YOJ: Week 21 Ring of Fire becomes Ring of Ice...

Actually it's more accurate to say ring of wind... sign.... Right now it's 3:22pm on Sunday as I type this. Original plan: I would be wrapping up day 2 of the Hannibal Arts Festival in Hannibal Mo, hopefully making money hand over fist... In stead, 4 hours in on day one ( Sat) the wind picked up my tent and broke it. In the process, it knocked over 1/4 of my tables and displays, dumping them all on the hard, cold, and wet cement. All of my back stock was on that table also.. they got dumped to the ground. I don't know yet what extent of damage I have, I know I"m out my tent and 1 table. After I type this I'm going to check my jewelry and displays.. I suspect I'll have some damaged pieces I"ll have to fix and jewelry busts I'll have to replace. As the wind howled around us we scrambled to throw displays and jewelry into cases, just trying to get it all picked up before I lost more to the storm. Jerry ( my hubby) just carried all that to the studio.. today and tomorrow I"ll unpack, clean and repack our show stuff. I have another show in Saturday, so I need to buy a tent by then.. at least I've got extra tables around the house!

I know at least 3 other artists lost tents to the storm, and 1 pottery person's tent took out her whole display, and broke most of her stock. The tent next to ours also suffered damage... he was staying at least the rest of the day, while we packed up we kept watching his tent sink further down. So I know I"m lucky... what's more, during the worst of it ( mind you, this tornado like wind lasted maybe 15-20 minutes) I realized what's really important... no one was hurt. I lost sight of Jerry for about 10 seconds.. and I couldn't hear him... He was trying to hold the tent from flying, I was trying to keep the front displays from flying.. the tent sides were flapping like crazy, the Velcro pulled loose and enveloped him. I was scared for 10 seconds that something had hurt him... My 11 yr old daughter who I could see.. actually got lifted off the ground for a moment, trying to hold the tent down. I've told her in the future if her feet ever leave the ground again holding my damn tent, she's to let go... I don't ever want to see that again. And my tent didn't fly into something or someone else hurting them. None of my flying displays or jewelry hit or hurt anyone else. So I count myself damn lucky. I'm out a tent, a table and probably a few displays and jewelry. I'm not happy about it, but but it doesn't matter in the long run... we are all safe.

It's pretty upsetting to me to leave during a show, if you do shows at all, you know it's just not done... and it can get you black listed from some shows. The only other show I've ever left early, was at show like 3-4 years ago.. because the police told us to leave as a tornado was heading in our direction. The Hannibal people were real nice about it.. one of the volunteers actually gave me a hug, cause at that point I was pretty emotional, and she could see that. She told me it would be all right, and I really really appreciated that. But without a tent, displays etc, what else could I do but leave?
So we picked up the pieces and headed back to the hotel... it was 2 late in the day to cancel the 2ND night, so we just lazed around and watched TV, and the kid had a good swim in the pool. We even called around and checked the Internet, looking for another EZ-up tent to try to do Sunday. No go. So we got up early on Sunday and left for home b4 9am in the morning. So here I am typing.

Anyway, I made this pendant a week or 2 ago, it's based on pendant I saw in a newspaper add for mother's day pendants. The original sold for 499.99 with diamonds all around a pearl. I used crystals and sterling to recreate the look. I like mine better. I've also included 3 different pendants I made back in march.. trying to catch up on my photos for the blog here... and 2 pearl bracelets I made. I've been in a real pearl kick of late, if you couldn't tell.