lina khan lampwork beads

I got these lovely pieces of lampwork glass beads from the very talented Lina Khan, a resident of the Canary Islands, who is featured today on Art Bead Scene Blog. She was a delight to interview and of course her work speaks for itself. Aren't they just beautiful?



We are home from our Pittsburgh trip. It was quite something, with soaring, searing heat and thin crowds in the vendor's pavilion. My husband made a few sales and more importantly for him, made some excellent professional contacts for his automobile art. I spent all my time perched in my booth, waiting for a bored wife of an auto enthusiast to come on over and discover a girl's booth of goodies. Saturday was a good day, Sunday was another story. Our tent was weighted down by four concrete filled PVC pipes, which hang suspended by ropes to the tops of the legs of the tent. My husband decided to take a walk and look around at the car show. I sat contentedly in the heat crocheting a large purse when suddenly a micro-burst of blasting wind swept the tent up in the air (concrete posts be damned), over my head, sailing through the golf course behind me, and landing in a heap on the putting green thirty feet away, upside down! OMG, carnage was everywhere! My jewelry display flipped all over the place, wooden display busts and earring trees tipped all over the ground, scattered jewelry everywhere, and about ten feet of linen yarn unraveled and flew in a twisted line towards the tent. I still sat in my chair, crochet hook poised in mid air, stunned. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. So much for concrete weights...
I called Michael on the cell and he literally sprinted back to the booth.

Thankfully some kind hearted vendors near me came running over, retrieved my tent, set it back up and re-anchored it. Michael arrived panting from exertion in the intense heat. Incredibly nothing broke or was damaged, other than the large chunks of putting green chewed up by the tent crash. The wind continued to plague us and we took turns for the next 25 minutes holding onto a bungee cord hooked to the top skeleton of the tent so the sucker wouldn't take sail again. Then came an announcement of impending severe thunderstorms in our area, with a forecast of it settling over our heads in 40 minutes. That really did it. You've never seen two people work so fast to pack a large truck full of delicate paintings, display panels, tent, jewelry tossed into bins, tables and chairs folded up and packed away and so on. Bear in mind it was 100 degrees.... We packed it all in, climbed in the truck, drove out of the vendor's area and just then a veritable monsoon hit Schenley Park.

Ah, well, these things happen, unfortunately to ME! ha!
After that episode, we were both ready for an extra large sapphire gin martini. But we settled for a extra large super duper venti iced mocha with extra whipped cream at Starbucks. Mmmmmm... good. Afterwards we made a cheer me up stop at a terrific art supply store called A & C Artist & Craftsman Supply on Hobart Street in Pittsburgh. What a great store! They had everything. Michael stocked up on small canvases and I got a supply of cool handmade papers and also thicker Indian made papers for some art journals I want to stitch together with coptic binding.

Now we are home for only a moment before leaving in just a few hours to go pick up our doggie Lucy, who has been at doggie summer camp with my parents. We'll be back Friday and then I can get back into creating and posting.

I'm not quite to the point of laughing over our experiences. Post-traumatic art show stress is a more accurate description. I'm glad to be home!!