Tell Me About Your Experience At African Violet Shows

With the bird flu pandemic I've taken a step back from poultry shows and am delving into the AV fancy instead. All the joys of learning about genetics and "breeding" for a standard without the risk of disease! I'm going to my first AV show next month and can't wait to compare it to poultry shows.

This is one of my new plants, Rob's Itchy Britches, has just absolutely lovely blue flecks of fantasy. In the pictures on his website it looks like they can get whole splotches of fantasy! What an interesting modifier, it reminds me of homozygous blue in chickens; it's called "splash" in the show ring and the birds end up with variable flecks of blue on a white to slate background. It's tricky to show because it's unpredictable and from one molt to the next the bird's color can radically change. Similar to how each flower has a unique pattern from the fantasy modifier!

So who's been to a show? Anything I should know ahead of time? I don't have any showable plants right now and plan on just soaking up as much knowledge as I can at the show and making connections. I've started a few books discussing AV genetics and have been digging through the AVSA website but would love to hear what others have to say!