Bead & Button - Part Two

Wednesday, June 9

Over the course of the last year or so, I have had the great fortune to develop online friendships with the oh-so-talented German beaders Sabine Lippert and Martina Nagele.  When they decided to travel to the States for B&B, the prospect of this trip became even more exciting for me.  Amazing! We would get to meet in person, something I had not dared to hope for.

Sabine and Martina had often mentioned their friend and B&B traveling companion, Petra Tismer - owner of Das Perlament in Bonn. Petra and I did became Facebook friends last month, in time to find out that she had lived in this part of the country for a few years. It's a small world.

Terry and I got on the elevator shortly before 7am on Wednesday. The plans were for him to get to the station to take the train to Indiana, where he would visit with his brother and nephew until Saturday and for me to have breakfast with my German friends.  On the way down to the lobby, I overheard two women with (what I thought were) German accents. The woman to my left was not really in my line of sight, so I addressed the woman more directly in front of me with, "Martina?"  Her reply, "no."  Oh well....an honest mistake, right...I may have imagined her accent.

Then, the woman to my left turns towards me with a big smile on her face and says "Carol!"  It was Petra :D Yes, strangers DO hug in elevators!  LOL  I introduced her to my husband, who then left on his own adventure. Petra and I found a table in the lobby part of the restaurant (despite having made a reservation, we were told that the restaurant itself was full). We hadn't been there long when Sabine joined us. More hugs and laughter and joy, which was then repeated when Martina came to the table a few minutes later.

Oooo-ing and aah-ing over beautiful jewelry. Conversation that jumped from one topic to another. Women having fun, getting to know each other better. Blessings. We were NOT strangers. And I fell in love. ;)

But we all had places to be and beading to do.  After promises to, at a minimum, meet up with each other for breakfast every morning of our stay, we went our separate ways...

My very first beadweaving class EVER--I am entirely self-taught thanks to wonderful books and the internet--was scheduled for 8:00am in the Hilton hotel, which was two skywalks and a convention center from where we were. That took a "few" minutes and at one point I felt rather like I was walking a maze.

I finally located the classroom, a few minutes before the scheduled start. From the hallway, I heard Marcia DeCoster telling someone that "any minute now one of my facebook friends will..."  and as I walked through the door  -- "...walk through the door"  "Carol!" "Marcia!"  Hugs. Laughter. What a welcoming way to start a class!

Everything about that class was wonderful: the amazing instructor Marcia DeCoster, her patient and lovely assistant Liz Thompson, the project - Ripplestiltskin, my "neighbor" Erica Cessna of ReedsBeads.

This is how far we got with the beautiful cuff in this project:

Please note that we ENDED the class by using size 15 seed beads to create a bezel for the gorgeous rivoli. Can we say, "eyestrain"!?  LOL  I think the photo of me on Marcia's blog was taken before we began work on that bezel, but I already looked pretty tired..hehe.

This is what the cuff looks like finished, by the way:

Wednesday was a super long, extra-ordinary day, and you will have to wait for Part Three of this tale to hear about meeting Lisa, Jennifer, Donna, Shelley, Linda, Shirley, Janice, Mak, Nanette, Tali, Kelli, and Kelly.

At this rate, it will be the end of July before I finish telling this story. LOL. Be well and get going!