Strange Folk 2010: A Novel in Several Chapters

Set-Up

Because you can't have enough tinsel.

Rocket Pops

This is a newbie craft, developed after I figured out how to do layered melted crayon molds. I was all freaking out before Strange Folk, on account of I ran out of white crayons (still plenty of reds and blues) after making only four true-to-life rocket pop crayons, and you can't just bring FOUR of something to Strange Folk, unless it's four, like, four hundred dollar somethings. Anyway, I finally figured that I'd just make a ton of randomly-colored rocket pops, too, just to fill out the display.

By Sunday tear-down, wanna guess how many rocket pops I had left?

Four. Every one of them was red, white, and blue.

I Bet She'd Also Like a Record Bowl...

So Matt was sitting at the picnic benches over by the World's Largest Sandbox, watching the girls play, and some guy sitting near him commented to some other women that he'd bought the exact same journal that she was holding. The woman replied that she'd bought the journal for her niece, who liked to write songs. The guy told her that he'd bought his journal for his daughter, an anthropologist, because it was "kinda Indiana Jones-looking" (nota bene: Indiana Jones isn't an anthropologist).

The woman said that her niece travels around the country. "She has an album coming out this month," she added.

The guy said, "Oh, wow. That must be exciting for her."

The woman said, "You might have heard of her. Her name is Taylor Swift."

The guy said, "That doesn't sound familiar. I'll look her up tonight."

My own reply would have been: "Oh, yeah? My daughter's name is Temperance Brennan."

Ch-Ch-Ch-Chia!

Or, as one customer squealed upon sighting them, "Look! It's a cup full of happiness!"

Go Away!

Do you know what hay means at an outdoor craft fair? Rain, that's what it means. Standing outside our tents in the rain, chatting (on account of there was nothing else to do, like, you know, wait on customers or anything of that nature), I told the guy who had the tent next to me that it had rained at every single craft fair that I have done this year. Because it has.

"What?!?" He shouted.

I was about to reply, "I know, right?", when he exclaimed, "Me, too!!! I thought it was just me!" And he's full-time--he does WAY more craft fairs than I do.

It used to never rain on me. I used to never even own a tent. And now, in the midwest at least, it only rains when I have a craft fair.

Future One-Car Family?

On the way home in the middle of the night, AGAIN in Effingham, something horrible happened to the van. Matt got us home by driving 45 mph the whole way, the maximum speed at which the car would travel before the horrible things happened, and fortunately the highway's minimum posted speed limit.

We can't afford to have any work done to that car, and I mean ANY work, no new tires, no oil changes, nothing, but fortunately I come from a people who know that a non-working vehicle is just four cinderblocks away from being yard art.

Stuff!

I plan to put all the proceeds from Strange Folk toward making Pumpkin+Bear an official biz, so I couldn't do much shopping there, but I did allow myself one spree, at Circa Ceramics across from my tent:

Say hello to my new most favorite coffee mug ever! It has a typewriter on it! Because I'm a writer! Although I don't use a typewriter! That would suck! I love my new mug!

On the last afternoon of the festival, the awesome folks at Rainbow Swirlz organized a little trade. I gave them a baby bag made from a vintage superheroes T-shirt for this great little four-month-old superhero that they happen to have birthed, and they gave me...

Can you see it? In the middle, next to Miss Island of the Blue Dolphins there? Here's a close-up:

It's my new most favorite bag ever. I love it so much that I was wearing it around yesterday before it even had anything in it. Not only is it super, but it reminds me of my family. Willow is the dinosaur. Sydney is the pink. Matt is the RAR.

Or should that be RAWR?