Usually when I travel, I take a stash of cut-out bits and pieces of dolls’ clothes to sew. There’s almost always “down time,” no matter what the trip entails, and I use that time to sew doll clothes.

On my way to the IANDS conference in Chicago at the end of August, I did some sewing on the plane, and I did a little sewing at the conference itself, but quite honestly, the past three weeks have been a whirlwind of travel with very little time to sew. (In case you had forgotten, IANDS stands for International Association for Near-Death Studies.)

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So what did I return with? Well, I’ve got some lovely stories to tell about the IANDS conference, including some of the celebrities I saw and some of the just-plain-old-wonderful people I met.

But I didn’t get very much sewing done. I was having too much fun learning and growing!

I learned so much at the IANDS conference, that it can’t be covered in today’s blog post. There’s too much! So it will have to wait for another day — or several days.

Shortly after I returned from the IANDs conference, I made a trip from my home in Idaho, to the city of Seattle Washington, for the PNWA Writers’ Conference. PNWA stands for Pacific Northwest Writers’ Association.

I’ve attended that conference before, and I usually take away some wonderful tools to help me in my writing projects. Yes, I got tips for writing articles for this website, but I also gathered ideas for future articles for Doll Castle Magazine, a digital and physical magazine in which I regularly publish articles.

And as some of you may recall, I’ve written a memoir about the three near-death experiences I’ve had, and there were some juicy take-aways from the PNWA conference that will help me re-shape my memoir project as well.

After I left Seattle, I went back to my old stomping grounds, where I was born and lived until I was ten years old, in the city of Vancouver, Washington. I payed a brief visit to the land I grew up on. It used to be farm ground. It’s now a Home Depot.

I thought seeing that land would make me feel sad, but actually, I found the trip to that property very enlightening. I left with a sense of hope and a vision for revising the final chapter of my memoir. Again, the details of that story will have to wait for another day, as there’s a lot to share.

Some very exciting news came about during this trip! I found out that my friend Wendy Kendall — a friend I’ve known for several years — has had two romance novels published with Harlequin! I’m very happy for her!

Wendy is an expert when it comes to purses, so her romance novels have themes that deal with collectible purses and bags. If you love to read a good romance novel (or if you love a nice Louis Vuitton or Vera Bradley bag), go check out her book, Kat Out of the Bag, which is available on Amazon as part of her hot-off-the-presses series, In Purse-Suit! (Watch for new titles in the series coming soon!)

On the sewing front, if you make and/or sell bags or purses, you should really connect with Wendy Kendall on Instagram.  And if you like to hear about good mysteries, Wendy’s podcast on YouTube is called Kendall & Cooper Talk Mysteries. I think you’ll find that Wendy is a very smart lady.

She and I once taught a class on the use of social media for the writers at the PNWA conference. She was a super fun businesswoman to collaborate with, and I couldn’t be happier about her successful book deal!

While I was traveling, I also went on a shopping spree with my oldest daughter, who is currently living and working in Portland, Oregon. We visited OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry), a community garden (where we ate black tomatoes), and a neat little shop which offers second-hand craft supplies, called SCRAP Creative Reuse.

If you live in the Portland/Vancouver metropolitan area, I highly recommend visiting SCRAP Creative Reuse. They have used sewing patterns for sale, as well as, fat quarters, and lots of sewing notions, all at a discounted price. It’s a second-hand store, so buying from SCRAP helps the environment.

So in brief, I got very little sewing done on this trip, even though I brought along a whole sewing basket filled with doll clothes to make, everywhere I went. I was just too busy having a fabulous time to slow down and sew…

But don’t worry. I have a ton of sewing projects and free patterns in store for you in the coming weeks, as my summer was filled with sewing and pattern design in June and July.

Do you sew when you travel? What tips and tricks do you have to share? What do you bring with you when you go on vacation? A tin full of sewing supplies? A sewing basket? A portable sewing machine? Please leave a comment. I’m very curious!

Today’s blog post skimmed the surface of all the adventures I’ve had over the past three weeks or so. What stories would you like me to delve into a little deeper? What are you curious about?