
And just now that Monika Heyen of “Silberschmuck Workshop” from Hörstel – Nordrhein Westfalen - Germany is coming to Studio Nevada's Dream. She has registered for the 3-day certified Art Clay Silver Quilling course. The hotel in Harderwijk was already booked, but eventually Monika decided to cancel this reservation.
She is currently not allowed to stay in the Netherlands for longer than 24 hours without taking appropriate measures. In order to be able to stay in the Netherlands for 3 days, she has the obligation to make a digital report of this to the German government and to go into quarantine for at least 5 days upon returning home.
None of this seems so special, though. . . Many Art Clay Silver fellow instructors also have a job in addition to their Metal Clay activities. Then it may just be that you can no longer take so many days off towards the end of the calendar year. This also applies to Monika. Apart from the negative energy that all these actions bring, she does not have enough days available to stay at home. What to do now?
We have contact about this together and eventually Monika has a brave proposal. She suggests traveling up and down by train every day. This way she circumvents the 24-hour rule and can still follow the training. Michael and/or myself pick up and bring her to and from the station in Harderwijk. How nice that it can be done like this. And then look: Annemarie is there too! All fun, in a space of 65 m2. Keeping your distance is therefore not a problem. Mouth caps are sufficiently in stock and everything is clean.
There is a lot of work these days, a lot of chatting and tasty snacks. Annemarie has brought chocolate spice nuts, so very wrong hahaha. I activated my button self-control and didn't eat it, but admit it took some effort.
Annemarie and I are practicing our German language these days, Monika her English. She clearly wants to continue with metal clay and invests a lot of time, energy and money to master more and more techniques. For this, she seeks connection with her neighboring countries. In Germany, Art Clay Silver is apparently less in the spotlight? Craftlines offers a solid training program as a distributor. All techniques developed and offered by Aida have been elaborated here into training courses, supplement courses and masterclasses. In addition to Level 1 and 2, Monika is now also certified in New Mokume-Gane and Silver Quilling. In December she will return for UV-Resin and Kumihimo. And I expect to see her more often.
You can tell from Monika that these days have had an impact. It was a lot of hours every day and that in addition to an enormous travel time. Because everyone knows: it is autumn, the leaves are falling and that is causing problems for our train system in the Netherlands. A lot of delay, also this weekend.
Monika, thank you for your enthusiastic, passionate input. Especially nice that you took so much effort to be able to follow this training. Have a rest, I'll see you in December!