Vancouver Clay Guild

I've been a member of the Northwest Polymer Clay Guild since 1996.  They meet in Seattle, which is about an hour south of where I live.  A couple of years ago, I went to Horizons, the Vancouver Polymer Clay Guild retreat.  It was wonderful!  They had some nice workshops and everyone was so very kind and welcoming. 

Of course, every year since then, the freedom to travel easily between Canada and the US grew more and more complicated.  It wasn't until last year that I finally got my passport renewed and could go into Canada again.  And I got to thinking...if I travel an hour to Seattle for a meeting, how hard would it be to travel two hours to Vancouver for a meeting?  And would it be okay for an American to join a Canadian guild?

In a word: YES!  Lucky for me, the first meeting since inquiring about joining was the December Christmas party.  I had a fabulous time and met some truly great people (all of them, really).  I'm horrible at taking pictures of people (I always forget!); for some reason, I usually concentrate on the polymer.  Go figure!

Here's a picture of some of the people (in deference to my failing memory, I'm not naming names--I don't want to get anyone wrong!):

Here's the ornaments in the ornament swap (I'll show individual pictures in a later post):

And here's the ornament I got...isn't it gorgeous?!  It's on my tree right now!

*happy sigh*