Outdoor Festival

I was in a recent outdoor fine arts & crafts festival sponsored by our local community arts center. Doing any show that leaves you at the mercy of Mother Nature requires a certain amount of planning and preparation in addition to the creation and presentation of inventory. I thought I was in pretty good shape until two days before the event. That's when the cavalcade of calamities began.

It all began with me pulling out my tent structure from the garage on Thursday. I thought I was so on top of everything- setting the tent up in my yard to make sure that I was completly prepared. All was in good order until I went to put the tent away and a critical compenent broke. Yikes! It was 8:00pm two days before the festival! Stupid tent!!!

I fratically began calling anyone I knew who might have a tent that I could borrow. Not surprisingly, it was not a long list of people but by Friday morning I was able to find a solution. My fabulous jewelry teacher from Main Line Art Center, Dawn told me to come on over and pick up her tent. Whew....crisis resolved!!
So....I arranged to pick up the tent with enough time to get back home to meet my son's bus for afternoon drop-off. Being on a somewhat busy street, I did the safe thing and put my flashers on while getting the tent and various accessories. All loaded up and completely relieved, I got in my car, and my 5 day old battery is dead. Oh no.......this definitely did not work with my tightly scheduled plan. Dawn was also on a tight schedule and had to leave for work, so I started to walk in the 92 degree heat to the nearest service station. The young man there said he'd love to help me, but he had no jumper cables. Really?!! Wouldn't that be like a house painter having no paint brushes? I suspect that if I were 20 years younger, jumper cables would have appeared, but, oh well.....I continued walking.

Several blocks later and another service station where the man said he was the only one working and couldn't leave. Arghhhh! It was at this point that I began to get a bit frantic about the time. Several more blocks and another service station where I found my hero of the day. This kind, kind man drove me back to my car, jumped the battery and tested the alternator. I thanked him profusely and gave him a big tip.

I got home 10 minutes before my son's bus.

Thank goodness I had this tent for the 2 day festival. Saturday was hot and windy. Sunday was cool and rainy. Not ideal conditions when you're hoping for a successful weekend.

I did work some new items into my display like the small printer's drawer found at the local thrift shop. The compartments are perfect for holding pieces of card mounted jewelry.

My refurbished, old window made it's debut.

I found it amusing that one item getting plenty of attention was the hand-held mirror that I keep available for functional reasons. People kept asking how much it cost and were disappointed when told it was not for sale. One woman picked up the mirror and said, "This ought to be in movies!" I chose to not respond to that curious comment.
Next hot/cool/rainy/windy festival, I just might sell that

could-be-famous mirror!