The Northwest Flower & Garden Show!

Got my sketches in very early this morning, and since I needed to wait until they were approved before I could do any more, I took a break and attended the annual Northwest Flower and Garden Show. It is always a lovely day (even if it is nearly impossible to find parking in downtown Seattle at lunchtime).

There was a nice mix of garden and plant displays interspersed with loads of fabulous vendors selling everything vaguely garden related. (Of which I bought much too much... By virtue of consistently working for the last 14 months, I felt I could splurge a bit. More on that later). This photo was from a booth *filled* with these huge, brightly colored whirligig sculptural thingys that just made one happy to look at.

As per what has become our annual ritual, I met up with a couple of members of my critique group (see the POBL links on the sidebar for some of their websites) who do botanical demo painting every year at the show. On the completion of their shift, we trotted down the street amidst drizzle and fiddle-playing buskers to a lovely little Italian place for lunch.


Then onto a marathon session of browsing, viewing and shopping - complete with chatting with various vendors about who they use for their giclee printing or their jewelry-making techniques, etc... There are a lot of lovely, creative, helpful, chatty folks out there. It makes shopping doubly fun.


I took this picture for my french-horn playing daughter. This booth was filled with fountains-made-of-instruments... Go figure.

There were too many things to see - our feet gave out before we finished it all, but it was a lovely day and a terrific reprieve. If I have time tomorrow (which is once again, a studio day), I will post the incredibly cool stuff I purchased! It's probably good I don't get out much right now!