Saturday, August 23, 2008

The Glass Bash

Welcome to Washington

It took FOREVER and a day to get up to Shelton from Oregon. Google said it would take 2.5 hours... it was more like... 4. Driving around in that RV makes me seasick. Or close to it. Was very happy to get out of the thing finally.

Plus, driving through this part of Washington isn't all that pretty... Willapa Bay was ok, pretty enough, but the roads were... windy and sickening in the RV. So much land in that area, and North too... is Weyerhaeuser land and mostly tree stumps, we call them stump yards. Not so nice to look at as you are driving by. No wildlife spotted either. Well, some geese and a blue heron in Willapa Bay area. A cranberry farm near the coast and "The Oyster Capital of the World" along the way. Anyway, was missing Oregon already and was temped to turn around and head back - would have, if it were not for The Bash.

The Bash is great - it's free, for starters, though you end up buying lots of glass. I should have bought more, since it's all on sale and the more you buy, the bigger the discount. I was trying to be good though. Anyway, I got lots of blues and greens because I was low on those colors. You get a free lunch too - this year it was Mexican food and very good. Last year we missed the lunch - by the time we went to get it, it was all gone - it just went fast and that's what we got for trying to avoid the line. Even better than all of that, you get to watch some really great glass makers demo some of their current bead styles. This year I watched Michael Barley make his baleen bead. Very Cool. I can't wait to try his techniques.

The best thing though, was I got to meet a couple of my online bead-making/jewelry-making friends. That was fun and I hope to get a chance to do that more often. That's me on the right, wearing my new still-favorite necklace. Angela of Blue Lagoon Beads is on the left, holding several heavy bags of glass she had already purchased and Barrie Edwards of Windermere Designs is in the middle. Check out the links to see their beautiful beads and jewelry!



Oh, and the other best thing is the door prizes - I won one again this year - it's a gift certificate to Carlisle School of Glass Art. Yay!

Oh, you may be wondering what Frank, Luke and the dogs were doing while I was at the bash... they were supposed to be with me, and they were through lunch... but then Kesia made such a racket out in the RV (she does that) because she was mad we left her out there that they made an announcement over the loudspeaker for the owner of the RV with the "very sad and hot dog" to go take care of it. She wasn't hot - all the windows and vents and skylights were open, but she WAS barking her head off. So Frank and Luke and the dogs hung out at the RV, watching the sky-divers, playing fetch, peeing on trees (Luke) and who knows what else.

Anyway, I made it back as fast as I could and off we went to Ocean Shores.

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