Sunday Aug 19, 2012

I have been in Coos Bay, Oregon (and surrounding areas). I had a great time with 6 of my friends and made 2 new friends in the process. We stayed at a wonderful home in Coos Bay. We went to 4 quilt shops. I really liked a couple of them. We had a great time together, got to know each other better. We ate some wonderful food and painted. There were somethings that happened that just had to be more than  coincidences. This is what happened... The owner of the house told us the first part..........at Halloween a couple of young girls came to her door trick-or-treating. One of the girls said to the other, "I told you this was the house in the painting"..... they apparently had seen a watercolor of the front door of this house in the museum. Carol, the home owner, went to the museum and it was indeed a watercolor of her home. She in turn told her neighbor about the painting. The neighbor purchased it for her for Christmas. The water color is hanging on the wall. We all thought that was so neat and it is a beautiful water color painted by Sherry Howk. I was doing some sketching and watercolor painting in the beautiful park and over heard a lady talking to others about teaching a beginning watercolor class in the fall....She was across the pond from me. When Rosie and Dayzee came to start sketching. I told them about Sherry. When Sherry heard me say 'watercolor' she came over to see what we were doing. Rosie talked to her and found out that she was the painter of the watercolor that hung in Carol's home. Carol invited Sherry to dinner that night, she came and showed us photos of all her work. We had a very pleasant evening. A couple of days later, we were at another park (a series of lakes) and low and behold, there Sherry was. Sue and me stayed and walked with her, she drove us back home (her home was just down the street for Carol's).  She offered to give us an hour lesson at her home. That evening a group of us had a very wonderful lesson at Sherry's home. She gave us some wonderful ideas. One I especially like is a blotter she had made for drying her bushes.......she used a cheep roll of toilet paper, wrapped a good sized length of paper towel (which she folded in 1/3's to make it just the correct size to fit the roll) which she secured to the roll with rubber bands...  this is something I will most diffidently use.
Another really fun thing happened while we were there. Rosie's brother played the bag pipes at the Shore Gardens, located on the coast. We had quite a following...he was kind of like the pied piper. Then his wife took our photos in what they called 'the family tree'. He and his wife made us each copies of the photo!
I have wonderful friends!.........................
Now I need to get busy. I don't have any customer work going right now, but have plenty of my own stuff to do...........Actually I do have a custom bag to sew for a friend and now client.