In the hour or two before the Preview Night at the Houston Quilt Festival, groups of friends sit at tables or on benches up on the second and third floors of the convention center. They pore over the show catalog as intently as if cramming for a final exam. They are studying the lists of vendors, plotting a course that will get them to the most desirable goods before everyone else finds them. The quilts will be there till Sunday evening, but new 60's-style prints, overdyed fragments of old kimono or wine-red beads in the right size may not. It's the old stuff, with a sense of a past life that gets me in trouble every time. I head to Jennifer Zanetti's booth, to examine French passementeries and Belle Epoque metallic lace. Who knew that pompoms came in so many beautiful colors? Can I live in your booth Jennifer? No? Well, this carefully-chosen bag of treasures will get me through till next year.