all's well that ends well

Thank you for all the kind words about my small rescue though I couldn't, in good conscience, have done anything less. It's a sad statement on the prevalent atmosphere in this country that what I did is considered remarkable.

Our open house is over for another year and some of us agreed that 3 weekends was too many. I doubt we had more attendance, it was just spread further out. We have some different ideas for next year though our location is our main problem, if our hosts decide to do it again. It's a lot of work on their part and they are aging along with the rest of us. Frankly, I've expected the last several years to be the last time.

Everyone had some good sales except us which at the end of the day on Sunday was still just the one $50 sale. I don't know how the handweavers made out. This was the first year for them to join us and they were only set up for this last weekend but oh, they had some gorgeous stuff. 

Not just loom woven items 

but some beautiful dyed scarves, some in the Japanese shibori tie dye style and some, my favorite, that were dyed using natural materials like leaves and flowers and seeds.

Well, our weekends were dismal until we started to pack up and Kathy of Dick and Kathy, our hosts, told me to wrap up the Tea Box. 

I gave her a skeptical look, really? Yes, she said. I put my arm around her shoulder, gave her a hug, and asked, this isn't a pity buy is it? This box was not cheap, the most expensive thing I had put out. No, she said, she's had her eye on it for a couple of years and it's the last box. Actually, it was the very first one. And I am working on another but they take so long to make, not just the hours in the making but the time between sessions of actually working on it.

The Tea Box has always been one of my favorite pieces and I have not been sad at all that it never sold. Ironically enough, one of the visitors to the show had asked me that very day if it was hard for me to sell my work, to let them go after all the time I have in them, and my answer to this question has always been 'no' because once a piece is finished, I admire it but then I'm working on something new, that it's the process of making that I enjoy. So as I'm wrapping it up I'm feeling a little melancholy, I had expected after all this time that I would have this piece in my personal collection. I'm glad, at least, that it went to someone I love. Dick and Kathy have an amazing art collection and not just glass. This isn't the first or even the second piece of ours that they have bought.

So, I didn't get pictures of everyone's work or even good pictures of those I took. For instance, you can't really see any of Gene's fused glass work here

and I should have just taken a picture or two of individual pieces like I did of this lovely piece of Chin's

and some of Tom's acorn boxes.

Got a fair picture of Liz's frit and powder paintings

but none of Bob's crazy stuff, everything from marbles to some fused glass pieces to turned wood to metal sculpture, the guy just does a little bit of everything. Nor did I take a picture of Eric the young glassblower's work or any of Dick and Kathy's new blown glass pieces all of which they sold.

Liz came in about mid-day on Sunday after hosting the life drawing class at Archway Gallery, the artist's co-op, that they offer every Sunday morning that I attended yesterday (but not the other two Sundays though I should have ) with this coat she borrowed from a friend which looks like the pelt of the abominable snowman all wired up with blinking lights (this is not Liz in the photo but one of the handweavers).

End of day yesterday after wrapping up the Tea Box, we broke down our display, loaded it in our pick-up truck cleverly disguised as a car, dropped into Trader Joe's as we passed by and picked out something for dinner, picked up the dog from my sister's house when we got back, and slept late this morning.