm being told that I must get off the computer and get dressed so that we can get down to breakfast and then over to Market! Today is the first official day of Market and then we have the Moda party tonight - I'm going to have so much more to write about!