The show season is over (and the project that can not be named)

I for one am rather glad of the fact that we're done with shows until next year.

The economy has really put the skids to the kind of happy shopping that folks were doing a couple of years ago.

At this show the saving grace for me was the fact that I keep an extensive mailing list and send out postcards to my previous customers and invite them to return. All but one of my sales yesterday were from return collectors -- YEAH Collectors!!

Now it's on to inventory and tax paperwork before I get full swing into creating new bears for next year.

This show did have one other very amazing feature to it however.

A couple of weeks ago the show promoter had sent out an email announcing that Charles Phoenix would be "in the building" doing one of his slide shows the day of the show. (For those of you who don't know about this guy, use this link to check out his website -- the clip of him with Martha Stewart is especially fun). Of course I had to check this all out when the promoter sent it out, found his website fascinating and wished I wouldn't be working my table during the time his show would be. Then on Thursday of last week, I saw him on one of the morning TV shows out of Denver.

Well, all that said, around 1 pm, as I'm hanging out in my booth, the guy zips in the back door and some unknown entitiy possessed me and I said (as he has his BACK to me) "hey, its the slide guy!" What ensued was a conversation about my critters and how we make them and a number of other topics in about 15 minutes. WOW! Nice guy, very complimentary about my work. This is what comes of sometimes being BOLD!!



You may notice on the side bar that I have labeled the Christmas countdown (ie: The Project That Can Not Be Named) as complete! I finished it up last night after the show.

This project has replaced it....this is a piece of white fabric which has been fused to a piece of dark blue fabric and all of these pencil lines were drawn right on the white fabric before the fusing. These will be my guide lines for stitching these patterns onto the fabric with white thread.

The "buggy" bear is coming right along too, I got all of the machine work on him completed on Saturday, so now its on to the stuffing and closing and putting on the face.

Today there is the usual Monday laundry and emptying the van from the show (I didn't feel like doing it in the cold and the dark last night) then its off to do a bit of shopping, mail some packages, etc., etc. (the usual ordinary life things!) Then hopefully back to working on projects!!