later

The last day of class, everybody showed their favorite and least favorite pieces of fabric. Here are some of them. Cathy's favorite, below.

Sharon shows her favorite at the moment, which was the last piece she had printed.

I think this was Pat's least favorite but I suspect she will put another layer on it and will like it better.  On the wall, her fave.

Wendy's favorite is on sheer fabric on the wall to her left. She is holding the one she liked least, although the rest of the class felt differently.

Later, I went out to an Indian restaurant in Birmingham's Balti Triangle with  Laura Wasilowski, Frieda Anderson, Helen and Dennis Conway and Lisa & Peter Walton.  We laughed a lot.
 Below, Laura and Helen - obviously enjoying themselves!

Frieda Anderson and a greatly amused waiter off to the side.

Below, Lisa Walton.  I didn't get a picture of Peter and Lisa at dinner.

Yesterday morning at a SAQA coffee, I met Eszter Bornemisza and Charlotte Yde - both absolutely lovely to talk to, not to mention that their work is wonderful.

Marlis Egger, who had just taken a photo of me taking the photo above.  My iPhone didn't do a very good job, but it is better than no picture at all.  Marlis and I kept running into one another all day at the exhibition.

At last night's international dinner I had a wonderful time with Marianne Bender and Cécile Trentini.

And this morning, Marlene and I had breakfast with Inge Hueber - also a delight.  Now, off to another coffee and if I can get WiFi when I get back to London, I'll post more.

See 'ya!

will check in later

No time to blog - off to the International Dinner and will catch up either late tonight or tomorrow.  Meantime, Liz Plummer stopped by to say "hi" yesterday after class and I was so delighted to see her in person.  Zowie, this is fun!!

Later.

printfest

Yesterday's first day of class was an enthusiastic group who took to printing like experts, although two of them had never printed before.

Here is Cathy, early in the day with one piece in process-- and later, some of her work on the board.

I wish I had taken a "before" of Sandra's piece because it was a perfectly ok first layer.  However, the second layer made it into a smashing piece.

Sandy was hard at work with her screen and was ultimately delighted with her first-layer results. I expect that these prints may change today.

That's it for now: more later.  In the meantime, I am off to class for day #2.
I'm having a great time meeting people whose blogs I read (Sandy and Sandra, for starters).  Ta ta for now.

Finally!

Backtracking a bit - our weekend in London was mostly quiet.  Saturday night was far from quiet: we saw a fabulous production of Sondheim's Into the Woods in the outdoor theatre at Regent's Park.

The daytime rain cleared up, sun came out, and it was a beautiful evening.  Sunday, the husbands hung out at home and Marlene and I went for a walk along the paths at Kenwood.

 We had cappuccinos and admired the Henry Moore, which I remembered seeing the last time we were in London, 5 years ago.

Today, David took Marty to the airport and I am keeping fingers x'd that the airlines take good care of him and that he gets home and safely into bed for a good night's sleep.  Here are the two friends before they had to say goodbye.

Marlene and I arrived in Birmingham mid-afternoon to set up the classroom, but now I have to deal with the fact of  not having sinks large enough in which to wash out screens for the next three days. The NEC people are very accomodating and hopefully will pull off a miracle by tomorrow morning so I can teach my class.

Susan Shie arrived at the NEC while we were there, so we all came back to the hotel together. Later, Marlene, Susan and I went down to the bar and encountered Elizabeth Barton, who joined us.  Alicia Merrett joined us a bit later. Here is Marlene studying the bar food menu.

Elizabeth and Susan were chatting and taking pictures.

and then Hilary Gooding came over to say hi to all of us.

What fun to finally meet her - and I'm looking forward to connecting with many more of the people I've been talking to and blogging with for a long time.

Elizabeth and Dominie Nash have an exhibit here, as does Susan Shie. Today they were just putting up walls.  Here is what the exhibition space looked like this afternoon.  The white walls are the individual galleries for special exhibits; the pipe and drape for the rest.

I expect it to look entirely different by tomorrow. We'll keep our eyes on the transformation. Tomorrow we're up at 6, so I'd better sign off and make it an early night.