You can measure the success of a long established festival by the attendance (even when it is as cold as it was that Saturday), but you can not express the experience unless you are among the visitors, vendors and volunteers.

The Hatsume Fair is a wonderful event, and last weekend the Love & Peace Project made its debut there. So many people dedicated beads that we barely could keep up. And we set another record yet again! Over the weekend 247 beads were dedicated and that was the most at any one event to date. Some visitors mentioned the article about the Project in the Sun Sentinel which ran the previous Sunday, and the Project had a really warm welcome.

But no festival ever is successful without all the people behind the scenes, so we want to thank everybody involved for their tremendous work and effort. Most memorable for us as "vendors" were the delightful volunteers of the Morikami Museum. We appreciated their polite and helpful presence, their bringing hot coffee to help stave off the cold and facilitating a vendor's day who often can't leave the booth. Thank you so much!

And of course many thanks to Donna Derocher and Cyndy Manzo who donated their spare time and helped again making the Love & Peace Project a reality.