The Wheatland Calligraphy Guild

So apparently, there’s this group of 14+calligraphic friends in Melfort, Saskatchewan who get together twice a month, make cards for and with people in hospitals and assisted living homes, and travel the area to teach classes to students. They invite you out to teach a weekend class and they send a famous TV interviewer to pick you up at the airport (I know she’s famous ‘cause my Aunt & Uncle in Saskatoon knew of her and she’d interviewed my cousin!), she takes you to the best art supply store in Toontown "the gallery/art placement", then to her wonderfully eclectic and creatively decorated home so you can rest up a bit, a quick tour thru the back alleys, then entertains you on the 2 hour drive to Melfort.

Once they get you out there and during your first ever ‘slide’ presentation alone, they chuckle in all the appropriate places, laugh when you screw up, then feed you a banquet of fruits and mouth watering peanut butter and ginger snap homebaked (almost as good as Grandma Blanch’s) cookies.
So you teach the course, and they feed you homemade soups and more goodies for lunch, and MAKE SURE you take all the coffee breaks in case you didn’t eat enough earlier.
Oh, and they billet you at your favorite Saskatchewan Auntie & Uncle’s place (or at least it felt like it), out on the farm, of course.

The students were all eager learners, even allowing for the 2 sassy ladies at the back that really should have been sent to the corner...more than once. (Not!) I think I had them trained by the end of the class as they did produce some wonderful work... all under time pressured situations as well. (gotta make'em sweat, right?)

Can you believe these 3 beautiful pieces were created in class using the same alphabet, with totally different approaches by 3 separate students? Pretty cool. Kersals Calligraphy: Gail Forsyth's F,Just As I Am Lord by Teolinda Carlson-Lang & does anyone know who's wonderfully gestural H that is?

Oh yeah, as that was the closing weekend of the Canadian Brier http://www.seasonofchampions.ca/2008brier/in Winnipeg (Curling, you know) they even arranged for my flight home to Edmonton to arrive directly after the plane carrying the grand winners, skip Kevin Martin and 2nd Marc Kennedy, who were still chatting with the media, so that I finally got to meet with and exchange hugs with Marc’s parents, my old junior & senior St.Albert High friends. We hadn't seen each other since our school days!

That Wheatland Calligraphy Guild, they’re pretty special.