Here’s a fascinating look at women at work painting Polish pottery.  The pieces are all hand painted.  The women use paint brushes and sponge stamps to make the patterns.  Most of the patterns are repeated for entire sets of dishes.  Each factory is known for its unique patterns.

It was interesting to see how pastel the paints are.  After the pottery is fired, the colors become dark and vibrant.

This work takes a steady hand and a good sense of how to make a pattern row come out even in the end.  I wonder how many years of practice these women have had.

Watching this work and seeing these tools was fascinating and it helped us all appreciate the work that goes into each piece.  The prices we paid here in Boleslawiec were about a third to a half less than you’d pay at a shop outside of Poland.  There are busloads of people who come here to purchase the pottery, much of it for resale.

Several weeks ago, I met Carol Van Tonder, a delightful gal, who loves Polish Pottery and sells some out of her home.  As we visited, she told me about trips she used to take with Sister Missionaries and friends, traveling 5-6 hours to Poland to visit the outlet stores there.  It sounded wonderful.  When I asked if she’d consider doing that again, her eyes lit up.  We decided to plan an outing!

Nine of us were able to go and on a Thursday morning, we rose bright and early and met at the office to depart for Poland.  Carol’s husband, Jean Claude came along.  We filled a van and a car with lots of excitement.  We were off on a girls’ adventure!

We arrived in Boleslawiec in the early afternoon and went straight to the shops.  This small town is the Mecca of Polish pottery!   We spent every moment we could Thursday, Friday and Saturday, going in and out of these wonderful shops, feasting our eyes on beautiful patterns and pieces of pottery.  It was SO FUN!

Each shop has different inventory made by different artists.  We all looked for different kinds things to take home to our loved ones.  This pottery is really beautiful and addicting.  I am collecting pieces for my girls who will love them.

 

This is Carol, our Pottery Queen!

We took quick breaks for food to give us strength to keep going!

Jean Claude brought a Sharpie marker so we could label our bags as we made our purchases.  We quickly filled up the car trunks!

These crocks are used to make Sauerkraut.

Our strategy was to spend Thursday and Friday looking, then we went back a second time to most of the shops to purchase the things we loved most.

I put an album of 300+ photos of the pottery on my Facebook page (in case you’d like to see more).  I had as much photographing the pottery as buying some!

In the next post, I’ll show you how the pottery is made.

For the last 14 months we have lived in our cozy little Porthstrasse apartment.  During the last several months, we have been helping to move our area office couples out of this apartment building and into new apartments in Bad Homburg.  We are the last to go.  Today was our turn.

This is the floorplan of our little apartment.  We have loved being here.

We were in the top right corner of the building on the 6th floor.

We loaded everything we own here into a van and then drove away.  Sigh.

Here are a few last pics of our apartment as we packed up and said goodbye:

Our Frankfurt Kitchen

Our bedroom

We have a lot of fun here!  Whenever we can, we work with the time differences to watch our mighty BYU Cougars play.  Sometimes it’s in the early morning with breakfast, sometimes it’s in the middle of the night at someone’s apartment.  We’re having a great year–so far no losses!

Once a month on a Monday night we get together to watch a German-themed movie.  Tonight we watched one of my favorites:  “The Scarlet and the Black,” staring Gregory Peck and Christopher Plumber.  Go watch it if you haven’t seen it yet.  You can find it on YouTube.

We were thrilled to participate in the Frankfurt Book Fair again this year.  This book fair is the largest in the world, with thousands and thousands of visitors.  Our booth this year had two sides, one for The Book of Mormon Experiment, and one for FamilySearch.  We spent 3 days at the Book Fair, helping.  John assisted with the Book of Mormon Experiment, and I helped with FamilySearch.

I LOVE helping others connect with their ancestors and family members.  I use FamilySearch every day, as I search for my own family members.  I had some very sweet experiences explaining to others how this work can bless our lives and bring families closer together.

Here is one of the news releases about what we did there this year:

Helping others download the app.

One of the highlights was seeing my Laemmlen cousin, Simon, again.  I met him here last year when we discovered we had the same name.

After a long and busy week, we were all pretty exhausted.  Here is the takedown:

Today in our peaceful German class, we learned about Fall and about chestnuts (Kastanie or Maronen).  There are many varieties, not all are edible.  Some have spiky shells, some are bristly.  The bristly ones are edible.  Chestnut trees line the streets here and the nuts fall to the ground  from October to November.   It’s hard not to step on them, and cars crunch them as they pass.

The edible ones look like exploded little hedgehogs!   These edible chestnuts have been grown in Palatinate, a region in southwest Germany, since Roman times.

The edible ones have a pointed top.

When you roast them in the oven, or over a fire, they split open.  The nut meat inside is tasty, it tastes a bit like potato.

Most of the chestnut trees we see (everywhere) are horse chestnuts (inedible).  Sis. Enger’s neighbor has an edible chestnut tree and so we all went out to pick up a few to try.

You can read more about chestnut traditions in Germany here.