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?

Strange Little Busy Bees

What have I been busy doing? Why, getting ready for Strange Folk! Many, many things have to be done before next weekend.

Have to put together the chia in a cup kits.
Have to water the cups o' chia already planted.
Have to water the dinosaur garden, as well:

Have to make signage.
Have to make record bowls.
Have to find the Pumpkin+Bear business card stamp.
Have to read some tongue twisters:

Have to sew colored pencil rolls.
Have to sew an I Spy quilt.
Have to tie, not sew, some tutus.
Have to tie some tutus for my two, too:

Have to put together an I Spy quilt kit.
Have to put together the clothespin doll kits.
Have to put together the color-your-own bunting kits.
Have to color an example, so everyone knows how cute they come:

Have to figure out a Barbie dress pattern.
Have to figure out a balancing butterfly pattern.
Have to get that toy fossil triceratops out of its slate prison!

Have to bake the crayon pops.

Have to go get some geodes.
Have to drill holes in colored pencils.

Have to take pictures on a sunny day.

Have to play Quirkle when it's cloudy:

At this rate, have to have a margarita tonight after the little pumpkinbears are sleeping.

Save the Date!

Our Second Year at Strange Folk

Oh, how I heart St. Louis! It's so funny, because when I was a kid I HATED St. Louis. It was the place we'd get up before dawn to drive six hours to every now and then, straight to an old lady apartment (belonging to my Great-aunt Della), sit there for a reeeeeeaaaalllllllllyyyyyy long time (if I was lucky, she'd bring out her Norman Rockweller coffee table book for me to look at--barf), and then drive six hours back home again. That SAME day.

I couldn't believe it when I grew up and realized that there's stuff TO DO in St. Louis. Awesome stuff. Stuff like sliding down the free-fall slide at the City Museum:
And witnessing there the extent to which a little sister will go to not be bested by a big sister:
Stuff like discovering what my husband thinks is the very best way to deal with the fact that the eggs he's attempting to cook in the hotel kitchenette have just set off our room's smoke alarm: That's a PILLOW he's waving, friends. Not a blanket or a towel, but a pillow. Note that he has not even called down to the front desk yet to say, "Hey, I know the smoke alarm is blaring and maybe people are evacuating, but it's just me, I'm just cooking some eggs." And notice how, even though the smoke alarm is screaming in their faces, the girls are so focused on this thing they've just discovered called the Disney Channel that it doesn't even faze them.

Oh, right, and stuff like the Strange Folk Festival. Which, thank you for asking, was AWESOME! Last year at Strange Folk was good, but this year was awesome. The record bowls are nearly gone, the pinbacks I had to keep replenishing as fast as I could make them-- --and the bathroom breaks were as few and far between as I could make them, and accomplished at a dead run. It was THAT kind of craft fair. The good kind.

I also think that Strange Folk has the best atmosphere of any craft fair I've been to, big or small, conventional or indie. It's in a huge park, with plenty of green, empty space for children to play in, a huge playground, and some activities (sandbox, handmade hula hoops, milk jug igloo) imported in by Strange Folk just for the kids. That makes it a much more restful place for someone with kids to shop or sell--Will and Sydney played in the grass and under the trees, and walked together to the sandbox, and befriended random kids like they wouldn't be able to do at a fair on a city street or in a convention center.

And the music is good, and the trees are shady, and the people are just plain nice. One customer gave me the last two cookies that he'd bought from the gourmet cookie vendor across the way. Another customer said, "Your stuff rocks!" and then high-fived me! And you know how I feel about high-fives.

Willow made her entrepreneurial debut at Strange Folk. She wrapped hunks of grass in duct tape and sold them for 25 cents each (she actually sold four), and my shy girl was officially in charge of giving each customer, after the transaction, a business card, saying "Here's a business card for you." It was terrific for honing her awareness of social cues, because she had to figure out just the right time to hand over the card so as not to interrupt the sale but not to let the customer walk away, either, and she had to interact with each person, and she got tons of positive reinforcement, because you know that all adults do really like to be addressed nicely by a little child. Take that, socialization!

But for the customers with children, Willow prepared a special treat. She made Artist Trading Cards, wrote her name on the back, and let me write my web info, as well, and then gave one to each customer's child:
Animals was the theme, can't you tell?

