Art & Soul Retreat Portland

I arrived home on Monday afternoon. Left Portland on Sunday around noon after the wonderful staff at the Embassy Suites helped load everything into my car, and I do mean everything. I have to take a lot of stuff to teach and vend and that's why I drive. Trying to box everything to ship and pay for it just doesn't work for me. I don't mind driving. I spent the night in Yreka a small old mining town in the mountains. It got down in the 30's that night and snowed on the mountain peaks. So Mount Shasta that had barely any snow on it when I drove to Portland had a snow covered peak five days later when I drove back through.

The last years I was at A&S my friend Jennifer and I roomed together. She couldn't make it this year so I had a new roomie, Lisa Call and we fast became good friends. She taught PMC jewelry and creates very nice pieces. I bought a necklace from her with a silver acorn pendant. I love it and will try to post pics later.

It seems unreal that I was just on the road to and from a wonderful time. I felt my classes were successful and I thoroughly enjoyed all my students. Vending night was fun and frenetic. The doors open to buyers at 7:00 and the show is only open for 3 hours so everyone rushes in and the excitement begins. I was able to walk around to some of the booths before the doors opened and buy some unique items. One was the mannequin bust with the shelves in that you see on my vendor table in the picture above. I sold all the jackets that I made and photo'd in the previous post. AND they each went to the perfect person to own them. I only got a picture of one sweet and adorable young woman in her's. Adrienne be sure and get in touch with me!!!

I was very fortunate to have my friend Wendy help me on vendor night and she took the pictures for me.




On Wednesday I taught the ribbon wayward threads class and here are some photos of what was created.














On Thursday I taught silk scarf dyeing and here are some pictures of the finished scarves hanging on a makeshift clothesline we made strung between two chairs.









On Friday I was the student. I took a class from Albie Smith and was delighted that I made a book! I took paper and decorated with color in a technique called "paste paper", did color washes on other papers, put them together in signatures and bound those signatures in a book cover that I made by covering book board with paste paper covers and inside covers and a book cloth spine. The signatures were hand stitched into the book cover and beads were stitched on the book binding. Amazing most everyone finished because it really is a lot of focused work! This shows you what a fabulous instructor Albie is and she's a warm and wonderful person too! Thanks Albie.








I realize this post is rather long with lots of images. Hope you made it to the end. I know it's taken me quite a chunk of time to get all this posted so I better get on with my day now.

Adding update on my back issue since people are asking:

I didn't mention my back in the post because I didn't want to start whining too much. Amazingly the driving part didn't bother my back. I took Advil and put a thermal patch on. Standing during teaching bothered me a bit and the students kept yelling at me to sit down but I've never been very good about sitting. In fourth grade (old lady Crawford's class) I got my desk taken away from me and I had to sit on the floor next to the teachers desk for several days. Cruel and unusual punishment that embarrassed the heck outta me but it was because I would stand up during class a lot. I just couldn't sit down that long so .......... there you go.

Friday after Albie's class my back was painful. I was suppose to go out to dinner with friends but didn't. Went to my room, put jammies on and had some soup. Sat. I was to go shopping/antiquing but didn't because I didn't want to be in pain for vendor night. It's not good selling etiquette to snarl at customers. I was able to do shopping with the vendors before the doors opened so I still got to part with a sizable amount of cash. LOL!

I'll be getting another bone density test and probably an MRI. I'm suppose to head to St. Louis on the 29th so I hope all this gets done before I leave.