How I Met Bonnie Hunter

My husband and I went on vacation last week and drove along the Blue Ridge Parkway, end to end. My husband is the vacation planner in the family. He figures out the itinerary, places to stay and interesting things to do along the way, taking into account the requests and interests of the family members embarking on the trip. On this trip, I managed to add in a surprise detour of my own, without consulting him first!

 

We had plans to visit Old Salem, the historic district of Winston-Salem, North Carolina.  Since I follow the Quiltville Blog, I knew that Bonnie Hunter lives in the area and that she was home the day we were going to Old Salem. The night before our visit to Old Salem, I sent off an email to Bonnie to see if I could possibly meet up with her to purchase some copies of her latest book, More Adventures with Leaders and Enders.  I told my husband what I was up to after clicking on the send button.  He thought I was nuts!  She will never answer you, he said.

 

15 minutes later, my phone vibrated as an email from Bonnie Hunter arrived in my inbox.  She offered to meet me somewhere so that I could purchase the books and have a short visit.  After a few emails back and forth, it was decided that we would meet at 11am in the parking lot at this restaurant:

 

As we waited for Bonnie to arrive, I received a text message from Cathy, a friend at home, who had noticed on Bonnie's blog that she was meeting a Canadian quilter that morning to deliver some books, asking if I was that Canadian quilter.  YUP!  It was me!

Bonnie had a busy day planned as she had lots to do to get ready for her trip to Italy later that week but she found a few minutes in her day to come and see me!  How fun!  Bonnie arrived, right on time, books in hand with a sharpie ready for signing!

We talked about our trip--driving the road through Great Smokey Mountains  National Park, along the Blue Ridge Parkway and then through Shenandoah National Park.  My husband took pictures with my phone and her phone so that we could both document our rendezvous.

When Bonnie heard that we were spending the afternoon at Old Salem, she recommended a stop at the Winkler Bakery to buy some thin cookies. If you are reading this post, Bonnie, I want you to know we bought the Old Salem Snack Pack with samples of 4 different types of thin cookies (sugar, chocolate, walnut and ginger snaps) as well as two types of cheese stars (plain and spicy). 

 

 

So far, we have tried the cheese stars and the walnut cookies--delicious!

 

 

I asked if Bonnie could recommend a quilt store in the area that we could visit after seeing Old Salem.  She told us about "Sew Original".  We added this stop to our itinerary for the later in the day.

I had to get a picture of Bonnie with her van and her vanity plate "Qultvlle" and the sticker on her window "got quilting?" before she had to race off to an appointment.  We had a wonderful visit!  Thanks for making time to see us when we were in Winston-Salem, Bonnie!

By the way, the quilt store was well stocked and I did a good bit of stash enhancing there which I will show in a future post.  The resident "guard dog" Shelby, greeted us at the door.

 

 

(Shelby is very famous--she has been on the Quiltville blog before when her owner and Bonnie got together for a sewing day!)

Bonnie posted a picture of the two of us on Facebook and her blog. Here is the link to Bonnie's blogpost.