Happy New Year on this very day. We are exhaling after a wonderful holiday season. Thank you for making it thus. Our furnaces and crucibles are being 'seasoned' like the old cast iron pan that might be in your midst, needing care. Since December-something we have suspended our production team in order to do maintenance on our glassybaby 'cookers.' It is over my head what this entails, but know that we will bring, tippy top, ship shape, 2010, glassybaby production in a matter of days.
It is exciting to announce that Saturday, January 23rd, is our next Seconds Sale. This is my secret favorite biannual Madrona event. We will open our doors to the brave line up at 10 am...knowing that many have imbibed lattes for more than two hours. Our Seconds Sales never disappoint. We carefully stow away glassybaby with beauty marks which designate them as 'seconds' for 6 months... I declare 'seconds' blasphemy...they, in their thousands (usually four thousand strong,) are gorgeous, but must be picked by hand. We have had die hards fly in for this event, and it is always charming to learn of the exodus to the Seconds Sale from various ports of call. I still hold in my imagination the troop of Seconds Sale shoppers , who carefully park their Winnebago curbside, at 3406 East Union Street, overnight, to be first in line for the sale... a Bacchanalian original, with so much potential for fun. I promise, if this is you, I will deliver lattes in the morning.
I look forward to what this year brings. I believe that it will bring another glassybaby store opening, maybe more, somewhere exciting and new. We have so much to look forward to...Steve at the helm, Lee, driving us soulfully forward with her giving vision and creative vision. We have Christine managing our 5 stores strong and growing; and in the 12th hour, her husband always brings us sandwiches. We have our dogs...Wallie, Jackie O, Lucie, Stella, Dexter, Piper, Scout, Pudge. We have an amazing task force, always buoyed by the abiding and amazing craft of our glass blowers, who just churn and churn out the beautiful glassybaby. It is something special to watch glassblowing... it is transcendent and rare to work at a place where beauty is rendered by hand.
Thank you, thank you, to all for a great 2009.
In my interim, between December 24th and the New Year dawning...I had an evening, a dinner, turned to bonfire in the snow. Archival glassybaby lined the dinner table in various greens...fortune cookies were read aloud as the snow enveloped us in this cabin. It reminded me of the magic we are a wonderful part of. Lovely.
Happy New Year with a lot more to come.
Until Next Time, Nicola
