Aug. 2, 2008
2am

Due to my broken leg I was forced to cancel participation in the annual League of NH Craftsmen's Fair; a Fair I have participated in each year since 1976. Over this time collectors who have come each year to see me at Sunapee have become a supportive family of friends whom I very much look forward to seeing. Their enthusiasm and support has been more a factor in the continued improvement and development of my craft than they know.

As I write this late on the night before the opening day of the fair I am already missing the people who would be smiling in my booth at the start of the fair as well as those familiar friends who come during the remaining nine days of the fair.

The upside of this situation is I have taken from this forced break an opportunity to work on the photography and computer skills necessary to get ongoing work onto the web.  To my surprise, I've actually gotten somewhere!  I now have an indoor photo set up and developed the ability to take a photo of a small carving, quickly correct the lighting and image size in a Photoshop program, and easily send it by email or post it on my site. To any of you who are daunted by computer stuff I would like to add that as recently as a week or so ago I likened the task of designing and getting this section of the site up to crawling over shards of glass. A better analogy I can say, from this vantage point a bit closer to success, is it is more like learning to ride a bike. Frustrating, you fall (a lot!), but all of a sudden it starts getting easy, and then, you're doing it. And then it gets really fun.

I am excited about this new possibility of staying in touch with far-flung collector friends throughout the year.  I hope you'll come to enjoy the ease and leisure of having access to my work in this new venue and check back often to see what's new.

As was the case in my inexperienced 1976 first booth at Sunapee, and every booth that followed, there is much room for improvements. But, for right now, I will take a moment to marvel in pleasant amazement that such a thing as this online booth is possible, and that it up, standing, getting filled, and here to welcome you.

I will hope the photos you see here bring a smile to your face just as seeing the carvings in my actual booth might. And I do hope you will let me know you've been to visit  Seeing your name and a "hello" from the contact/order page will make all the work well worth it to know we are in touch, and surely bring a smile to my face!

Sincerely and with thanks, Laury