Art and Soul stories

Mine! My house!
Originally uploaded by lemonade_sandwich.

I managed to convince my sister Sarah, usually less of a structured class crafter, to come with me to Art and Soul in Virginia. Thus begin the adventures:

Friday morning I got a special treat before I left, to see the house next door partially demolished. This was not a surprise, but it was an interesting way to start the day.

I arrive at the airport and cannot immediately locate Sarah, who has taken up residence by the wrong US Airways counter, and has also turned off her cell phone. (Sarah, I promise this will be the last time I make fun of you for that!) She does eventually realize the latter, and we get to our gate with plenty of time to spare, especially since our flight is late (no real surprise there.)

Despite the delay, we arrive with enough time to cross the entire Philly airport to get to our connecting flight. We go to check out the deal, and slowly come to realize that this flight is scheduled to leave EARLY. Who ever heard of such a thing! The inevitable fall out does occur - we make the flight, the luggage does not. Did I mention that we also did not get a chance to grab lunch? Sarah has a much mocked turkey sandwich in her bag, so she is fine. I am surviving on Luna bars and airplane pretzels.

At the hotel, hunger starts to set in, and all restaurants are closed (that lunch-dinner lull) and the hotel shuttle is off on some unexpectedly long jaunt. We finally get the brilliant suggestion for room service, which I admit NEVER would have occurred to me normally. It actually wasn't too overpriced, and was reasonably tasty.

Now its time for class, and there's no sign of the luggage. So off I go to Susan Lenart-Kazmer's tassles and fringe class without any of my specially ordered tools, or carefully selected ribbons, yarns and charms. The classroom is already full with people who have been in her earlier class all day. This is a sure tip-off, since they are all already comfortably settled, familiar with everything in the room, Susan knows their names, and I am already feeling left out. A totally empty workspace does not help any.

Susan shows us some of what we're doing, and fortuantely has many ribbons and metal supplies. What I really need is tools - pliers of various sorts. The woman next to me has offered to share hers, but somehow everything of hers seems carefully placed on her other side, and after repeated attempts to ask for things or reach across, I give up and use Susan's tools at the center table as much as possible. I then get missed in the distribution of some copper circles for a different fringey dangle, probably because my space is so clear its not obvious that someone is working there. I end up taking apart Susan's class example (at her suggestion!) to use the parts.

So when its done, I have 3 different tassel forms for jewelry that are fine, but nothing very personal. Pictures will be forthcoming, I was understandably not interested in taking photos at the time.

I do get a call from Sarah, whose class is in the hotel itself, just before the end that our luggage has arrived! So at least we don't need to do a late night run to the nearby Target for clean underwear and toothbrushes. We happily go through our bags to get ready for tomorrow's classes.

To be continued... (Hint, things get better from here!)