Of Craft Fairs and {Re}Connections

I am back from the craft show. Before I tell you about my adventures, I will just rant about Partner briefly, grit your collective teeth. Every time I go away for the weekend and leave Partner on his own, he breaks something, and then looks at it sadly all weekend, perhaps making cryptic references to it when I ring him up, until I come back. By this point, he has normally convinced himself that only someone irredeemably conventional would want a working cooker/ TV/ lamp etc anyway, and he communicates this to me with much enthusiasm, and with reference to classical literary works which seem to have been written to stop anyone being comfortable or enjoying themselves. And the next day I go to John Lewis and replace it and we do not mention it again, because while I may admire Marcus Aurelius I do not care what he would think about whether or not you should have a fan oven. I do not care. Anyway, this weekend I did a quick check when I got home yesterday and I thought we had escaped, but no, he has broken the bottom shelf in the fridge. How would you even do that? He has suggested that ‘a wine bottle may have fallen on it’, in a tone which is meant to convey a purely academic, distant interest, without committing himself to any knowledge or admission. I said, did the wine bottle fall on it while you were perhaps holding it and hitting the bottom shelf of the fridge with it, shouting I cannot live this shallow bourgeois life of bathroom refits and veg boxes, but he has assured me this is not the case so I will look for a replacement online and not engage emotionally. Partner! Like a bull in a china shop!

Anyway. I did the craft fair this weekend. In monetary terms (says she, thoughtfully), I think it could have gone better. However, in learning-how-to-do-a-craft-show terms, it was an excellent introduction, with much learned. This was my stall:

Do you see I had a red fluffy decorative item? Milo the husky liked it

And when I do my next show (in less than three weeks!) I am going to have a sign and branding and things. I must confess I find the whole branding thing difficult, firstly because I am kind of anti-branding, and secondly because I worry my business name sounds a bit daft. I do. I worry. (Somebody once said to me about Useless Beauty: ‘did you call it that because of what people used to say about you at work?’ Sadly not ;-) ). Anyway, I will conquer these thoughts and will brand and label just like a fiend, and we will see how things go. Apart from the exciting craft show (and I have one other piece of advice: do not do a craft show and sit behind your stall looking grim and reading Bleak House. No one, repeat no one, wants to engage with someone reading Bleak House. You have to stand up and talk to people. I learned this), I spent the weekend reconnecting. With kittehs

Do cats have opposable thumbs? Is that normal? Are they evolving to take over?

This is Ernie. Some kittehs seem to walk between the worlds a little, and Ernie is one of them, although it is obviously in this world that she has to be provided with a sheepskin rug, a warm fire, and regular Whiskas.

With champagne

I had drunk it. I am not saying I'm proud of this

To celebrate the successful conclusion of my first craft fair. I was lining my drinks up here: champagne, water and a nice cup of tea, the drink that cheers but does not inebriate. Two glasses of champagne did, though, and having drunk them I was playing the guitar very enthusiastically. I can play three chords, which don’t go together. Everyone was very patient.

With McDonalds

It wasn't all mine! There were other people there!

Although you know my stance on big corporations and questionable food products, I have to now confess to you that approximately once or twice a year I eat a Filet o Fish. With fries. And I enjoy it very much. I understand if you feel you can no longer read my blog

The first song is moaning about having to pay tax. I shall say nothing. I am thinking it though

And with the Beatles. My brother says although, broadly, he agrees with me about the Beatles, I will be able to manage Revolver, and he has bought it for me and I am listening to it. I am getting on ok so far, chiefly because no one has expressed a wish to Hold Your Hand. That is possibly the song I hate most in the world. Thank you Dan for the nice presents and I have already read the Thornton Wilder book, it was great.

So it was a good weekend. And now I am back to broken fridges and the whole plumber situation. But nice things came for me in the post, of which more tomorrow, and it will be good to get back to sewing things, because I have ideas for legwarmers and other such things. Stay tuned x