Whew! Three days in St. Louis makes for three long days, but if it takes some long, long days of hard work and play to make sisters be this nice to each other on purpose--

Count me in.

Busy/Exhausted/Sore/Damp/HAPPY!!!

Too tired to type. Just know, Strange Folk Festival RULEZ!!!

Strange Folk Sunday

The second day of a two-day craft fair isn't quite as awesome as the first day--the excitement's worn off, and it's less busy, with more sightseers out for a wholesome Sunday activity than super-excited handmade fangeeks looking for the next big thing. Instead of only having one thousand people looking at the record bowls and asking, "How do you make these?" or joking "I bet they don't play anymore!" or berating you with "That's a fine thing to do to a good record!" you have two thousand people doing the same. It's still a fun experience, but somehow it's WAY more tiring than the first day was.


But while I was trudging through Day Two, Matt and the girls hit the St. Louis Science Center and the St. Louis Zoo (and yes, I was also bummed that I couldn't go, too!). The St. Louis Science Center is always a top spot on account of the giant anamatronic dinosaurs, but guess what the family found at a special exhibit at the St. Louis Zoo?



Dinosaurs!!!

Such a lucky day.

Today it's back to the grind--freshman comp papers to grade, grocery shopping to do, kid to drop off and then pick up again from preschool, meals to cook and trash to pick up. On the plus side, I've got some #6 plastic, and me and the kiddos are going to make ourselves some Shrinky Dinks!

Strange Folk Saturday

It has been a good, good Saturday! If you've never been to an indie craft fair, my friends, I must tell you that I highly recommend it. Just imagine chilling out here in suburban St. Louis with me this weekend, wandering through the enchanted craft forest, visiting over a hundred handmade items vendors and with every one of them you think, "Huh, their stuff is cool!" When you get tired you can take a break over at the alpaca petting zoo or the #6 plastic Shrinky Dink station, and when you get hungry, why, there's both a coffee shop and a booth selling deep-fried Snickers bars. Yum.Here are just a couple of shots of my booth......and a worm.

The girls have been having an awesome time, too. One of the reasons St. Louis was a good choice for a craft fair was that we love spending the weekend there, anyway--zoo, Science Center, The Container Store, Whole Foods--but Matt and the girls didn't even get out of the park today. Not only is Strange Folk in a park with trees to climb and a playground and a picnic blanket with books and toys just behind my booth and lots of grass to run in, but there is also a #6 plastic Shrinky Dink station and a make-your-own necklace table and an alpaca petting zoo, etc. Sydney especially enjoyed the World's Biggest Sandbox: And Willow enjoyed--can you guess?

Matt got this great shot of the two vendors at the mei tai booth, along with their mannequin:

I even got some shopping time while Matt ran the booth with strict orders to smile at people, look pleasant, respond in complete sentences when they spoke to him, and not eat:
Becoming so crafty by habit has unfortunately spoiled my craft fair visiting a little, however, because everything I see, I say something like, "Ooh, a fleece hat with kitty ears! So cool! But I could probably figure out how to make that for myself. Oh, diaper prefolds with quilter's cotton on one side! Um, I could make that, I guess. Vinyl brooches! I should make some of those for myself." But I did find a loophole--supplies! I bought a yard each (so far) of two new awesome cotton fabrics, one of zoo animals and one of the alphabet, and the sock monkey one is kind of calling for me to come back again for it tomorrow. I also bought this beautiful and bright wool roving--

--for making the little felted wool balls from .

All in all, it was a good day for a little money-making, a little shopping, a little spending time with the family...
It was a good day.

We are Pumpkin+Bear

Look what my awesome little kiddo learned in school this week:

The teachers incorporated 15 minutes of singing into the daily curriculum this semester, and so the kid's absorbent little mind is chock-full of folk songs now: This Land is Your Land, Where is Thumbkin, Looby-Lu, The Paw-Paw Patch, The Name Game--if Pete Seger sang it, my kid knows it. Thursdays are request days, and although I keep secretly wishing that the kid would request something that rocks, like Rufus Wainwright or Kimya Dawson, she's pretty into her teacher's lap dulcimer-thingy.

