Dragonsglass: The Dragons Weyr

Wow, it has taken me a day and a half to recover enough to write this post. What a wonderful time I had. What a wonderful group of clayers I met! I am going to try to make this post halfway intelligent (don’t want to push it yanno) in hopes everyone who reads this will feel like they were there.

It started with having to get up too dang early at O’dark hundred to be at the airport by 5:15 AM for my 6:15 flight to Denver. There I had all of 42 minutes to go ehhh about a mile to my other gate and the plane for Chicago. Thank goodness for moving walkways! I got there as they were boarding my seating group…group 3, the last group before closing the door. I made it…this is a good thing. HUGE plane…seems like I walked another mile just to find my seat. Oiks…I am too old for all this walking. Little did I know what was in store for me at the retreat. I landed at O’Hare with all my luggage (a miracle in itself, except I did carry on ) and met Gerri Newfry, who lives in Chicago and was so wonderful to be my chauffeur to and from the retreat, plus I was able to send all my sharp instruments of claydom to her so I wouldn’t have to check my bag. I had arrived.

Got to the hotel at Indian Lakes Resort (talk about posh….I felt like the girl from the hicks there…I mean WHICH coffee cup is mine and why do I have 20 forks?) checked in, dropped my bags in the room and Gerri and I began the first of many great schlepps from one end of the resort (hotel) to the other (conference center) . Got signed in, met Barbara Forbes-Lyons, the grand poobah of the retreat, and got my table space. WHOA…..we each got HALF of an 8 foot table. I have NEVER had that much space at any retreat. this was awesome! I got my space all set up, interrupted by meeting new friends and hugging old friends, lots of laughing and talking. Good time.

Then….it was time for the welcome reception….AKA food. The first of the most AWESOME meals I have ever eaten at a retreat. Oh lord, the food they provided was gobsmacking droolicious. Go to the Indian Lakes Resort link and check out their menus. Not only was there a wonderful variety of food at the meals provided, it tasted so darn good. And, they had chocolate chip cheesecake at every meal. oh darn

choclate chip cheesecake

I am so not a night owl but through out this whole retreat I didn’t get to bed before midnight and was up and ready to go by 7 am. Each day of the retreat was filled with demo’s, some demo’s, oh and did I mention demo’s? Christi Friesen hit the ground running and had a crowd around her table every second of the day. She is the demo queen Other folks who did demo’s throughout the retreat were Suzanne Ivester, Judy Belcher, Maureen Carlson, Debbie Jackson, Cat Therien, Cindy Silas, Wilma Yost (they also brought the store with them), Kathry Ottman, Lisa Pavelka, Lorrene Davis, Christy Minnis, Barbara Forbes-Lyons, Heather Campbell, and myself. Boy was I in with some wonderful artists. Wilma also did a demo of The Dream Machine….can I just say drool? Needless to say there was always something going on in the workroom. There were also impromptu demo’s at work spaces which of course is always fun.

I took a ton of pictures and will put them up on flickr once I get them edited so they don’t chew up tons of bandwidth and take forever to upload. Until then, Barb created a flickr group pool for everyone who was there to upload their pictures. So have a look see and enjoy all our fun vicariously.

I think the final night banquet was the icing on the cake. Lot’s of donated items were raffled off and folks were loving their winnings. Maureen Carlson managed to get 3 of the 4 scarves, she must of bought a bazillion tickets! And the cream on the icing? The live auction. The auctioneer? Christi Friesen. I don’t think I have laughed so much in a long time. Tears were flowing down many faces as she did the auctioneer spiel. She is one crazy woman. I so did not want to leave the next day but I had too. I was missing my Munchie way too much to hide out there.

The trip home was long. I had a three hour layover in Denver and then the smaller plane home. It was soooooo good to sleep in my own bed. So good that I have slept in it 6 times in the last almost 48 hours. Retreats and classes are wonderful and renewing, but home is where my heart is and I am glad to be here……until my next event. Sandy Camp 2009. Hope to see you there.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 17th, 2009 at 11:30 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.