Heart Felt

Oh please forgive me! I am not a fan of puns. I swear! But I did spend the last few weeks making felty heart pins for Valentine's Day. Rather than cutting heart shapes out of wool fabric, I sculpt dyed wool roving into hearts with barbed felting needles. It's very satisfying! I love embellishing them:


I participated in First Saturdays Open Studios on February 2nd, it went great! Mom and Dad came to visit and keep me company. Mom even did a drawing in her journal of the main mill building through my studio window. And I was especially glad to have her there to see many people enjoy and purchase her cards! And D came by with hot tea from Brew'd Awakening, much appreciated for sure.


By the way, I have several new Marilyn Smith Rosenfeld cards in the pipeline for my Etsy shop. But if you can't wait, they are currently already available in my studio!

It was just a great vibe at Western Avenue that day and I really enjoyed talking with everyone and selling a few cute things.

Then it was right back to work to have enough items for the Lowell Winterfest Glacier Galleries show on Friday, Feb 8th and Sat, Feb 9th. We vendors were paired with the soup competition. It was held in the Masonic Temple, the building on the right:


Me and my set up:



D helping me out:


People lined up outside in the cold and paid $5 to get in so they could taste soups from restaurants all over Lowell. They ate tiny soup after tiny soup, and sometimes they turned around and noticed we were selling things. Heh. I have to say, I have never seen the backs of so many people's heads! I understand the event organizers were trying to get us much needed foot traffic, but really, those people were into soup and not much else.


It wasn't all bad of course, I talked with lots of sweet people and tried to get everyone to promise to visit Western Avenue Studios during First Saturdays. My friends were also vending; Amanda of Brick Mill Studio, Ann Lee and Sonja Lee-Austin of Friends Fabric Art, Peter and Eve of La Sal Mountains Studio (Suite 415 at Western Avenue) and Heather Wang of Heather Wang Jewelry. And I did sell some things, enough to buy groceries for the week in fact, which feels like a total triumph! And it was right around the corner from the condo, it couldn't have been more convenient.

This was my first year vending at Winterfest. If, in the future, they decide to separate us vendors out from the soup competition, like it was in years past, I think artists who didn't do as well this year would not complain about the reduced foot traffic since quantity did not turn out to equal quality. (BTW: the Chicken Parmesan Soup from Ricardo's Café Trattoria was EXCELLENT!)

Later that night, from our bedroom, we were able to see the fireworks that signalled the end of Winterfest. Yes, go ahead, insert your fireworks in the bedroom joke here:


So now that those shows are over, I have pledged the rest of February toward learning how to do business taxes for the first time! I'll let you know what I find out.