In other news, the family here is deep into prep for Strange Folk, festival of awesomeness, which is NEXT WEEKEND! For those of you who will be there with bells on, my booth is #243, by the tennis courts. There are still some things that I'd like to make, but this coming week is all about display and branding. We're going to buy a cheapo EZ-Up from Sam's this weekend and set it up in the basement playroom for a mock booth, and then after Strange Folk we're going to return that EZ-Up, because the EZ-Ups from Sam's suck. Matt is in process designing me a logo that I can freezer paper stencil onto some shirts for us and perhaps potato stamp onto bags or print onto fabric that I've soaked in Bubble Jet set. Here's the one he made that I like the best--

--but Matt has to make me a simpler design for the stencils, so I don't have to deal with all those islands on the bear or the thin little lines on the pumpkin.

And in between cleaning house, and sewing one more miniature T-shirt quilt (I can't stop!), and finding a big bag of wet laundry that I put out on the back porch YESTERDAY and never got around to hanging up, and having a friend over to cut out felt shapes for our felt boards, and zipping by the grocery store with the little kid (Bob's Red Mill pancake mix and baked dessert mixes were on SALE!!!), the kids and I worked on a table cover for one of the two tables that I'll have in my booth.

In my artist's statement, I think I made it clear that I consider all my work collaborative with my kids, and so I wanted that to be reflected in the booth display. While I hope that my other display items will be a little more sedate, most of the table covers will be, well, covered, anyway, so we went all out. We painted and colored--

--and cut and collaged (the books are usually outdated textbooks or children's books that we get for free from various places and they live in one special bin in the art room--not even the toddler is confused by what books we cut and color in and what books we don't, and the toddler cuts the couch and colors on the walls)----and the end result might be a little wacky--

--but you can surely tell that some joyful children participated in its creation.

Next up, a bunting and the logo T-shirts for the family. Also, the preschooler wants to make and sell something, too, and I'm all for the idea...but I can't think of what! I tried sewing her some books out of old book pages for her to dictate stories in and illustrate them, but they're so precious that I can't sell them! Could she attractively color on old picture book pages or other vintage papers and I could turn them into greeting cards? Model stuff out of dryer lint dough? Paint rocks?

Any ideas?

Not a Renegade This Year

I'm so bummed!

is this weekend, and I am not there! I am here, and I am seriously, seriously bummed. Nevermind the fact that we were just out of town last weekend, and that I have my own biggie craft fair--

--in TWO weeks, for which I am furiously crafting, and that it has apparently been hurricaning down rain in Chicago all day. I don't care! I'm mourning my Renegade!

We all went to Renegade last year the weekend after I failed my PhD qualifying exams (it felt political from the start, since the administration had been weirdly unwilling to give me any maternity accommodations and I had been unwilling to take my exams while tending to a newborn. They did eventually give me a few extra months, but then my committee was just never available to meet to help me prep, and never mentored me the way that all my grad student colleagues said that they were being mentored, and then all of their exam questions seemed to come completely out of left field and I was apparently super unprepared. After I failed, I emailed the chair of my committee and said that I was thinking about not trying again, and she just never emailed me back!), and so Renegade's obvious awesomeness is paired in my mind, I think, with relief that at least the months-long constant cramming was over, and the whole fun and relaxing weekend served as a balm for my very wounded ego. I bought Syd this hat and ordered a matching one for Will----and Syd, who really hadn't been able to walk for more than a couple of months (hence the bare feet even in the slight chill--bare feet=better balance, don'cha know?), followed her big sister along like a true devotee--

--and not just for the snow cone that a big sister will graciously share:

  

I also have lots and lots of photos of this lady--

--which tells me that my kiddo's obsession with dinosaurs goes back further than I'd thought.

I would have loved to have gone back this weekend. And, um, this might come as news to you, but I tend to repress unpleasant emotions, so the fact that I was shot through with misery this morning and burst into tears and could not tell you why may have had something to do with the anniversary. Or it may not--who knows?

I did notice, however, that some of the same vendors I visited last year are there again. I'm quite the handmade soap nut, so I bought some Biggs and Featherbelle soap , and I admired the industrial-strength record album coasters that artreco made.

