Maydelle, you beat me to the punch. I was about to write up a short post about the Dr. Rizzolo Fly Tying Festival!
Just to echo your sentiment, it was a great event and awesome to meet and see Pat in person. They say it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something, but Pat must have double or triple that time at the vise because he's a true artist. He's also a really nice guy to boot and spent about 15 minutes answering my idiot questions. I'm always shocked at how receptive and patient professional fly tiers are to dolts like me when they could just say "want a better bug? Go to my website and enter your credit card."
Before I got into tying, I bought a few poppers and divers from Pat, they're still going strong to this day after heavy use, so when he talks about durability being important to him, he isn't joking.
Another highlight for me was listening to Capt. Billy Trimble talk about the electric chicken and his approach to fly tying. He has a very utilitarian and practical approach to fly tying, if something doesn't have a purpose or reason, it's not going on his flies.