After spending the morning packing the car and working on other work and household stuff, we set off to our daughter's house to spend the evening.
We had originally intended to stop by and visit with my folks, but on our way through Denver we got caught in 3 different traffic jams, and it ended up taking almost 5 hours to go a distance that normally would take 2 1/2.....not a particularly great start.
Once at our daughter's we had dinner and visited for a while before going to bed about 10 pm.
Thursday, travel day #2
We managed to sneak out of our daughter's house without disturbing her and the dogs and headed out about 5 am.
Drove most of the day, across Nebraska, through about 6 miles of Iowa and into Missouri, arriving in St. Joseph about 4....we had time to drive to the show grounds to see where we would be setting up and pick up our packet of information for the weekend.
While we were driving, I got an entire dodo stitched and prepared for stuffing.
Her feet are the dark color on the bottom and the light color on the top and there are wires inside each one.
The wings are all ready for attaching too.
After seeing where we would be, we settled into the hotel where I found that the only place in the hotel that I could actually use the wireless network was in the lobby ... not what we had been told, and definately not convenient.
Friday -- Set up day and first day of the show
Woke up to rain.
This is not my idea of the kind of weather for successful show setup.
We did get set up, and the booth looked pretty good.
We had nice neighbors, a couple from Missouri that make some really attractive humming bird feeders with neat copper tubing and "recycled" glass.
Not a very good afternoon. The show opened at 2 pm and was open for us until 7 pm, and we made one sale....
Saturday --
The rain continues.
Opened at 10 am and it rained until about 3 pm....then we were open until 7 pm.
The up side of today was that we won the blue ribbon as first place in the craft division.
The ribbon did translate to good "press" as we displayed it right out in front and it attracted attention.
Sales were better once the rain stopped.
Sunday
Show opened at noon today and closed for us at 5. There was to be a concert afterwards, and we were told we could stay open if we wanted to, but the crowd was not really interested in buying.
While we had been allowed to drive right into the park to set up, we had to haul all our stuff out to the sidewalk outside the park to load out...after 2 days of rain, the warm temperatures (in the upper 80s) made this work like lifting weights in a sauna....we were definately worn out by the time we got done!
Monday -- travel home
Instead of getting up at the "crack of dawn", we decided to get a good night's sleep before heading out.
We drove back the way we had gone out, which we will probably not do again. We got better mileage and cheaper gas driving across Kansas than we did in Nebraska where we had to pay as much as $3.09 per gallon for gas.
On the road, I got the new bear I've been working on all sewed and ready to be jointed.
The picture is his head. This will be another totally different style.
I also finished stitching the last two sets of brick track together for the Car quilt in the car, as well as almost finishing the first afghan block for a group that I'm going to be donating squares to.
And so we have returned home, and will have to spend the next few days trying to get all the mud off of everything and letting all the display pieces get dry.
Each show is its own adventure!
1 comment:
Wow, what a schedule! Hope you had a great time! I just got back from my own road trip. When I went to bed the first night at home, I dreamt of freeways. It was crazy. =D
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