Smoky Mountains

The Smoky Mountain Fiber Art Festival is over.  We have made many great, new friends.  My classes were fun to teach and students have returned home with their scarves, purses and felting materials.  Oliver joined the class for a while and eagerly helped the students as you can see on one of the photos.  Felting is not an art for the weak.  It takes tremendous energy.  What I love about teaching is seeing the creativity of each student.  You can see their personalities come out in their work.  The students give me energy and gives me the desire to return to my studio and continue with my experiments with color, fiber and design. 

Again, the knit lights were a huge success along with the hand thrown pottery knitting bowls by John Todd of Paw Paw Pottery.  I am amazed with the colors that I regularly have great sales.  It seems that black is hard to find and, of course, I have it.  Choral is the new color for 2011 and is running a close race with black for top sales.  The student that chose to make a choral purse, of course, had to leave early and I didn't get a photo of her finished product. 

Thank goodness it is time to rest.  Three days of sales and two of teaching can make a person weary.  Now we are parked next to the Little River in Townsend Tennessee and letting the sound of the rapids sooth us.  John is planning on getting his fishing rod out and I may even join him.  Last night, he saw fish jumping and it totally excited about finally getting to fish.  In seven weeks of travel, he was unable, or unwilling to pay the high price of an out of state fishing license to fish a day or two to fish. 

We will leave for home Tuesday.  John has physician appointments Tuesday and Wednesday, then we are off to Bowling Green, Ohio, for the Black Swamp Spinners Guild Market Day.  I hope to see some of you there!

On the Road Again

Returning home is not as exciting as heading out on a trip.  But Everything has a cycle and this is just part of it.  We have started our list of what we missed this trip and hope to make the things on our list our plan of "attack" next year.  We plan to start earlier in order to have more time on the road.  Since my show season begins with the Smokey Mountain Fiberart Festival, I will always have to be home for that event.  The next week end is the Black Swamp Market Day in Bowling Green, Ohio.  I sure am going into these events rested and totally relaxed.  That won't last long since the push is on for the Hoosier Hills Fiberarts Festival the first full weekend of June, located in Franklin, Indiana - Just south of Indianapolis. I will be teaching wet felting classes at two of these shows.

As we have driven through Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, I  have seen so many abandoned homes, farms, businesses.  Some appear to be ghost towns along the side of the road.  Here in Texas, many are in the  oil and gas fields.  This coupled with the dry grass, some pumps not in operation tells a story of hopes and dreams of the future.  It is a history lesson of families who gave it their best, some had success and some failed.  But failing at one thing, most pushed on to find success in another realm.  That's life, isn't it.  We don't give up with a failure, we push on, an on until we reach our goals. 

We boondocked or as they say in California, drydocked in another Wal Mart at El Paso, TX.  This one had a security guard that pointed the spot for us to use.  Now that's service!  We did some shopping, returned to the motor home for dinner and played more Nabbit.  John won both games last night.  I'll get him tonight. 

The border patrol is and has been out in force.  We passed 2 inspection sites in California, one in Arizona, and two in T.  We could have had a motor home full of Mexicans as they looked in the driver's side window,  asked how many were traveling in here and if we were citizens. 

Well, we are heading to Dallas, Fort Worth.  See you on the road! 

Gentlemen, Get Ready to Start your Engine!

With the holidays over and the hardwood floors installed in the house, we are a few steps closer to leaving the Indianapolis area and heading on to warmer country. The Motor Home is at Edmundson RV, located in Taylorsville, IN for it's oil change, brakes, new water closet and a few other minor repairs to make our road trip worry free, (we hope) and more comfortable. Since we are new to this lifestyle, we are learning new things every day as we read the blogs of those more experienced. Oh, what a learning curve!

As of today, our first stop will be Savahna, Ga. Then on to Florida to watch the launch of the last space shuttle. Once we have experienced that, we are off to Gulf Shores, Alabama to meet up with family for a day or so then to New Orleans. After that, it is off to California to visit with daughter #2. After this, we hope to spend time in south west TX before heading home for the Smoky Mountain Fiber Festival in Townsend TN March 18 -20. From there, we head to Bowling Green, OH for the Black Swamp Market Day on March 26.

During all this time, we will be stopping off at antique shops and yarn shops seeking our dreams. We dream of any fiber related item, and John, also, of coins. Since I have discovered the antique circular sock machines and knitted my first sock, I'm on the look-out for more sock machines. Oh, my gosh, what fun the sock machine is....and when good at it, I will be able to knit a pair of socks in an hour....did you hear what I said???? AN HOUR!!!! Holy cow! I'm on one pair of socks I started knitting at the Michigan Fiber Festival in August of 2009! These sock machines were popular in the late 1800's and early 1900's. Many were sold or given to people to knit socks for the soldiers in the war. Now, these machines make socks that exceed the quality of any sock made in China or wherever.

John has started weaving on his birthday present I purchased at the southern Indiana Fiber Festival in Corydon, IN. He is learning to weave on a rigid heddle loom. I have a 4 harness loom, but he wanted to "start small" and work up...He's about to get hooked!

The drawback to this trip? My niece, who is more like a sister (6 yrs diff), is having total knee replacement. I wish I could be here to walk through the experience with her since I had my first TKR 12 years ago and my second 4 years ago.

Enough for now, but as the "blast off" date grows closer and arrives, there will be more.

quote of the day: "Success if the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm." Winston Churchill