Freaky Saturday

The booth set up with optimism and high expectations (note the cheery tulips)

Snow. Raw damp cold. And wind. On April 26. Not even life-long Minnesotans expected this.
And in an unheated building on the State Fair grounds, with the doors open all day, it made for one miserable experience for the vendors of Craftstravaganza. (A fellow blogger/crafter called it "excruciating.") There really was nothing that the organizers could do (except maybe close the doors, but then the building looks locked up). My letterpress partner and I had been delighted to find ourselves assigned a booth right in front when the map was sent to us a month earlier. But on Saturday, it just meant that we were in an 8 hour wind tunnel of damp, freezing wind. Excruciating. Exactly.


When I got home I made some toast and crawled into bed. I was so exhausted from pretending to be oblivious to the cold that I couldn't even get into a hot bath. I felt the warmth return to my toes around 9:30 that night.

My booth partner Allison pretending that she's not cold.

But the odd thing is that...except for the physical misery...I really enjoyed it. I liked the prep, arranging the display, meeting people and other crafters. I got tons of inspiration from my frozen colleagues and some great feedback from people who stopped by. I had a postcard out for the classes I'm teaching at MCBA this summer and those were all gone at the end of the day. So it's definitely something I'll do again.

Boxes waiting to be packed up

Fortunately, there is another opportunity for all the boxes I made in the last several weeks. This weekend is Art in Bloom at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, a beautiful exhibition of art and floral arrangements. Their special garden shop has taken my boxes on commission. So I'm glad not to have to pack them back into the basement quite so soon!

A pair of favorites