Greetings from Tucson!

I'm here and am having the time of my life!  We left Maryland on Thursday and arrived at the Crystal City Doubletree, in Northern Virginia, right outside of D.C.  We decided that since our flight was leaving at 7 a.m. on Friday morning, we would do a park and stay deal and get a cab to the airport from a close-in hotel.  I was up at 3 a.m. in the morning ... couldn't  sleep.  The trip was great.  We upgraded our tickets to first class using frequent flier miles.  Not only was it a comfortable flight but we had free baggage ... each of us could bring two bags weighing a maximum of 75 lbs for each bag.  This cut down on the amount we had to ship ... which was ridiculous as it was.  Everything for our booth, though, fit in our luggage.

We rented a Casita at the Doubletree for our stay because there were three of us.  We're also staying for nearly two weeks so we wanted to be able to spread out.  As luck would have it, having the Casita really came in handy because it became my classroom.

Here's today's workshop ... do you see anyone you know?

The living area is huge! We had eight in the workshop.  The time flew by ... when I got to my booth I found out that Denise Peck and Karen Keagan of Interweave had stopped by to say Hello!  These people are incredibly busy trying to see as many people as they can in the time they're there.  Andrew referred the Fusion Beads group to my booth, where they giddily went through the beads like girls in a candy shop!  The flew away as quickly as they had arrived, leaving us to prepare the invoice and package up their goodies!  Boy was that fun!  

Of course, people look at me wide-eyed when I tell them that this is my first bead show!  But, it's really not much different from the craft shows I used to do to sell my pottery and then my jewelry .... the art form just keeps getting smaller and more intimate.  More tales later!