Don't mess with Mother Nature

Gaia is the name I use for the goddess of mother nature.
She's in charge of trees, rivers, plants, weather and earthquakes.

So when us piddly people plan an event, and Gaia has other ideas, guess who wins! Here's my journaling of our trip to Shelby NC.

All day Thursday, Feb. 6, 2020, it rained in North Carolina. Western NC has lots of mountains, and creeks and rivers that flood from the runoff. This storm also included a line of thunderstorms and tornados. I kept an eye on the radar screen as we drove right behind the worst of the storms which were going slowly east. We were driving southeast, but we stayed on the western side behind that line. We also stayed on Interstates most of the way, and had no trouble at all.  My use of a certain impromptu wand might or might not have had any effect on traffic and conditions. Believe me, plastic straws were the underlying theme of the day.

My display

We unloaded our pottery at the Cleveland County Arts Council in Shelby NC. It was a bit wet, but quickly accomplished by Tim and Allan. There were just 2 employees there. It seems sometime while we were on the way they decided to cancel the opening reception.  It meant it would be held in a week, but the show would still be up for the whole month.  Apparently too many people (probably of importance) couldn't get through their own swollen-creek roads to town.  Only one other artist hadn't put his works out yet...and I'm sure when the rain stops he will make it to town.

But I did take time to go look at all the other potters' works. I'm sharing them over on Alchemy of Clay!

We were really ok without having an opening reception (aka party with lots of potters and some customers.)  Cathy and I had been pushing ourselves all week to get ready, pricing, packing, inventorying, glazing and firing in Cathy's case, repacking, etc.

Our dear friend, Tim, had not had a much prep work to do, and probably was ok with another adventure with these crazy potter women.  His job was loading and unloading his van, and fixing the lighting switch which had failed when we last were going to drive with him to a show. He had also put in the third seat so we could all drive in comfort, and he had the van inspected and renewed his registration. Plus, he got to do all the driving in the rain! That was a pretty major undertaking, and I was especially grateful that he drove us home after dark in the rain...something that would have left my white knuckle marks on the steering wheel.

Since there wasn't a party, we asked the locals for restaurant recommendations after we'd arranged our displays.  We ended up at a Greek/Italian place...very nice layout. My cousin, Violet, had recommended the Spanakopita, which I ordered. Cathy and Tim had Greek salads with chicken. And as we were handed plastic straws to use with our water or diet cokes, I had to remark that these would someday be rare antique items of value. That probably explains why I have such a collection of them. I had brought my own hard plastic straw in my sipper which turned magically into a wand for good safe driving...but I left it in the van.  And I drank a much appreciated beer anyway (do not try to drink beer with a straw!)

Toscano's Cafe still had this unique Christmas tree up.

The bottom layers of my 'pita were kind of burned and hard, and so I couldn't even cut them.  But the top was delicious.  And when I got home with my Balaclava-to-go, I found the same problem with the bottom layers being hard and over cooked.  Shucks, I wasn't very happy about that. I love good Greek pastries!

Yes, I captured Tim looking around the corner...he'd been a real trooper with all this rain, so we treated him to dinner.

More is to be posted tomorrow. Over on Alchemy of Clay. I think I took a shot of everyone's pottery at the show.