Playing catch up.

During the past couple days I have been busy trying to catch up around here after having been gone the previous weekend. As some of you may already know, one of my "other" jobs is making polymer clay figurines that I take to various craft shows, and for unknown reasons, some folks actually buy them. Last weekend I was in Des Moines at the Iowa State Fairgrounds for one of the larger shows that I do...in fact, it is one of the largest craft show in Iowa with approximately 300 vendors with all types of handmade arts and crafts. I usually do this show every year so it is fun to see some of my favorite customers and fellow crafters, but it is a really looong weekend. The show starts Friday at 5pm and goes until 9 pm and is held all day Saturday and Sunday as well..by the time 4 0'clock Sunday afternoon rolls around I am throwing my wares in boxes and stuffing everything in the back of my truck in record time. Normally my sister, Marie, comes along and helps...er...shops...actually, she does both, but she was not able to come with me this time so there was a noticeable drop in profits to all of the vendors.

I tried to take a few pictures without getting any individual artists products in the photo (there are strict rules against photographing or sketching people's work since some unscrupulous people have no imagination and feel that it is necessary to steal others' ideas....can you tell that stealing ideas is a pet peeve of mine?). Anyway here are a few pictures of the venue. I took these mostly for Kristi, since she is a craft show addict (sorry for outing you Kristi).
I make all different kinds of figurines, mostly whimsical animals, seasonal items and holiday decorations. Of course I make sheep! They are really hard to photograph because they are actually pretty small. Yes, I know that they don't have eyes...I just didn't feel like adding eyes, but people have bought them for years without eyes, so I just keep on making them with no eyes!


One of the things that I was hoping to get accomplished since retuning home, was to get fleece samples of all of my sheep to send for micron testing. I did get the fleece samples, sort of. I KNOW that I read somewhere that I only needed a pencil sized sample from mid side, but when I finished taking samples and reread the instructions for sending the samples in, it said take a two inch square from mid side.....so now I have to re-catch all of the sheep and snip and clip AGAIN! They are not going to like me at all!