Kalamazoo: Friday Night Arrival & Set Up

Set up time! I attended the staff meeting, helped serve the staff dinner with Leslie and Ethan, gave Paisley her care package (which was a big success), and then hustled down to Expo North to start setting up.

The calm before the storm. Les and Rick have set up their tables and then put tablecloths on mine and assembled the clothing racks and hung the garment bags on them. Such a relief and I am grateful. That saved me a lot of work.

And since I'd packed the garment bags by type and size, all I need to do was unzip and remove them and the clothes were in place.

Those racks are very sentimental to me - my Dad made them way back in the 1980s to be used at living history events. They're still in use and it's nice to have his touch with us.

One of my most popular sales items are the fabric remnants. After I cut out a pattern, I collect the leftover fabric, measure it, and then record those measurements on a tag. I fold the remnant up as neatly as I can and tie it with twine.

This year I'd bought 32 remnants. They always sell out very fast, and true to past events, I had none left by the end of the show.

Because I had no help this year, I knew restocking would be difficult, especially on Saturday. So, I put every single beeswax ornament I'd brought out onto the table. That's 150 ornaments, and I sold 55, over a third of them, throughout the course of the show.

Because I was limited by the size of the display box, I could not do the same for the sleeve buttons. I sold a fair amount of them, and it was challenging to find the time to restock it. I'm thinking of how I could streamline its use for Feast.

Thanks to the extra help setting up from Les and Rick, I finished in good time and was able to go back to the hotel and get some sleep.

I stepped off the elevator as I approached by door, I saw a familiar face. Jamie Oxendine!  We chatted for a few minutes and I congratulated him on having gotten the Lumbee Tribe recognized. You should have seen his smile.

When I entered my room, I was a bit dismayed. How was I going to get into that bed without a step stool or something? (I put my walker next to it to show just how high the bed was.)

I wasn't the only person surprised by the beds; all the event staff was housed on that floor and were talking about it at breakfast the next morning. But it wasn't just the beds that were so disconcerting; the toilets in the rooms were VERY low, too.  (Didn't take any pics of that... LOL) 

But we managed throughout the weekend and, despite their height and the acrobatics to get into them, the beds were super comfy and I slept well, even with Saturday and its excitement just ahead.

Stay 'tooned!