| Hi and thanks for stopping by to see what's new around
here. 11/27/06: Wow, right now the weather is outstanding
here in Western Pennsylvania. We did a show last
weekend and were disappointed to learn that the promoter's
contract expired this year and that she was outbid by a
competing promoter. The show we've been doing for the
last 14 years was juried for handcrafted items only.
The promoter who will be holding the show next year isn't so
picky as to what he allows in.
I know from talking with so many of you that you're up
against the same thing that we are -- it's difficult to
compete with the imported stuff, the items we refer to as
buy/sell. I call them "craft-like objects" but you
know that I'm talking about the cheap copies of our
handcrafted items that are sold in just about every store
nowadays.
It was refreshing to hear some of the comments from our
customers this past weekend though. Our regular craft
show goers are catching on to what is what. The sad
thing was to see how many of our fellow crafters did not
return to the show this year. Some have retired, some
have moved on to other shows and unfortunately, a few of
them have passed on.
The gate was most certainly down from years past.
The mall behind the exhibition center where we did the show
opened doors at 6 AM on Black Friday. No doubt that
competition during the holiday selling season is stiff,
however, I still firmly believe that there will always be a
market for handcrafted items each holiday season. The
trick is to keep one step ahead of the imports!
It's been really busy around here. Thanksgiving
brought an incredible amount of things for my family to be
thankful for this particular year. My daughter-in-law
Debi has been thoroughly scanned, probed, poked, screened
and tested and has been given a clean bill of health for
cancer. She'll be tested regularly but we all can
breathe a sigh of relief for now.
My granddaughter Corra's tumor was surgically removed and
turned out to be benign. She'll have scar where the
incision was made but that should be about it. When
the doctor came out to speak to us in the waiting room after
the surgery, he described the operation and how in incision
should heal. Lol, my son Garrick said "Okay, so what
you're saying Doc, is that this pretty much ruins her
chances of being a Playboy model, huh?"
Some of you know that Mum was hit from behind by a
tractor trailer late last summer. The Blazer had
rolled over the median of a 4-lane highway and landed on its
roof. The Blazer was totaled but by the grace of God,
Mum was wearing her seat belt and was helped out of her
upside down position in the vehicle through a shattered
window by three wonderful women who ran to her rescue.
Mum says that the seat belt saved her life. I believe
it too.
And my middle child Daragh had an auto accident back in
the spring. That car too was also totaled but no one
was injured. And Daragh is the better driver for it.
A car is only money. The kids in the car were fine and
that's all that mattered.
My oldest daughter Revere moved out to the York,
Pennsylvania area which is about 4 hours from me here in
Pittsburgh. Mum and I went out to visit for a couple
of days last month. The area is beautiful and her
house is extraordinary. Her husband Jason is a pilot
for Southwest and their move permitted him to be stationed
permanently out of Baltimore. That gives him at least
another full week at home per month with Revere and their
three kiddies. When he was living here in Pittsburgh,
he had to fly out a day early for each of his shifts and
then fly home again from wherever he was when his shift was
over. So while I miss them, it's a blessing that they
were able to finally settle down into a much easier way of
life.
So yes indeedy, this was one year where I had a list of
things a mile long for which we truly gave thanks.
Revere has her craft room put together and tells me that
a new moose pattern is in the works. I've got some new
stuff on the drawing board too. Other than that, I'm
ready to hole up for the winter. I've got a few quilts
to finish up and have fallen in love with rug hooking.
Oh, and the kitchen needs painted and the foyer still needs
some plaster work.
Wishing you all the happiest of holiday seasons!
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Well, summer's over and two of the three kids left at
home are back to school. Daragh graduated and will be
attending classes at the local Community College. She's
working almost full-time at a grocery store.
Taya was selected as drum major this year for the Fox
Chapel Area High School marching band. It's been a busy
time, not only for her but for me as well. Band camp
goes all the way through August so we've pretty much been on a
regular school schedule for the month already.
In July Taya attended a Bands of America symposium in
Illinois. 500 miles from PA to drop her off, 500 miles
back home the next day. A week later 500 miles to pick
her up and lol, I just up and kept on going. Mum and my
younger son Devon went with me for the ride and after we
picked up Taya, somehow we managed to navigate all the way to
Yellowstone National Park via the Colorado Rockies and Estes
Park. What an absolutely beautiful trip. I'll try to
post some photos within the next month or so. If you've
never taken a trip through the Rockies I highly encourage you
to do it.
To be perfectly honest, I stole that trip. If I
hadn't kept on driving, I probably wouldn't have been able to
take off anywhere this past summer. ROFL, I didn't even
tell my husband where I was until we were in Rawlins, Wyoming.
Needless to say, he was a bit surprised to learn that his wife
and two of the his kids were in a hotel room 1800 miles away
from home. I give him credit though. He took
fairly good care of the cats and Max while we were away.
My oldest daughter moved four hours away to Red Lion, PA.
It's been about a month and I miss her and the grandkids
something awful.
But here's the most important thing that's going on right
now -- my son's wife Debi had terrible pain in her right side
and went to the emergency room. Within 5 hours she had
her appendix out. I went down to the hospital that
afternoon and visited with Debi, Garrick and the grandkids.
Debi was pale and weak but in otherwise good spirits it
seemed. She's young, only 30 and she and Garrick have 4
kiddies ages 10 down to 7 months.
Shocker of all shockers, when Debi had her follow-up
appointment with her family doctor, the doc told her that the
pathology report was bad news. What we had thought was a
routine appendectomy turned out that the surgeon had also
removed a malignant tumor on Debi's appendix! :-(
A very surprising thing in all of this is that both her
family doctor and the surgeon who removed the appendix insist
that the tumor did not cause Debi's appendicitis. They
both claim that she is very, very lucky that she just happened
to get appendicitis and that the removal of the tumor was a
coincidence. Apparently this cancer grows painlessly for
about 6 months and by the time a patient starts feeling pain
in the abdomen, the cancer has usually spread and it's too
late to do anything about it. The surgeon told Debi the
same thing -- scary, huh?
Well, Debi's not out of the woods yet so I'm asking for
some well wishes and prayers. She'll be starting care
with an oncologist this week and there are oodles of tests to
be done. If they think that they got out the tumor
before the cancer spread, she'll be monitored weekly for the
next several years. Even after that, they'll test her
regularly. If the tests come back with any
irregularities, most likely she'll have to endure chemo and/or
exploratory surgery. We should know more within the
month.
Oh, and between eBay's fee hike and the fact that I wish I
were Wonder Woman but I'm not, I closed down the eBay store
and the Marketworks site and combined all of my craft supply
inventory on my Clarion House site. Five sites were just
too much to keep updated so I'm down to three. Be sure
to stop by our Clarion House site to check out over 800 craft
and decorating items.
Hey gang, it's time to start getting ready for fall
shows!!!! Yay!!!!
Linet/LCC
(By the way, if you're looking for the free background
graphics, email me and I'll send you the links. Somehow
the backgrounds managed to make the rounds around My Space and
Live Journal and hundreds of kids were linking directly to the
graphics and using up a lot of my bandwidth. Sorry that
I had to take the backgrounds down -- they're still on the web
though, just at different locations and I'm still very happy
to be able to share them with you.)
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