It has been a busy week in Clinton, NJ. On Thursday, Greet Rome, Martin Bruggeman, Wally Thoma and Veerle Merschaut visited the exhibit at the Hunterdon Art Museum, having come from Belgium. In honor of this international visit, a town councilwoman was sent by the mayor to greet them, and a Hunterdon County Freeholder also came, welcomed them and took the tour with them. The Freeholder had to leave before the end of the tour, because the tour took about 2 hours. The duration of the tour varies with the interest level of those on the tour. After the tour we went across the historic bridge and had lunch at the Clinton House Inn, an historic inn which was established in 1743 and was once a stage coach stop. On Friday, we had a viewing at the Ratti of War Lace and other Belgian lace with the four Belgian ladies, and we were joined by Karen Thompson who journeyed up from Washington, DC, and Loretta Holzberger, President of the IOLI and Lee Daly who was graciously acting as Loretta's hostess for the visit. On Saturday, Loretta, Lee, Trenna Ruffner, who had come from Michigan to see the show, participated in a ticketed tour that was organized by the museum. There was one lady at the tour who had made bobbin lace in the 1970s and wanted to get back into it. I noticed that Lee was giving her all the details of how to connect with lace in NJ. There were about a dozen people on the tour. It seems like the more people there are, the shorter the tour is, so this tour was only an hour long. Although this may seem counter intuitive, it actually makes sense because when there is only one person or a few people they enter in more freely with their observations about the works on display. So far the record length of a tour is 2 hours and twenty minutes. After this tour, a small group of us walked across the historic bridge to the historic inn and had lunch. The inn had thus been subjected to two times this week when a group of 7 people who had not reserved in advance walked in demanding food. They seem to prefer to have reservations made, but as I learned at the time of the opening, they don't like reservations that are for a yet to be determined number of people at a yet to be determined time. On Sunday, we picked up Elena Kanagy-Loux at the Newark train station and drove her to Clinton for her to give a beginning bobbin lace class to 10 people. The class was completely subscribed. I stayed to assist. The students completed a sampler of cloth stitch, half stitch, whole stitch, and in some even did torchon ground. Everyone seemed to enjoy the class and several people wanted to know how to continue. I directed them to the IOLI website to have the regional director match them with the nearest lace opportunities. Several people seemed to be interested in returning this coming Sunday for "Drop In Lacemaking" with Pat Morris. After the class Elena and my husband and I crossed the historic bridge and walked into the historic inn without a reservation for dinner. Devon
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