Tomorrow is the big day. I am nervous, as I always am before going on an art adventure. Or leaving home in general! I was letting the trade thing get to me a bit, which was silly because trades are optional at this retreat. It sounds cool and I’m taking a bag of goodies with me, but if I don’t feel comfortable with it, I don’t have to do it, so there. Part of it is that I don’t want to be tempted to bring home a lot of stuff. I wouldn’t mind just giving it away nearly as much. Isn’t that strange? The other part is that when I show my tapestries to some people, they aren’t all that impressed. I don’t want to give my little art children to a home where they wouldn’t be wanted. So we’ll see – I might bring them back and trade them over Flickr, where the person would know what he/she is getting.
I doubt that I’ll have time, but if we take a laptop I might blog once or twice from Hampton. I’ll be in classes Friday night, all day Saturday and Sunday, so probably not! I’m thinking that when I get out of class, it will be hot tub time in Virginia! I’m not used to staying in such a nice hotel (Embassy Suites). We usually camp on vacation or stay in places that are not expensive. We stayed at a motel one time where the clerk asked us if we wanted to rent by the hour. I’ll tell you, I checked that room out very carefully before I agreed to stay there, but I was exhausted and it was surprisingly clean.
I think that the most stressful thing about preparing for this trip was buying supplies. I didn’t have hardly any of them, and it cost me more than I thought that it would. Each class is very different so had a different set of supplies to bring. I found most of them, but not all. For example, I never could find a “Japanese paper drill.”
Sandy seems to be looking forward to going, so I feel better about that. He’ll be on his own most of the time. It will be nice to have a companion in the car and we always travel well together once I get over the jitters of leaving the house.
My hope is that I will come back with lots of new techniques and ideas under my belt, ready for an artful summer.
slowly she turned 