I hope to high heaven that somebody took lots of photos of the Open House at The Q on Main Street of our very own Small Town USA this afternoon and evening.
It was so incredibly busy and fun that I totally forgot to take photos - then, when I did remember, the crowds were already thinning out ... and I found out the hard way that my camera needed new batteries. A quick but thorough search of my backpack - no batteries, and no time to go get any.
say la vee
It was darned exciting to see people wall to wall and the little shops booming with customers, the temp vendors having a fine time, and everyone moving around laughing and chatting up a storm!
It gets to me, I tell you. I had to take myself outside a couple of times just to compose my sentimental self.
Close to Home, the little shop that my sister and I have, was packed for most of the hours of the Open House.
One of the draws was that my nephew had come to town to do some amazing cooking for the event. HOLY COW can that young man put together food for the gods. I kid you not.
For me personally, it was an educational experience. I loved it.
A lady and I got to talking about old stories and how too often they are lost to future generations because 1) kids notoriously fail to listen and remember the stories they hear their elders telling and aren't interested until it's too late; and 2) the stories don't get written down or preserved.
She had a couple of great stories (one of them was a ghost story) about one of our small towns nearby, and knows someone who she says tells great stories. I told her to get herself a little recorder if the person doesn't like to write, turn it on, and ignore it while the person tells the stories. If that really does happen, it's just a matter of transcribing, formatting, and publishing so the stories can be shared.
I also found out that there's a book out there, written long ago by a local person, which I'm going to look for on line. One mention led to the name of someone, and that someone led to another someone, and before you know it we had the author's name AND the information that there are a couple of copies floating around town. Exciting!
Now, remember that The Q has an open 'Community Living Room' type of area where people can sit with a cup of coffee from the coffee shop and visit, or read, or knit or whatever they feel like that's relatively quiet ... and what better reading material than books about and by our own people?
And so the quest is on.
Not only would it be superb to encourage local authors to write and publish their work, it would be even more special to find and make available the works of those who preceded us!
I have a very good feeling about the whole idea, which is somewhat increased by word that the next shop space to be filled in The Q will be a Printing Service! Assuming they can and will do bound works (books), how much more could we ask for than to have Vignettes House Publishing AND a printer AND a book store in the same building? The writers are all over the place, elders who know stories from 'the olden days' also abound, and I can see a very wonderful collection of local lore growing in our very own Small Town USA!! The thought of it makes me smile. Everyone has a story to tell, you know - here's their chance to tell them and share them.
I think I'm going to have to write a whole separate post about that, indeed I do.
Onward, b.
Okay, onward.
Another thing about both Home For The Holidays out at the Festival Hall and this Open House at The Q is that almost all of the cedar shake sky-scapes with silhouette landscapes are gone gone gone. That too makes me smile, partly because I'm pleased that they're selling but largely because I flat out love painting them. Somewhere around here are a bunch of them that are lost somewhere in the morass of my studio/porch/attic/store-room.
Now that the Open House is done, my road trips are done, and things are settling down a little around here, I can maybe find the time to search them out ... and paint a bunch of new ones *happy grin* ... I'm selling them for ten bucks each and that's a pretty fair price all things considered. It's not too expensive but it's also not just giving them away or minimizing their value. It helps that I've at long last (don't give me that look; I know it's plain logic) figured out that it's quick and easy to drill a couple of holes in the top corners of them and string thin copper wire through so they can hang on walls.
So.
Guess what my next few days are going to consist of.
Yep.
See if I can find the ones already done, for starters.
Then paint on cedar shakes until I'm blue in the face, get them sealed and the wires on them, and take them up to the shop to fill the empty spaces!
That's one of this coming weekend's projects. The other one, since you know I can't have only just one thing going at a time, will provide the needed change of pace as more of the kid books get written. A third project will be doing the covers and illustrations for those books, which always takes WAY longer than the writing of them.
Come Monday (and Tuesday and Wednesday) I reckon I'll probably be working on said projects (since they're never-ending with one following the other indefinitely) up at the shop. Mondays aren't one of our scheduled 'open' days, but 'tis the season and all that so what the heck, right? I can sit up there and paint to my heart's content, or patter on stories, as easily as I can here at home.
I might go up tomorrow (Friday) and Saturday too, especially if those cedar shakes show up around here so I can drill the little holes and thread the copper wire through (or twine, when I run out of copper wire) and take them up there to hang. No they aren't my regular days to be 'minding the shop' but my sister told me that she's going to be home-bound until January 11th ... she lives clear across town, and I live a block and a half away, from the shop - so there you have it. My calendar is clearing finally, thank goodness, so I can pick up days.
I am, however, not going to be setting any alarms for in the morning, nor am I going to be obsessing about the whole thing in general. I can't afford, in any sense of the word, to work myself to a frazzle or to work myself up to a melt-down point. I do what I do because it's fun for me and I enjoy it. So far the positive is out-weighing the negative and I want to keep it that way. That means keeping my BALANCE.
And part of that balance is the eating and sleeping bit ... else the joy of creativity is liable to wane into fatigue which is never a joyous thing. My so-longed-for schedule of four days of part time shift-work followed by ten days of writing, drawing illustrations, painting, sculpting, sewing, marketing/promo, and whatever else strikes my fancy is definitely out the window. But that doesn't mean I can't make the best use possible of my time, and enjoy the heck out of all the changes that are coming along right quick here!
And enjoy it all I fully intend to do!
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