The die is cast

Last week I scurried around to complete my entry to Quilt National. I've entered QN at least 5 times and so far have not made the cut. In the past I've been much better prepared and didn't have to send my entry at the last minute. Not this time. I put the finishing touches on the 3rd entry last Monday and photographed it. QN seems to be a holdout in the digital world because it is only accepting slide entries. Took my slides to the local processing lab in downtown Baltimore to drop them off and discovered that they no longer have the 4 hour turnaround that they had in the past. The slides wouldn't be back until Friday.

Well, Friday still gave me enough time if I sent the entries FedEx 2 day delivery. The only problem was that on Friday I was leaving town for a weekend sewing retreat and didn't want to hang around until the end of the day. Luckily I was able to pick them up by 1pm. I had my entry all prepared: forms filled out, other slides labeled, check, return SASE, and the FedEx envelope and label prepared. I even had enough forethought to figure out where the nearest dropoff spot would be and it was less than 1 mile away from the lab.

And even though I designated 2 day delivery so that it would arrive today, the receive by deadline, it was delivered yesterday. And so I throw in my lot with the other 1800 or so entries. They said you could include an early notification postcard, which they send if you don't get in. In the past few years the news of who has been accepted has been out long before I ever received my postcard, so this year I didn't bother. The grapevine is alive and well, and working far better than the USPS.

And also, so as not to tempt the evil goddesses, I'm not posting a picture of any of what I entered.