1st weekend Open House

For the past month we have been having warm dry weather. So of course, with our first Open House weekend coming up, the weather forecast changed on Thursday to cold, heavy rain, and wind all three days! Not exactly conducive to getting people to come out. As it turned out, it mostly just rained in the mornings and nights at least there at Houston Studio Glass. Coupled with the fact that there are many events going on the first weekend in December, we had our smallest turnout ever. People didn't even show up for the glass blowing demonstrations. You would think that as a result it would have been a miserable show and it was really for everyone else, well except for Kathy and Dick whose studio it is and who always do OK with their small glasses, paperweights, ornaments and small vases, but we did pretty well with our 5 sales, mostly because we sold this one

and two other moderately priced pieces. Usually it's the other way around.

So, last Thursday, we drove in and got set up. We took a different spot than the one we have occupied for the 15 years or so we've been participating in the Open House. Usually we are the first ones as you walk in the door which means we are the cold and wind break for the next display. This year Kathy asked us if we wanted to move further in and I said YES! especially since I was setting up my display differently this year.

We always have a Friday evening preview from 6 – 9 PM and so since I wanted to get there an hour earlier and we had to make a stop on the way in, we left at 3:30 (it's usually an hour drive in to the city). We didn't get there til 6 PM. The highway between us and the city is undergoing construction as it is being upgraded to an interstate and before we got 15 or 20 miles down the road all traffic came to a halt and it took an hour to creep through whatever the obstruction was which put us in Houston right at Friday rush hour on a rainy night. Our usual one hour drive in with one quick stop took us two and a half hours. Didn't put me in the best mood since the reason I had wanted to get there an hour early was that I still had some things to do on my display.

Not that it mattered. With the cold and rain, hardly anyone showed up.

Lisa Klein – enameled jewelry and small dishes

Gene Hester – fused glass

Bob Straight – marbles, fused glass, wood turning

Kathy Poeppel and Dick Moiel – glass blowing

We'll have another go at it next weekend. We add 4 more that do not work in glass...a ceramist, a wood turner, a furniture and leather worker, and a jeweler...the group from our June Open House.

Oh, and the weather is supposed to be colder but not rainy.