The fourth graders at the local elementary school have just finished up studying about Jamestown and today is the last day of school before winter break. There are 3 classes that rotate with 3 teachers for Science and History with one, Math with one, and Language Arts with one with a 4th teacher that is support. To end their unit and try to have some level of control on this last full day, they planned a Colonial Christmas celebration. In one room they dipped candles, in another they made pomander balls, the third room had a Christmas movie playing, making herb coated ornaments, and me in Colonial clothing with a lesson about colonial clothing, textiles, spinning, and weaving. I always take many “toys,” several different types of spindles, lucet, combs, carders, my wheel, and this time a borrowed rigid heddle loom. I love this type of event.
The children had an hour in each room, so I had 6 groups for about 30 minutes each to talk about a brief history of spinning, history of homespun, and some weaving. Some groups watched and asked a few questions, the most common one was, “Do you wear that every day?” Some groups wanted hands on and I allowed carding of wool and playing with the various spindles that I demonstrated first. With the number and age of the kids, I didn’t let them handle the sharp combs and knew that letting any of them use the wheel I was asking for trouble. And as the rigid heddle was borrowed from a friend, I only demonstrated on it.
There were photos taken by various adults, but none by me.
My favorite question though, was as I was packing up to leave, a tiny little gal approached and very quietly asked if she could ask me something. Of course, I replied. She asked, “Where you around in Jamestown?” I laughed my way home with that one. The old lady with her spinning wheel.
Another great opportunity to teach the youth and maybe interest some of them in pursuing an interest in fiber.
Yesterday was spent in recovery from the long, cold, wet day on Saturday, but wasn’t totally idle. The craft display stuff was returned to the guest room closet where it is stored, the inventory checked, sorted, and put away this morning.
The pop up tent is still slightly open in the garage drying, but will be packed up soon and tucked away in the garage with the weights and cart. My next two events are spinning demonstrations in Colonial costume on December 20 for the local elementary fourth graders, and at Wilderness Road Regional Museum on January 6 for old Christmas and the burning of the greens. Neither of those events are vending events.
I have written about “the chair” and “the chair II.” At some point, once all of our furniture was moved to this house and the basement had been finished (several years after the house was completed), we did some rearranging. We had a leather couch and club chair that had been our living room furniture for years that moved with me. A Lazy Boy couch that is leather on the seats and back and synthetic leather on the low wear areas that stayed in the apartment in Virginia Beach until hubby retired and it moved with him and was added to the living room here initially. We had an oak futon that was in an office/guest room when we sold our home in Virginia Beach and it moved with me as a guest bed in my apartment in Blacksburg and later into the loft of the house. When the basement was finished we moved the Lazy Boy couch and the futon to the basement rec room leaving a huge hole in the living room, so we went to a local furniture store and bought a reclining loveseat to fill the hole. It didn’t match the color of the leather couch very well, so we decided to move the loveseat to the loft, and get another love seat, just like the first one but a better color match. One of the loveseat purchases generated a Father’s Day Sale coupon that resulted in the disposal of “the chair” and the purchase of “the chair II.”
“The chair II” was heavily used and the phony leather deteriorated pretty quickly. The loveseats which we thought had leather on the sitting surfaces were gently use, but once our daughter and her family moved in with us for a couple of years while they sold their Florida house, saved for the down payment for their local house, the living room loveseat started getting lots of use and it didn’t take long for us to discover that the leather sitting parts were not leather.
It was soon cracked and shedding pleather so I bought a stretchy cover to try to slow down the progress. The upstairs one was doing fine, but again, it received little use until “the chair II” was discarded. It only took about two weeks use for it to begin breaking down as well.
The living room one is going to be discarded and is currently sitting on the front porch to make way for the Christmas tree. After Christmas, a second rocking chair will be added to the living room. The cover will be put on the second one to try to get more use out if once the new chair is delivered mid week. It seems almost like fraud to sell furniture that wasn’t inexpensive junk (we thought) that can’t hold up to basic wear over a couple of years.
This morning, I had another check up at the hearing clinic to raise the functionality closer to 100% effectiveness on my hearing aid. While we were out and about, we drove to Joe’s Christmas Tree Farm, about 10 miles from home, hoping to get lucky like last year and find a precut reasonably sized tree right near the store, but not this year. We didn’t want a huge tree this year, nor did we want to spend a long time walking the farm in the rain. They had some 7 foot trees near the store and as we were the only customers at the time, the young man working the yard brought out his chain saw and cut down our tree for us, drilled it for the stand, tied it and put it on our car while we shopped inside and paid for the tree. The tree was small enough for me to handle once home and it is up and decorated.
This gave me the incentive to finish decorating with my Santa collection and the snow village. This weekend, eldest son and eldest grandson will arrive to spend two days with us. I will prepare Christmas dinner with all the fixings on Saturday for them and daughter and her family.
This is an impromptu Christmas decoration. This begonia has bloomed better since I brought it in for the winter than it did outdoors all summer.
And to close today’s post, “Esplain to me Lucy,” why does a box of raw sugar need vegan and gluten free labels on it. My science background tells me that sugar is a plant product, not a gluten bearing plant.
Another Saturday double booked. The second Holiday market set up at 8 a.m., to take down at 2 p.m., at least that was the schedule. The vendors all set up in the rain this morning, but we got unloaded, tents up and organized mostly by opening at 9 a.m. It was surprisingly busy considering the rain. Knowing that it was to be wet, and since I have wool and soap, we bought me 4 clear shower curtain liners to hang on the back and sides to protect my wares. They worked well and are now spread all over the garage to dry. The sun finally came out off and on around noon and with it, wind gusts. I have 100 pounds of weight, 25 per leg to hold down my tent, so it really wasn’t a problem, except when a big gust came, I grabbed for the tent, a mistake, as one of my tables, the one in the center of the photo with heavy box, soap display, signage, and all my salves, lotions bars, beard oils and soaps blew over backwards, into the wet. And to make it more of a mess, it took my chair over too that had a travel mug of coffee in the holder and it poured over all my business cards. By the time my vendor friends and I got it all picked up and I got it sorted back out, it was about 1:30 and I gave up, loaded my car and came home.
I was fortunate, only the elongated sign frame broke and only a few labels and my business cards were lost. The photo is from last weekend, I didn’t manage to take any today, much less of the mess.
After a quick trip home to unload the tables, wet tent, wet liners, wet red table cloth, and a quick change into Colonial costume, I headed over to Wilderness Road Regional Museum for the 3rd of 4 nights of Noel Nights and Christmas Bazaar and set up again. The circuit breaker that wasn’t working last weekend was repaired, so we had several space heaters running in the German Barn and it was much more comfortable in there tonight. Instead of spinning, I gave a spinning lesson to a friend who was there with her husband, our local blacksmith, while he was also vending.
The craft shows are over for me for this year. I still have a couple dozen holiday shape and scent soaps, very few knits or woven garments left. Tomorrow it will all be sorted out, make sure it is all dry, and stowed away properly instead of just randomly unloaded in the garage and hallway.
I learned a lesson this morning however. In the future, the wooden table will not have a rack with signage and heavy items on it, it will be used for the yarn and lighter items. The study plastic table will hold the heavier items, and the signage will have to be displayed a different way. I was lucky. Several vendors had breakage as the wind blew down displays. Others had to take down parts of their displays to prevent them blowing down. And everyone, needs to make sure to bring weights for their tents, we didn’t have any tents take off today, like last year, but many were not weighted down which contributed to displays being knocked down and damaged.
