The Northern Michigan Lamb and Wool Festival

Em and I had such a wonderful time at the show! It helped that everything went well. We easily found our hotel, the fairgrounds the next morning and, while looking for someone to tell us where to go, somehow managed to park right outside the same end of the exhibit barn we were assigned to. How the hell did that happen? The planets aligned or something. The weather was beautiful, the people all incredibly warm and friendly (Must be those frigid Northern Michigan winters leading to their deep appreciation of all things warm and wooly!) and it was just all around perfect.

I swear I should never be trusted with the camera. I get so involved in things that I forget to take pictures. The only pics I took were right after setting up...

My sign, thrown together at 2AM

the night before we left

I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do with this pumpkin when I bought it. A few punches with a sharp pick and--voila, a spindle display. People seemed a bit reluctant to yank out the spindles. The trail of teeny styrofoam beads on exit didn't help. But it was purty and it went with the whole theme thing we had going on. I decided we needed the theme--reason to add clutter crap decorative items--to give the illusion of having much more stuff to offer. I had nightmares, envisioning myself sitting behind an 8 ft table with three ugly spindles.

Lots and LOTS of spindles (Did I happen to mention that I had only about 17 spindles when I signed up to be a vendor? Or that, in the ten days between signing up and leaving for the show, I cranked out 55 spindles, 14 lazy kaits, 30 keychains and an unknown amount of beaded stitch marker sets? Yeah, go ahead with your "holy crap!" My hands are still feelin' the pain.). And a basket of little test spin puffs of some roving Em had dyed. See how perfect it coordinates with The Theme? But that stuff sure didn't draft well. I sent Em on a mission to find something we could more easily use to teach with.

Click for big, though not for clarity. It was 7:30AM, the hotel beds were hard as rock, their coffee atrocious (there's McD's coffee under the table but we hadn't gotten much of it yet) and we (That's Em in the purple, winding off onto a bobbin to show my lazy kate in use. She taught 7 yo Emma to spin and then Emma hung around much of the weekend, demonstrating plying on the lazy kates.) were both quite blurry.

We met Yarn or a Tale's Leah (She was just across the aisle and a few spaces down. Tracy found her first and told me I could throw one of my spindles at her if I tried...still laughing at that, all these ladies are fun AND funny...we joined Leah and her husband at their table for the vendor dinner--Em was shocked and dismayed that dinner was lamb. We didn't eat it--there were lambs in the petting area just outside the doors *sob* --but it did smell good.), ) , Susie/To Knit, Perchance to Dream (who was volunteering in hospitality, though she came down and hung out with us when she could...and offered an amazing trade--a couple of my spindles for enough Midnight Rainbow/Harlot's Peacock yarn to knit the shawl *gasp* *SQUEEEEEEEE* I love you, Susie!), Tracy of Copperpot Woolies, Rita of Yarn Hollow , several fellow Ravelers (including PurlToo, who came back to her hometown all the way from Maryland and brought her sweet uncle who was very interested in Em's wheel spinning...I hope he gets a wheel of his own!), Spindler's List members and even quite a few Spinner's Flock members.

We have some amazingly talented fibery business women here in Michigan. Seriously. Go shop!

Em and I spent the weekend demo spinning and teaching right there at our booth. I barely sat down on Saturday and didn't at all on Sunday. It was so much fun getting people--from the very young to the very old--to try their hands at spindling. We seemed to focus more on sharing our love of all things fibery than actually trying to sell anything. Maybe our enthusiasm made up for our lack of "buy our spindles NOW!" sales tactics? We did sell quite a bit, more than enough to cover expenses and then some.

Being our first show and with nothing to compare it to, I think it was a roaring success. We can't wait for next year!