Lots to Say, Little Time to Write it

So I'm sitting here knowing that I don't have as much time as I would like to write in my "online journal" this morning.

Where do I begin?

Batik. My henna batik sign did not come out the way I'd envisioned. Part of it was that the green dye turned out BRIGHT green, instead of dark green. The other is that portions of my waxing turned out too thin. I'm not sure why this is, only that I'll have to avoid thin lines in the future. It just doesn't hold the color well.

This is what my tent looked like at the festival:


It wasn't until my friend B (who brought me hot chocolate on the chilly morning!) made a comment about the color of the green that I realized how correct he was. He described it as "St. Patrick's Day Green" and that he felt I should be offering beer at my table.

So I took the banner down.

I was worried about the lack of customers, and then tried to not be worried about it. So much effort and mental energy at things that I had no control over, and then at trying to stop my thoughts. Have I mentioned I'm in my head too much of the time?

Then I saw this:



A real actual butterfly perched atop the butterfly and lotus sheet (nope, didn't make it). This butterfly was just sitting there as confidently as anything, regardless of the wind that made the sheet sway. I walked up to it several times, just to marvel in its peaceful beauty. It wasn't scared or threatened by this big human coming to peer at it. It just Was.

And so I learned to just Be.

As the day wore on, the wind picked up, whipping most of the cloths and hanging designs around. Sometime around 3 or 4pm, we decided to just keep the things down that the wind pulled down.

As far as customers, it was actually a slow day. Between 10 and 2 I had a grand total of 1 customer. I'm not sure why. Everyone at the fair, who had done this one before, said they'd made about a third of what they'd made the previous year. Folks just weren't spending money like they had before. Maybe it's the rising cost of gas and food, maybe it was because graduation is near and there's other things to spend money on. By the end of the day, I'd covered my booth fee. So yay!

Here are some pics. The designs are by Deborah Brommer, except for the lotus, which is mine.