A meeting in San Diego 10-27-07

I drove to San Diego today (Saturday) for a meeting of the Visions Art Quilt Associates, which is an affiliate of the Visions Art Quilt Gallery. The group meets about every other month for the purpose of letting all the Visions members and interested people visit, share ideas, share work and usually to hear a short program relating to our quiltmaking interests. I haven't attended during the summer and wanted to see people I haven't seen and catch up with what the group is doing. The attendance was low - because of the disruption of so many lives by the fire and also due to people having gone to Market and Festival in Houston. I learned sadly that three Visions people have lost their homes and at least half a dozen were evacuated, but had been able to return to their intact houses. Some said they had to attend the meeting just to put a little normalcy in their lives. We had a fascinating presentation on quilt appraisals by Julia Zgliniec who is a certified quilt appraiser (in fact, MY certified quilt appraiser) and past president of Visions. I go to Julia for TCQC appraisals because she has long exposure to both traditional and contemporary quilts. She was there for the first Visions in 1987 - her twenty years of involvement is a plus in my book!

On the way home I zipped off the highway at Oceanside to see the work in progress on the Oceanside Museum of Art where the biennial International Visions exhibit is held. The construction will be finished in time for Visions - 2008 coming up next fall and will greatly expand the gallery space available.

There were sprinkles periodically all the way home, which must be a huge help to the firefighters and the humidity last evening was 81% - up from 9% last Sunday! But the fires are still burning, so there was smoke in the air in some areas, but not enough to cause me a problem. I was amazed that the fire burned right up to the I-5/San Diego Fwy at Camp Pendleton, even though I had heard that there were closures on Sunday and Monday. I took some pictures as I drove along and posted them in an album that you can access at http://picasaweb.google.com/DELQLTS/FirestormOnI5AtInspectionStation102707

The weather is warmer today, but will be mostly in the high 70s with more drizzle predicted for late tomorrow. Next weekend the winds are suppose to visit us again, so keep your fingers crossed that there are no fires to burn everything that hasn't been burned already!