The weekend of July 8th I went to the Stowe, Vermont Kaleidoscope Festival. The delay in posting about it was because I was at a fun but exhausting polymer clay retreat this weekend and only had a few days between the two events to recover and prepare for the next one.
Stowe is an absolutely gorgeous place and well worth a nice relaxing vacation anyway. The weather was beautiful and we really enjoyed being there – they even drive politely! 
I met Stephen and all the great folks from Stowe Craft. The gallery has some really nice stuff besides the kaleidoscopes. There were some gorgeous glass pieces which made me wish I had a teleidoscope with me to look at them.
The event was on Saturday and Sunday. There had to be a couple hundred scopes set out in the Stowe Design Center, both inside and in a tent outside. I looked through most if not all of them and I do think image is almost everything. There were some scopes with really nice exteriors but rather boring images and I didn’t spend any time on looking through those. I found I really liked the sidelit oil cells with black backgrounds so I’m going to try a couple of those. I saw a few people using polymer clay in their oil cells, and I bought one of the Durettes scopes with a really stunning image made up of pieces of colored coiled wire. I saw some wearable scopes by the Healeys – I’d seen pictures before but never realized how small they actually are. The ring scope with the turning end was adorable
I got to meet Scott Cole and Sheryl Koch who were both really, really nice. I got some suggestions from them which would probably have made the whole trip worthwhile alone. I don’t think Scott would mind if I shared one of them which is basically to just practice. He pointed out that people usually only cut and assemble mirrors when they’re actually building a scope and you don’t really develop a good technique until you’ve done it time after time after time. I’ve tried a number of different ways of doing things but my volume isn’t too high so I often get inconsistent results. I think I’m going to use some scraps and just try assembling over and over again until I figure out exactly the best way to make it work for me.
Sheryl was working on making some really nice stained glass wheels throughout Saturday and Scott was teaching people to make pvc scopes. Dave and I both took his class on Sunday where we built a really nice brass scope with a ball-bearing turning end. The workshop was only about 4 hours but it was well worth it. If you ever have a chance to take one of Scott’s classes, I’d highly recommend it. And the ball bearing turning end is soooo smooth.
I brought about 6 of my own scopes to the festival, plus some kit based pocket scopes I had. I didn’t sell anything that weekend but Stowe Crafts did keep one of my oil-globe scopes on consignment. Technically I have a few things to improve on – my mirrors could use some work but they weren’t the worst. I also think I’d have to spend less time on the exteriors of simple tumble scopes so the price could be comparable with other people’s production scopes, and save the time and innovation for really distinctive, ‘Wow’ one of a kind scopes with great images. I’d probably also have to include a light with polarized scopes because they really don’t show to advantage in a dim environment.