On the road again…

Actually, I’ve just returned!

First, let me say how incredibly touched I am by all of your supportive and wonderful comments on my previous post commemorating 10 years of surviving breast cancer.  You cannot know how much your comments mean to me, and how much I enjoy reading every one.  Thank you…

I posted that blog, and then stealthily left for the airport the following morning for Iowa.  I didn’t mention this trip before I left, largely because of my revolving door household, it probably isn’t the best idea to announce to the world that I’m going out of town when everyone who follows my blog and my Facebook page knows my husband is in Saudi Arabia, my son was training at Fort Dix (home now), and my daughter is away at college (though she is homesick and planning to come in this weekend…)

I had a lovely uneventful trip, via O’Hare, to Moline Illinois, which is one of the Quad Cities, split apart by the Mississippi River.  I’m learning so much about the geography of this country. My hostess picked me up in Moline, and we headed off to Bettendorf, where the Mississippi Valley Weavers’ Guild hired me to give my three day intensive garment construction workshop. And it was amazing.

Let me just say that my opinion of mid-westerners goes up a half dozen points every time I’m with them.  I know that’s a snobby thing to say, but understand that those living on the coasts don’t think about the Midwest much until it is primary season and so much of the presidential selection starts there.  Every experience I’ve ever had teaching at and attending an event hosted by a group in the Midwest has been a fantastic experience (except for my debacle at the Midwest conference in Hancock, MI last year, which was no one’s fault but a planetary collision of cosmic proportions).  I find mid-western women to be kind, well mannered, enthusiastic, and very very sharp.  They are always a genuine pleasure to work with, and their events are top notch.

This workshop took place in the Bettendorf Library.  I wish I had snapped a couple of photos because if it one thing I’ve noticed, some of the best libraries I’ve ever been in have been in the Midwest.  They serve the community well, and provide all kinds of services and community rooms, and this one was just perfect for the workshop.  Spacious, well lit, with areas for work and for lecture, and the all important food table.  I took this photo after the hyacinths had been given away as door prizes.

The workshop was organized by Gisela, who is primarily a felt maker, Gisela has taken a couple workshops from me in the past, I first met her at the Felter’s Fling in Massachusetts.  She has a lovely home, geothermal, contemporary, right up against a cornfield, and it was the coolest thing to get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and find that the tile floors were warm.

I was concerned when I woke up on Friday morning, the second day of the workshop and saw this…

My first real snow of the season, and not welcome when you are in the middle of a workshop.  Sigh…  But my indomitable Midwestern ladies all made it in to class, they are made of solid stock and nothing stands in their way…

We worked hard, they learned a lot, and one of the comments I heard from a number of them, one that means so much to me, was towards the end of the workshop, when I heard, “Thank you for giving me permission…”  In fact that’s all any of us really need in life, permission to follow our passions, fearlessly, and with humor and grace.  It is hard for women in general to give it to themselves.  I can’t tell you what it meant to hear that comment from many of my students, I’ve done my job, I feel like I pushed them out of the nest and am watching them fly.  It won’t be smooth at first, but they will learn…

We had a lovely group dinner at one of the local restaurants, they gave us a private room, which was a good thing, we are of course a noisy bunch…  The Crane and Pelican in LeClaire, IA is housed in an 1851 Riverpilot’s home.

The food was fantastic, and of course the company delightful.

And I got to experience a couple of real Quad City treats.  At the end of the workshop, the participants presented me with the most lovely gift.  A small statue of two children hugging, apparently quite famous in these here parts, from the Isabel Bloom collection.  I’d never heard of Isabel Bloom but I’m enchanted with the sculpture.  It was such a thoughtful surprise.

And of course, I can’t end without mentioning my new favorite spread, Boetje’s mustard, a Quad City Staple, made in Rock Island, IL, I came home with two jars…  (Growing up near Philadelphia, one puts mustard on everything.  I feel a kindred spirit…)

I’m home now, and I have so much stuff swimming in my head, I get inspired when I visit new places, and experience new things.  I long to do some felting, Gisela’s influence was strong…  I spent the day drowning in paperwork, which I hate, but it has to be done, and so the bills are paid, I’ve worked through all the correspondence that came in while I was gone, and now I can look forward to some grand new adventure in the studio.

Stay tuned…