But there were so many other things that I wanted to buy this year! How will I get this spoon ring now? And the British flashcard toddler apparel? And the faux fur cat-eared hat? Okay, that one I'm just going to have to buy anyway, shipping be damned! And yeah, I'm not even going to kid myself that I could ever afford this, but this bookshelf would look so great in the playroom.

Speaking of the playroom...finally tired of hearing me bitch and moan about the rickety shelves he installed (seriously, this morning they were canted at a 30-degree angle, and they just had fingerpaint and board games on them!), Matt took me to the Habitat for Humanity Restore and did not tell me I was nuts when I called him over to where I was and said, "Wouldn't these doors make PERFECT shelves for the playroom?" Okay, he did swear a lot in the ensuing hours, but tomorrow I'll show you the coolest thing ever to be constructed in our house. Not the coolest thing ever conceived, if you get me, but the coolest thing, by far, ever constructed.

Matt did not, however, permit me to buy the church pew. God, it would have ruled!

Some other Strange Folk

So I've been cyber-stalking some of the other vendors who will be at the Strange Folk Festival with me, the better to plan where to spend all my profits. Here are my favorite fellow recycle and especially eco-conscious artists:

• ARTicles by Teresa: She recycles random stuff, sometimes industrial, into these cool embellishments for journals and scrapbooks--it's a sweet idea. My favorite is this paper fastener made from parts from a watch face.
• Comforts by Ruthann: I am a sucker for hand-crafted soaps, and also unrelatedly obsessed with peppermint and eucalyptus essential oils. Yeah, this soapmaker makes handcrafted soaps with natural ingrediants, including PEPPERMINT and EUCALYPTUS essential oils. Matt insists on only using Irish Spring to counteract my soap indulgences.
• Ettu Handmade Wearables: This concept is so cool--I'm pretty deft at recycling cast-off clothes for my own tykes, turning pants legs into jumpers, sweaters into dresses, and sleeves into pants, but Ettu has a beautiful line of T-shirts from cast-off clothing, matching colors in a creative way and often incorporating my most favorite sleeve type, the raglan. This shirt is reversible with a Christmas theme on one side and a Hannakuh theme on the other--brilliant.
• Gnomeclothes makes reusable cotton napkins, sandwich bags, and lunch sacks. If we can afford to keep sending Will to Montessori when she starts first grade, which is unlikely, we'll probably send her lunch with her most days. How comforting to know she won't have to carry it in a Bratz lunchbox.
• HandBEHG makes cool bags out of wool and recycled wool. She also works with roving to make felted wool balls, a project that I have been dying to do with the girls. Good thing there will be some Strange Folk vendors selling plant-dyed wool roving--goodbye, profits!
• House of ni Lochlainn: I really like this collection of suncatchers and jewelry made from deconstructed chandeliers and vintage jewelry. I have a huge collection of vintage jewelry I scored at a garage sale that I've been meaning to post on etsy, but I just can't seem to make myself say goodbye to it.
• Little Bird Bows: Oh, my freakin' God! A Strange Folk vendor who sews cloth diapers! Breathe calmly and repeat--"I have plenty of cloth diapers. I can sew my own cloth diapers. Also, I have plenty of cloth diapers." Goodbye, profits.
• Revamped Fashion: Clothes for curvy girls made from recycled/repurposed materials? Okay, now I don't have any profits left. Does it count as wearing a skirt if you wear it over pants? Because I don't wear skirts, but I WANT this.
• Did I mention that yesterday, while attempting to cook potatoes and corn on the stove while Matt's ribs (not literally, unfortunately) baked in the oven, I turned on the wrong burner and caught our last remaining oven mitt on fire? I picked it up and held it, looking at it stupidly, until the flames began to lick up to my wrist, then dropped it on the floor, dropped another dish towel on top of it, and when that promptly caught on fire as well I thought about pouring water on the whole thing, thought better of it, and instead opened the oven door and threw flaming dishtowel and oven mitt in with the ribs. Also, I might add--I have no business being in the kitchen. Anyway...how nice that Squaresville makes these cool oven mitts out of recycled denim.
• Trash-to-Treasure Creative Recycling: I am all about heavy metal in my jewelry. Recycled soda cans? Awesome!

You're totally going to Strange Folk, right? Who's your favorite vendor?...Aw, you guys! Besides me!

