There is nothing like getting up at 5 in the morning, watching the sun rise as you trek through four of London’s zones, to make you appreciate small luxuries when they come your way.
Luxuries like bus drivers waiting until you’ve safely set down your three suitcases, corner unit of shelves and wicker baskets of various sizes before hurtling off. Like it being so early no one’s fighting for the luggage hold on the Tube. Like tiny cups of free coffee — wait, no, is that tea? It’s so hard to tell, but it doesn’t matter: it’s caffeinated!
Actually, I think the thing it made me appreciate most was that all of the other vendors at the Bentley Priory Winter Fair did the same and were all so kind and gracious and willing to share scissors and pins and change, or do tea runs for the stalls next to them. For them alone, Saturday was a GREAT day. (Plus, the other vendors had some amazing things on offer! I ended up picking up some awesome vintage buttons for a swap partner and a beautiful hand-made necklace for my sister, as well as an adorable vintage dress for me!)
Part of the reason why we were lugging so much stuff is that we wanted to recreate a kitchen for our stall. We had a little corner unit of shelves for the handwarmers, a cookie jar from the 60s was stuffed with the plush Lavender, Rosemary and Lemon inserts for the hanging Moth Banishment sachets, a casserole dish or two housed the actual sachets and the hanging ones were hung elegantly from a teacup tree. The kanga bags were in a salad bowl and our WIP bucket bags were in my wicker picnic basket, while our (newly named) market aprons hung on a clothesline across the front of the stall. It was so much fun to set up, it really made me wish we had a permanent stall somewhere where we could set one up everyday!
(Lou will have to put up the pictures of the stall itself later, because I am a doofus and forgot to take pictures of it on my camera as well as hers!)
In any case, we did pretty well, particularly with our handwarmers — off to help out people cheering on their partners and children from frosty sidelines — and Grow Your Own Soup kits — set to greenify suburban kitchen windows, and we had a fab time.
We also sold two bucket bags! This lovely textured print is destined to hold someone’s crochet projects:
while these duckies will be shortly winging their way to some sunny beach, where they will hold sandals and a book while their new owner goes for a swim in the sea:
(Am I allowed to say I was a little gutted she chose the duckies to use as her beach purse? They’re part of a little experiment of ours — a foray into Cardigan-Perfect WIP bags,
large enough to hold a nearly complete cardigan or jumper plus working yarn and an extra ball or two, with nice deep pockets for spare needles and buttons
– and it’s one of my favourites because, well, duckies!! They’re so bright and funny, we’re going to have to get more of them.)
We also sold three aprons to other vendors right at the end — we’d both been wearing ours all day and using them to hold the float, plus our phones and things. It’s so exciting to think that the lovely ladies from Shamu and Sorcery & Sparkle will be sporting our aprons at other events!
