The surprise

Gosh, Beth we must have been posting at about the same time.  I love the description of your visit to the mosaic studio.  I so very much wish I could have been with you!  I'm guessing that these were clay based tiles?  or were they possibly glass?  Several years ago I think I blogged about visiting a glass tile artist's studio, and coming away with a shopping bag full of fused glass pieces.  That was a similar experience, in that she invited me to to the studio (previously we had only met in her dining room).  We had to negotiate her basement stairs in a very old house in Old St. James, only to enter a beautiful grotto-like area.  She had put in special fire proof flooring, and then had coloured glass everywhere.  How she got that huge kiln down those very narrow stairs, I'll never know. We spent almost an hour going through the process and the wonderful result.  I still have many of the plainer pieces and a precious bag of very special pieces that I have hopes of using some day.

I guess that both of these episodes prove something we had talked about just a while ago--taking the  risk of accepting an opportunity when it arises.  After our conversation (on the blog), at the time, ( just a couple of months ago), I decided to take a chance.   Last week I was offered a chance to participate in an international fibre art exhibit, and I've accepted.  I'm not allowed to talk about it, and have probably said too much, but the emotions I feel now are mainly apprehension, but also exhilaration  about what I've gotten myself into.  I was also recently presented with the opportunity to connect, in a small way, with the World of Threads  Competitions.  This was a "voice from the past", as this is the competition that I was juried into many years ago with my brown gold work box that was exhibited in --was it Oakville?--as one of my very first  publicly exhibited art pieces. This connection may go no where, but I did accept the invitation.  We just need to be more aware of these opportunities, and accept them, whenever we can, without paying attention to that negative internal voice.  I wonder sometimes if it's Mom's.