More Market Mayhem

So I was sitting there today amongst a few of my friends just minding my own business and not bothering anybody when all of a sudden they decided to give me “the talk”.  NOT the birds & bees talk.  Criminy, I’m older than God.  I think I already know as much about that as I want to, thank you very much.  “the talk” was more along the lines of “WHY HAVEN’T YOU WRITTEN ON YOUR BLOG?”  Yikes.  All I can say is they put the fear of the Lord into me and I shall commence writing.  Amen, sisters.

I’ve got a lot to say today so to help keep things interesting, I might just throw in a picture now & then of something that has nothing to do with anything but might help keep you awake.  OK?

 

 

1st Bloom on my Peony Tree

 

 

 

 Peony Bush

I could be wrong (but I’m not as I looked it up), but I promised a few stories of intrigue from Spring Quilt Market while I was helping Kari Carr of New Leaf Stitches  My exact words were:  Treachery & betrayal, con artists, altercations and just plain too strange to be believed.  (Just ask #37).  I’ll take them in order.

Treachery & betrayal.  When Kari signed up for market, she signed an agreement for the size/shape of booth she wanted.  That made it so much easier for us to plan – I could draw it all out on graph paper and move things around on the paper to see what we liked best.  It was an odd shape but usually they are more interesting.  A little back & forth talking and pretty soon, wal-la, we have a design we both are happy with.  This is great.  We know ahead of time where everything will go.  We’ll walk in with our stuff, set it up and then go out for a nice, leisurely lunch. Right?  Ya, sure.  You guessed it sweet-cheeks.  There was a fly in the ointment.  Basically, when we saw the booth, it was not the size they told Kari it would be.  Well, actually, the square footage was the same but the shape was so different, there was no way we could use our plan.  Kari tried to work with them to straighten this out, but frankly, they didn’t work back.  And we were back to square one.  So that was the treachery & betrayal. 

Not happy with the bathtub planter this year.  Purple isn’t showy enuf and the geraniums are more red than orange. 

Con-artists & altercations.   After a very long & hot day working on the booth, it was finally time for a MEAL.  I’m just sayin’, there wasn’t that meal in the center part of the day that I’m used to having.  Now that I think about it tho, I should probably be skipping it all the time.  Maybe I’ll think about that tomorrow.  We had a strong need to simplify our lives so we headed for the restaurant in the hotel we were staying at.  There was Kari & myself, the wonderful Ms. Karen aka Mrs. Farmhouse Woolens, (the “other Kari”), Carrie T and Ms. Jolene.  We stopped at the hostess stand by the door waiting to be seated.  Two gentlemen in suits (I’m using the term gentlemen loosely here….) walked up behind us, politely asked how we were doing and if we were enjoying our stay.  They asked if we’d been helped or were we waiting to be seated.  We’re waiting we naively replied.  Let us seat you he said.  He took menus from the stand and said to follow him.  He took us to a round table toward the back, and said Oh, I see it hasn’t been cleared yet.  He asked his friend to see to it.  Things just sort of disintegrated from there and the 2 men sorta disappeared and we were left standing in the middle of the restaurant by a dirty table.  I can almost hear  you chuckling now but lets be clear on this -- IT WAS NOT FUNNY!  (well, it was funny but maybe that came later?) oh, wait, there’s more.

A real waiter comes over, clears the table, seats us, gives us menus and takes drink orders.  What a relief!  So we were like, chat, chat, snore – oops, that was me taking a power nap.  We’re dying of thirst here.  After a bit, a young waitress comes over to take our drink orders.  HUH?  We patiently explained that the waiter already took our order.  She patiently explained that our table WAS NOT his table but it was HERS.  Ohhhh, a little sensitive, aren’t we?  Well, we all still remembered what we wanted to drink and ordered again from the young gal.  Now the waiter came back & asked if we were still waiting for our drinks.   Well, yes, but that young person said she’d bring them.  Evidentially, they went somewhere & settled their fight/altercation over the table assignments because,  Hallelujah and praise the Lord, our drinks finally arrived.  We also PLANNED to order our food from the young gal at this time ‘cuz frankly, we’re starving.  But, dang, she said that’s the wrong menu and she went & got the evening menus for us.  Now if you’ve read my blog before, you have every reason to believe I could be telling a tall tale, but I AM NOT MAKING THIS STUFF UP! 

So we ordered.  There was plenty of time here for us to do the whole chat, chat, snore thing as it was taking a long time.  Oh, wait, here’s our food………already.  Except Carrie T. didn’t get her soup while the others did.  Oh, sorry the waitress said, it’s my first day.  Soup arrived.  Soon our entree’s arrived.  Now there’s total silence at our table as we pay homage to the food.  Except for Ms. Kari.  Well I mean to say that she was her nice, polite, sweet self as usual but she did say she wished she’d gotten the chicken that she ordered on her salad.  At that point we couldn’t face asking the waitress to correct it and have to go thru the whole, I’m so sorry, it’s my first day, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.  I just took some of my chicken and threw it on Kari’s plate & told her to eat.  A girl’s gotta have some protein after a day like that!    (alcohol is optional)

 Jackmanii Clematis

Can you stand one more story?  I know this is really long but I’m not going to  hold a gun to your head & make you read it.  It’s an optional activity but you could take a break here and grab a cup of coffee/tea/water/alcohol.  Whatever turns your crank. 

Too strange to be believed or ASK #37!

I hardly know how to even tell this one.  It’s Carrie T’s story about what happened that very same day when she went to JoAnn’s fabrics to pick up some supplies for Kari’s booth.  It went something like this: 

Carrie chose the fabric she wanted and carried it to the cutting counter.  The store was pretty quiet and in fact she was the only person waiting to have fabric cut.  That’s kinda nice isn’t it when you can zip right up to the counter and zip right out again to head to the cashier.  There were 2 employees behind the counter.  Even better, right?  Carrie waited patiently for a while and finally asked if someone could cut some fabric for her.  She was told she’d have to take a number. 

I’m trying to paint a picture here for you.  2 clerks, 1 customer, no one else.  Take a number?  Is there a hidden camera here?  Apparently they weren’t on a bonus program to see who could serve the most customers in the shortest amount of time.  Here’s where if you know Carrie it really becomes fun.  Carrie is a very calm, reserved lady but she decided to play their game to see how far it would go.  So she calmly went to the little machine and took a number, went back to the counter with the fabric thinking they would now cut for her.  Not so.  They were having a conversation.  A lengthy conversation even.  Not only that but since Carrie was so close she felt a part of the conversation as she heard every word.  Not that they included her of course.  I’m just saying that Carrie told us the entire conversation because she heard every word.  Nothing special, just an ordinary conversation.

OK, here it comes…. 

Wait for it…..

Conversation over…. 

One of the clerks picks up the microphone and makes this announcement over the store loudspeakers: 

now serving #37!

You can take this entire story as the gospel truth.  You couldn’t make up stuff this good.  I’ve tried and it ain’t that easy.  I just hope the store captured this Kodak moment on their store security tapes.  They could use it as a training video or maybe send it in to funniest home videos, make a million dollars and then hire some REAL employees!

 

 

Pansies

 

 

 

 

Cosmos

 

 

 

 

Sorry I’m so short on pictures this time but I had all these stories I had to tell or I was gonna explode!

Come chat with me any time over the picket fence!

Ms. Faye