Cruisin' The Caribbean With Tim

Thursday, September 29th

St. Maarten

and

Workshop #3

We arrived in St. Maarten early, and after breakfast Pat and I left the ship to hunt for some souvineers and postcards.  The souvineers for our "big" project with Tim (he didn't mention what it would be, just that we should be collecting items for it), and the postcards for our Mail Love pals back home.  What is Mail Love?  Well, a bunch of us, most of whom have been in collaborative art projects together for years, have committed to sending everyone in the group at least one thing a month via snailmail.  Could be a postcard, an interesting article, die cuts, anything handmade....as long as it arrives in the mail it's OK.  We've been at it for several months now, and it is great to receive love in the mail.  Try it with some friends!

Anyway.....St. Maarten was not quite as hot as Coco Cay or St. Thomas.  Hot, yes, but this island has a pretty constant breeze which makes it much more comfortable.  We wandered around, visited some shops, made a few purchases, took pictures, and then returned to the ship for lunch (more on that in a bit).

One of the specialty restaurants on the ship is Johnny Rockets, and we decided to have lunch there.  It's a chain known for burgers and singing/dancing waiters.  And for only $4.95 you can eat until your veins are throbbing with cholesterol.  When you first walk in you are greeted with a rousing "welcome" from whoever is there, and your waiter puts this down on your table:

Onion rings, fries, a dipping sauce, and yes....that happy face is ketchup.

At some point during the festivities all the waiters stop what they're doing to sing and dance for us. They're very sweet, but their moves are not exactly Temptations caliber.  But sweet.

After lunch Pat and I filled out our postcards.  There are 18 people in our Mail Love group, so we each wrote 9 cards.  Yes, Pat sent one to me, and I sent one to her.  Or should I say, the nice folks downstairs at the information desk will send them as soon as we get to Florida.

Later that night we were scheduled for a one hour workshop, and we all wondered what we would do in only an hour.  Last year we had an hour long Q/A with Tim.  Would we do that again?  Nope.  Tim managed to come up with a very beautiful project that only took that long to complete.  Here he is explaining:

He called the project "Elements of Time," and we made a necklace using his idea-ology time piece and an assortment of other embellishments.  This is the one I made, and next to it the leftovers from my class kit.

I had time to wander around and take a few more photos of friends.

Here are Lois and Ellen:

After months of enjoying  participating in A Compendium of Curiosities and Grungy Monday, I was so happy to finally meet Linda Ledbetter, the mastermind behind those two challenges. Linda was on the cruise and taking classes with her mom Pat:

And it was so good to see Kyoko and Naomi again.  They come all the way from Japan for Tim's cruises.  And they always bring the coolest gifts.  More on that another day. 

I remember last year, meeting Carol on her very first trip to NYC.  She was a bit nervous, but now she wants to come back!  Here she is with Veronica.

I glanced into the store to say hi to Mario, and managed to get this cool picture of myself with him and Jim (Mr. Scrapmap):

Tomorrow, I'm combining our last two days at sea and Parts 1and 2 of Workshop #4.  Hmmmm, a project that requires two parts and a total of 6 hours.  Are you curious too?