I was less than thrilled by the festival. I'd signed up for email notifications, arranged a hotel, all sorts of things. Upon arriving at the location of the festival I was told, in stringent tones, there was a $10 entry fee and they only accepted cash at the gate. (Please note--the entry fee was never mentioned in the emails, I went back and looked.) Okay, fine, point me to an ATM. There was one inside but they weren't going to let me go in because people were cheats and liars and didn't come back to pay the entry fee. Yes, that's really what I was told. Nothing like being accused of being a cheat upon arrival. Finally, it was determined that another worker could walk me to/from the ATM. Considering that all I was getting for my really high entry fee was a walk through the vendors, I was disgruntled.
Once we achieved the vendors, who were sprawled out across a huge building in a seeming haphazard manner, I looked, but didn't buy. Can you believe I was actually not in a mood to buy yarn? I was nearly shaken out of it when we reached a vendor selling Blue Moon Fiber Arts Yarns. BMFA is on the west coast and I've never been in a shop that carried it. (The Master Sergeant and I have discussed a west coast trip for fishing and BMFA reasons.) Tina, the BMFA color-mistress, came up with a cool process of infusing black and white with hints of color and I wanted some of those yarns. Only, the vendor was complaining that they'd had inadequate time to set up and refused to let me in the booth to those yarns. Four hours to set up the day before, and it was nearly noon when I got to the booth. Disgruntled was deteriorating into peevish.
Ultimately I bought one skein of yarn, some beautiful green wool from New Zealand. And truly, most of the vendors were lovely, but I felt really turned off overall.
When we adjourned to the outside, there was good Polish food!! Despite my braces having been freshly tightened, Sibling-the-Elder and I packed away blini, potato pancakes, sausage and applesauce and loads of sour cream.
And then we adjourned to out front of the community college--to take pictures.
Sibling-the-Elder is quite a photographer and it had been nearly ten years since she'd last done a full shoot of me. Usually being in different states, if not continents, tends to do that.
Here are a few of the pictures, we took over 400 and edited heavily. The yarn is the one skein I acquired that day.
1 comment:
Sorry you didn't enjoy the festival. I'm really surprised that someone said something like that to you. I was a volunteer worker there and all the volunteers I encountered were really friendly and helpful. There were demos and such going on, which may be why the entry fee was so high. But if you really didn't enjoy it, you should pass your comments along to the festival staff. They are receptive and intent on making this a great festival. This was the third year it's been held and the first year at the college.
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