Chicago - part 2

Friday, April 19 FINALLY, Preview Day!!!

While at breakfast, met Lynne from Vancouver Island who came to our table and introduced herself.
Had a chance to see Liz, Kelly, Judith, Iris and Debbie while lining up to get in. Huge lineup but once the doors were opened it moved very quickly.

As we filed in, I was pleased to see that despite health issues, Jeremy Paul from Florida had made it with his house under construction. Jeremy builds his houses like RL houses, studs and all. Very impressive!

My first stop was to see Alice Zinn in the Doll Room. Joanne had given me a gift certificate  (a first for Alice!)  for my birthday and I used it to help buy a pair of Alice's glass (with a case) and a bamboo plant.

We had made plans to meet in the lobby at noon to head over to the 3 Blind Mice show so I took a quick walk around the Doll Room then hit a couple aisles in the Orange Room.

One of the first tables inside the Orange Room is that of Ferd Sobol Editions. You've probably seen this work in the miniature magazines. It is magnificent and I must admit my eyes misted a bit discussing the pieces with Millie and Ferd. Unless I win the lottery, I'll never be able to afford a piece but just seeing it in person made my day.

Gloria Bogulas from Tucson was a couple tables down. I met her last year at the Phoenix Show and Sale so was great to see her again. More about her later.

Arnold Volker from Germany was next to Gloria and I stopped by to pass on greetings from Barb S. who is a member of our club and buys from him on a regular basis.

I next stopped at Pete and Pam Boornum's Smaller Than Life intending to buy some tools Tina had recommended after taking their marquetry chest class. Then I looked at my watch and realized I had to get moving in order to meet the others for the trip to the Three Blind Mice Show.

As I was leaving to meet the others in the lobby, I spotted Storyteller and Miniaturist, Wanna in El Paso. Wanna is one of my heros in miniatures, both for her storytelling and trash to treasure abilities. We've corresponded sporadically over the years and meeting her was on my "must do" list so that was a highlight of my day!

With the flooding, we had to take some detours to get to the show.

Thanks to April Gill of Wildwood, we had a coupon for $1 off on admission to the Three Blind Mice Show. With the demise of the IMA Show, the 3BM Show had about 130 dealers in four rooms this year. AND every attendee got a small mini on entrance!

There were some lovely pieces here and my friends who work in 1:48 scale found some great things. As for me, although I swore I would not buy any more fabric and/or trims, I just could not resist...found some beautiful pieces at incredible prices ...

Most of these packages were $1.50! The most expensive was the smallest package of red trim at $3.00.

Then back to the Tom Bishop Show...

I've sort of lost track of what I bought at the Tom Bishop Show on Friday or Saturday so this may get a bit skewed.

I made a point of visiting Peter Tucker from Vancouver. Aside from his miniatures, which I love!, Peter has been generous enough to make available to fellow miniaturists a scale conversion chart that when downloaded to your computer, allows you to enter a RL measurement and automatically convert it to any of three scales. This is probably one of the most useful tools available to me as a miniaturist and although I've e-mailed my thanks several times, it was really important to me to thank Peter in person for it AND tell him how much I admire his work.

I got some nice pieces from the Heidi Ott stall.

Sean's saxaphone for the attic, a table lamp for the Bombay House living room, a hat that I can hopefully bash into a fedora for the detective's office and some very fine chain that will work as pull chains on the attic light.

(Saw a sad side of miniatures here...a rather imperious woman tried to bully the man at Heidi Ott into accepting a cheque. Glad he stood his ground but hope it didn't cost him a $300 sale.)

LXL Miniatures from Spain had incredible work at some of the most reasonable prices I saw. I bought a beautiful jewellery stand from her

and would have loved to have bought one of her Meerschaum pipes (under $10) but just had no place to put it.

Near the end of the day I made it back to the Boornum's table and bought the tools that Tina had suggested the night before and a glue bottle.

First on the left allows you to sand mitred corners, middle: equal measurements; glue bottle

They didn't have any more of the sanding blocks for mitres on the table but Pete went back to their room to get more for a customer who wouldn't be there on Saturday so I was able to get one when he returned just as the salesroom closed..

THE CAMP MEETING

As much as I wanted to attend the Tom Bishop Show, I knew that, for me, the highlight of the trip would be attending the meeting of The Camp for our 10th anniversary. It was a bittersweet get-together in that W. Marie (Camp Den Mother) and Jazzi (a Camp member from Australia) wouldn't be there for health reasons.

Tom and Leni Bishop sponsored the get-together and were acknowledged with a beautifully-written note from DM Marie.

In DM Marie's absence, the gathering was hosted by Bev with much help from Lynne and Paula.

You might recall the books that I made for this. I took about 60 and gave out about 50 that night so it was a good turnout.

I received these lovely gifts from other Campers:

Top: sand and seashells in bottle from Heather; Far left: stained glass from Adrian:  Round Tuit from Paula: pipe cleaner teddy bear from (sorry, don't recall), and Camp coffee mug from Bev

Books from Wanna

Heather on the left and Lynne (with her halo) on the right.

Grandma Holly on the far right

Bev (with the devil horns) on the left, Lynne (with the halo) and Paula (far right)

top back: Tom Bishop

Bev (top left), Lynne (with the halo) Wanna (bottom left) and Jeremy (middle)

I can't begin to list the names of all the wonderful people I met that I had only known previously through the group for fear I'll forget someone.

But I do want to acknowledge Irene Holloway. She was late arriving on Friday night and I was SO glad to still be there when she came in. Irene and I did a swap years and years ago (at least 12) and since then I've bought several things from her on e-bay through Pat Morrison. It was such a joy to finally get to meet her in person.

So sorry I've been slow on the updates here. After I got home and shelved the books in the library, I ended up with about a dozen new books to read so that sort of got me on a different path. Tomorrow is filled with a visit, condo coffee and condo board meeting so don't know when I'll have a chance to post.