Hey, all! Welcome back from the Great Internet Outage of 2024! As you might know, Primitive Gatherings along with several other businesses in our area, experienced an Internet service outage that started on Wednesday evening, and ended up lasting until sometime last night. Needless to say, not being able to connect to the web was a huge wrench in our gears that basically affected every aspect of the business. Not only were we unable to answer our phones, process online orders, or reply to emails, our shipping department was also pretty much completely disabled – and all at no fault of our own. Talk about frustrating! I was told the outage was due to something called a “fiber break…” Ok? Sounds annoying – at it was!!! LOL! Either way, I am relieved to tell you that our most recent bump in the road has passed, and that we working as hard and fast as we possibly can to get caught up and back to what we call “normal.” Can you say, “T.G.I.F.?!?

Despite the near-disaster the temporary loss of technology briefly caused, it’s still Friday and the Twilight Stars Quilt-Along must go on – especially since we’re so close to the finish line!!! If you’re on track with the QAL schedule, you should have 86 completed blocks so far, with 14 (seven weeks worth) left to go. Moving forward with Week #44, you may now add block numbers 46 and 66 to the assignment list!

Another aspect of the business that our little Internet crisis messed with yesterday, was obviously our LIVE and ComentSold schedule. If you’re a fan of my STITCH with Lisa Bongean show, I apologize for not being able to broadcast as usual. Our intention was to come to you LIVE from The Gathering where special guest collage quilter, Laura Heine is currently teaching a full house. To improvise around the situation, Kali filmed our chat instead, and will be weaving it into a nice little video for your viewing pleasure as soon as she can work it in. Watch for that on my STITCH with Lisa Bongean YouTube channel sometime early next week!

Annnd of course, with no LIVE show there was also no prize announcement on Thursday, so let’s do it now! A huge thank you and congratulations goes out to Jane Semrau! We are finally starting to see some real signs of spring here in WI, and your pretty purple flowers gave me hope that it’s truly here. For that – you get a prize! Thanks for sharing.

Remember, if you’re participating in the Twilight Stars Quilt-Along, all you have to do to for a shot at your own prize is post a photo of your completed blocks for the week along with the required book, Triangle Gatherings and Primitive Gatherings Triangle Paper included in the picture. You can post it on either our Facebook or Instagram pages, or both! Just remember to also include the hashtag #TwilightStarsQAL in the photo as well. The winner for Week #42 is Kathy Taber Frances! Beautiful job on your blocks AND your Easter décor!

Speaking of prizes, two more of them are also going out as a way to say thanks for leaving comments on the blog last week. They make my day! Deb M. and Bex T. – check your emails! You are the this week’s lucky prize winners!!!

I hope you have a wonderful weekend! I have a stack of projects on my to-do list so my intention is to lock myself in my sewing room at home so I can put a good-sized dent in it. I’m looking forward to it! The weather is supposed to be warm on Sunday, so maybe if I get enough done and it’s not too windy, I’ll reward myself with a bike ride or a float in the kayak. We’ll see. Take care, have fun, and get some stitching done! I’ll see you next week. ~Lisa