Count down to Morrisburg 2009

I am a counter downer. When there's a big event in my life I start counting down. The length of time that I start counting down towards is dependent on how big the event is. Generally I count down to our Caribbean vacations that we take every year. Sometimes I count down to other vacations. If I'm on a business trip I count down the hours until I get to see my husband. You saw a hint of this personality quirk from me in one of my previous postings when I started counting down the hours to receiving Gera's landscape tiles that I ordered (by the way, they arrived yesterday and are just as pretty as the photo).

I've unfortunately learned that I count down when it's a negative event as well. When we've known that we've had to put one of our pets down and we've scheduled the appointment, I've counted down to that. Sometimes the count down puts things in perspective. Lately, due to the political nature of my job, I've counted down the hours or days until the unpleasant meeting might be over. I generally don't start the work count down until a few hours so it's nice to be able to say "in four hours this will just be an unhappy memory".

But, for most things, counting down is pleasant. Some might say that I'm wishing my life away. But I disagree. It allows me to not let the little stuff get me upset during the count down. Temperatures of -25 C and mounds of snow to shovel during my count down to Caribbean vacation? Go ahead, get cold! It only makes it more worthwhile to be going south. Car problems that cost hundreds of dollars to fix prior to a road trip in Arizona? No big deal, I'll have a rental car without those concerns soon.

And I'm happy to say that I've started a new count down. Morrisburg 2009 will be upon us in just a few short months.

What is Morrisburg, you might ask? It's an annual get-together of clayers in the Ontario and Quebec area. The first year I went I was practically dragged to it by what I considered overly enthusiastic and annoying clayers (Karen and others, I speak of you). I went, and very quickly became one of the overly enthusiastic and annoying clayers. The next year I pressured Sharon to join and she did with the same reservations that I had but now appears to be committed to going each year.

The class postings are up now for 2009 and the classes look wonderful with steam punk, faux clay fabric, miniature junk food (we'll even learn how to make relish!), brocade techniques. If you're at all interested, thanks to the wonders of blogging we've now got a blog set up that shows samples of what we're going to learn. You can see the class listings here. All of the classes look fun.

We've got some great teachers scheduled and it'll be a fun filled but exhausting long weekend. My mother's joining me and will be my roommate this year. That'll be nice and it adds to the anticipation since I only get to see her a couple of times a year.

I'm going to be teaching for the first time this year (I've done tutorials in the past). I'll be showing some options on what to do with the iridescent flakes. You've seen the earrings that I made before here and I'll be teaching an adaptation of those. Another sample of something that I'm playing with is in the photo below. Between now and then I've got some time to perfect my technique and hopefully come up with some ideas that will inspire others to create trinkets and treasure.

Anyhow, Blogger allows for a countdown gadget to be installed and I've added one on the left panel. It's below the polymer clay links and shows how many days until Morrisburg happens. I'm looking foward to it and the countdown begins. 101 days to go...

Cheers,

Sandy