Black Sheep, Part I

Our trip was tripped up when we lost our site to online reserva-
tions. We either needed to leave and find a motel - hah! or move to another nearby site. After having dinner with friends who retired here from Reno, we elected to move the campsite. It was 9:00 when we started, but being north, it's light later. We were able to pull up the tent and walk it to the new, less desirable site in under an hour. Uncomfortably close to the showers, it seemed okay. I wonder what it looked like for the other campers when when we did the campsite shuffle with a fully-loaded 11'x12' tent. Great tent, BTW - thanks Coleman.

We drove into Eugene and the Lane County Fair-
grounds the next morning. It's been six years since Ian and I were here last and we were astonished at how much bigger the event has become, to the point that vendors are in Easy-Ups outside the main venue.
I can tell you that one of the thrills of this event is old friends. Caught here - Mike, Linda and Marianne. Linda is my friend who stepped away from her corporate life, sold her house and moved to Washington to be with her love - a guy that Ian and I both like a lot. Marianne is our guild friend from Burney in the mountains, who is working with the lady who bought Russell Groff's inventory and is one of the booths. I bought a brass sley hook embossed with Robin and Russ, because I've always worried that I'd lose the only one I have.
Okay - this is my favorite picture of all. I was shooting the picture when they said, let's get a stranger to shoot it so you can be in it. A woman overheard, and became our stranger camera angel. It's me, Becky, Laura, Michelle and Mim, pronounced Meem, long story. I don't know what to say, because our blogger roots are much deeper than this picture. Only Michelle had the presence of mind to wear her own work.

I have stalled at what to say next for at least ten minutes, typing and erasing. I guess I would say that the down side of blogging is making friends that you care about so deeply and who live so far away that you ache to say goodbye to them. Okay, I cried when we drove away. What can I say.
The is my last image for this post, but it's an important one for me. Ian and Mike are chatting, my purple purse is present on the table, Linda is evaluating a hat that Laura made - her hats are insanely brilliant - next to Becky whose high school daughter made her an unexpected and also doting grandmother this year, to Robin in the dark shirt and her sister Toni. Doris is in the foreground with a white shirt.

Robin and Toni's parents have been our neighbors for the past eight years. Their mother, Mandy, has fought cancer ever since we moved out here and lost the battle just last week. We cried together in a surprised vendors' booth. While Mim isn't in the picture, she too lost her mother this past year, right before Christmas following a short illness.

And in the recent past, Doris lost her mother during a terrible fire season and had to fly East, leaving neighbors, friends and firefighters in charge of her farm and sheep. It was an emotional time for us daughters. It's never easy, is it. I tried to figure a tag for this post, but you know, there's not one for us daughters, is there.