An Ideal Weekend

My goodness! What better way to spend the weekend than hanging out in the midst of fibery goodness? I've been to Oregon Flock & Fiber as a customer the past couple years, but being a vendor is a whole different ball game. I know that I said this would be my first and last foray into selling at shows, but I think I may need to make an exception and have a booth at this one every year. It was so much fun!

I didn't get my camera out until today, which was probably a good thing since yesterday was busy, busy, busy! Donna came and helped me out for the entire day, including set-up. I got lost on the way to her house (which is pathetic since I've been there many times). I think I was irritated at something I was listening to on NPR and drove right by her exit. I hadn't ever approached her house from the south and ended up going a very round-about way to get back since she lives off one of those roads that doesn't have ramps from the freeway in both directions (who plans these freeways, anyway?). After I located Donna, we managed to get ourselves lost between her house and Canby. What's really pathetic about this story is that I have navigation in my van. Even more pathetic is the fact that we had the route mapped out and STILL managed to miss our exit and go about 6 miles out of our way. Fortunately we got to the fairgrounds in one piece and set the booth up not much after the 9 am opening.

Saturday was filled with sales, and Donna is an extraordinary salesperson. She was awesome! I suck at sales, so it was nice to have someone who wasn't afraid to talk to people about the stuff in the booth. I had my Feather Lace Shawl displayed on a dress form out in front of my booth and people just went crazy for it. I had to keep repinning it (I didn't have a nice shawl pin so I just fastened it with a dpn) because so many people were fondling it. The pattern sold like hotcakes along with my Winter Branches sweater and my Autumn in Oregon socks. I was expecting the yarn to sell well, but I didn't expect the patterns to sell like they did - it was really fun to see people actually enjoying my work! I'm still amazed that anyone would want to knit anything that I designed. You'd think I'd be over that by now...

I got to meet so many cool people this weekend. One of the fun things about doing a local show is there are so many familiar faces. I got to chat with JC Briar, Janel Laidman from Spindlicity, Trish Andersen of Tanglewood Fiber Creations, Betsy McCarthy of Knit Socks!, Tina from Blue Moon (yes, I actually caught her for two minutes this morning before her booth was re-swamped), Cindy, Tammy, Chrispy, Meghan and the totally awesome Jen of Woolgirl. Donna and I also got to chat with Peggy and Mims of the Oregonian Knitblog. If you haven't already, check out their blog for everything knitting-related that's happening in Portland. They are two very cool ladies! I know there were others, but I'm halfway through my post-show glass of wine, so please forgive me if I forgot to link you. The weekend was a blur, to say the least. It was so much fun chatting with everyone and seeing all the awesome knitted stuff everyone was wearing!

I also had the privilege of getting peed on by a chinchilla named Linus. Really. Sydney was very upset that I didn't bring the chinchilla home with me, despite all my explanations that he wasn't ours and his real mom would miss him too much if we took him.

Now, for some pictures. This morning I set up in no time (despite almost spilling my coffee on the roving in the booth next to me - fortunately it was ALMOST) and was joined by Amanda and her darling little guy for the morning. Here are a couple views of the booth:





Here's Amanda with our smallest salesman:



I don't know if he actually helped sell anything, but he sure got lots of attention! He is such a good-natured little guy. He looks a little grumpy in this picture, but he's just staring intently at his feet. He was such a delight to have around.

Of course, we couldn't get away without the requisite fiber animal pics (our booth was right near the barn, which was cool since we could hear the sheep bleating all day long). Our neighbor on one side was a woman who raises Pygora goats and was selling Pygora fiber along with goat milk soap (I talked her into trading soap for a shawl pattern - yay!). She brought her goat over to visit for a little while and the kids adored him.



We also saw lots and lots of adorable sheep of all shapes, sizes, colors and fleeces. I thought this one was particularly cute:



There were also a wide variety of Angora bunnies:



I really, REALLY wanted to bring one home, but we need to wait until the kids are old enough to really help (and not just pretend help while actually making a bigger mess) before we add any more animals to the menagerie. We were *lucky* enough to witness the mating of two bunnies - and boy, they go at it like...well...rabbits! The woman buying the doe wanted her preggers, and we were lucky enough to walk by and witness the fun. It was actually quite comical, especially since the kids were too young to know what was going on and we didn't have to get into a long discussion about where baby bunnies come from...(the rabbits pictured above were not the lucky ones).

We also saw some very nice llamas:



There were also alpacas and yaks and a very friendly baby camel (who we heard about but didn't actually see - Donna's girls were lucky enough to get to feed it).

All in all, it was a great way to spend a weekend. Now I've got some bookkeeping to do. Hope your weekend was just as good as mine, even if it didn't involve naughty rabbits!