Scheduled

Where am I going to be on the weekends in the fall, when I sneak away from my evening freshman comp classes and masquerade as a non-teacher real person (Didn't you always sort of feel that your teachers weren't really real people--I mean, how could someone who got THAT into English GRAMMAR really be a real person?)? Here's where:

Saturday, August 23, 4:00-6:30: Cloth Diapering Workshop, Barefoot Herbs Barefoot Kids, Bloomington, IN. This is the funnest of workshops, because there's something about a big group of pregnant people and people with newborns that is just awesome fun. I give everyone a page of lecture notes, printed front and back in tiny print, and then I tell them every single thing there is to know about cloth diapers. I demo with dolls (the part where I hold the Cabbage Patch Doll upside down and shake her to show how well fitted diapers stay put just KILLS, I tell you), I show off my old ratty four-year-old diapers, I describe, in detail, the two different kinds of poop using a peanut butter metaphor--good times, people. Good times.

Do the joyful dance of vending at my first big craft fair along with me! Strange Folk is located just outside St. Louis, Missouri, one of my family's favorite places to play, and thus fits into my craft fair criteria of being indie, about a four-hour drive or close to family members, and including awesome stuff for the family to do around town and at the venue while I vend. I'm super-excited, but also weirdly jealous that although I'll be doing exactly what I've been wanting to do for a while, I'll have to miss out on the St. Louis Zoo and the St. Louis Science Center. Thank goodness The Container Store, Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, and Torrid will still be open when I'm done for the day.

Saturday, October 11, 9-1: A Fair of the Arts, Showers Plaza, Bloomington, IN. This is the last farmer's market craft fair of the year! My computer crashed and we went to California at around the same time, so I unhappily can't remember if I was on top of life enough to apply to the Holiday Market here, but I sadly think that maybe I didn't. Oh, well...I'm not really that into Christmas, anyway.

Saturday, October 18, 4:00-6:30: Babywearing Workshop, Barefoot Herbs Barefoot Kids, Bloomington, IN. This is the other of the classes I teach just to be near cutie little baby patooties, with the added bonus of occasionally being permitted to hold a really live itty baby while talking a parent through putting on a carrier, or maybe even wearing said baby myself for a minute, just to demo, you know. We work our way through all the attachment parenting standards--pouches, ring slings, wraps, mei tais, and the ergo. No Baby Bjorns need apply.

Whew! What are you up to this fall?

...Jiggety Jig

Ah, the joy of being home! We couldn't find the housekey when we arrived home last night around 10:00 pm, but I managed to break in the back door all by myself (hmmm...mental note to FIX said back door this week), and there was only one weird smell in the whole house, from a bag of garbage Matt had put on top of the stove to take out before we left. Ew.

Our collective favorite activity upon homecoming is to collect all the gathered mail, and although neither my order from Dharma Trading Co. nor my swap package for the Christmas in July Stashbuster swap has arrived, my entire order from Dick Blick has made its happy way to our house--and I do mean happy.

We're a family pretty well dedicated to creativity and lifelong learning, so art supplies are dead important to us. Now that we have some serious storage in the basement (as soon as we, um, build the shelves), I chose to invest in some serious art supplies--class packs of markers, crayons, and tempera paint, as well as a few novelties, such as sun printing paper and blank puzzles, and, of course, a gallon jug of Mod Podge for me.

Class packs are actually pretty sweet. The markers and the crayons each contain numerous sets of 16 colors--with two kiddos, I bring out a set for each of them, labelled by kiddo, store the rest, and replenish when necessary. The paint set has a gallon jug for each color, with a lockable pump and a billion little paper cups:
Obviously, though, the box they came in is the funnest toy:Willow had this idea of drawing the entire map of the United States, so I dutifully pulled up a map online for her to copy:Her California looked pretty good actually, perhaps since we've been studying it so much lately; as for the rest of the fifty states--well, she is only four.

In other education news, Montessori starts tomorrow for Will. Our other home projects this week will likely include more map study, identifying some rocks and shells collected in California, helping me create things for a super-big craft fair I'm doing in September, and a trip to the library to check out every color book they have for Syd--I think it's weird that she doesn't have her colors down yet, but Matt thinks I tend to work with both of the girls mostly at Willow's level, and thus I haven't been doing enough color labelling for Sydney. We'll see...