Our first "Party with Patrick at Sea" cruise!

With everything that's going on right now (all GOOD), I could sure use a vacation. I rarely take them; opting to combine work with travel when it's possible. We often have classes or retreats in the areas we visit and I like that. It keeps me from getting bored being in one place for too long! I'm a bit of a workaholic but that's because I love what I do and like to be very hands-on with my business.

The perfect opportunity to combine work and pleasure came up last year and I jumped on it. I've never been on a cruise and wanted to give it a try. Ten days at sea could make me a little stir crazy so the perfect part of this opportunity is that I get to work a couple of those days teaching some quilters how to make a couple of my fall designs. We're taking Party with Patrick to sea and cruising the northeast coast from New England to Canada for a fall colors tour sponsored by The Yankee Quilter quilt shop with Quilt Retreat at Sea. It sounds ideal to me because I love New England AND fall. (It's hard to find any fall color in Phoenix except for the usual sage or tan.)

This all starts tomorrow morning when we get on a plane for Philadelphia where we're meeting our good friend, Ann, to spend a day with her before she takes us to the ship in New Jersey. I can't wait because we had such a great time with Ann last year around this time touring the autumn countryside, hitting some great shops and restaurants. (Don't miss this restaurants link. It's a GREAT place Ann took us last year and we MUST go back!)

I'm going to try take time for blogging about this trip a bit. I'm not the best at keeping up with any kind of social media but I'll definitely make a good effort to get some photos and highlights of the trip posted here for those who wish they could come along or would like to next time. We make it a point to have a good time wherever we go and I know that the group of quilters we're traveling with will guarantee that. So I hope I can capture some of it for you all here.

The ship sails on Thursday and, if I'm not a seasick mess, I promise to keep you posted!

Cheers,
Patrick