Early Friday morning, we hopped in the car. It was loaded with bedding, clothes, our youngest child - and the results of a few months of intensive crafting.
I had serious butterflies before we left, but they calmed a bit as we got on the road. Not much more I could do once we were on our way, aye?
We had quite a lovely time, cruising down the country. It's unusual for it to be just the three of us for such a long period of time, and even more unusual for Abraham and I to have such long stretches of time for conversations to happen. We listened to music, made fun of road signs, ate Burger Fuel (essential on any road trip!), disagreed with the TomTom (you want us to go WHERE? Into the middle of the forest? Uhh.. no?) and discussed which of the small towns we would most like to live in.
(For your information, we decided that Cheltenham might be the one. FLASH houses, green pastures and a pub called 'The Chelty'!)
We arrived in Masterton just before tea time. We stayed with a good friend from school, and spent the evening eating pizza and chit chatting with her, before settling in to get some sleep before the big day.
I learned my first lesson of the day very early on: make sure you know how long it take to to set up your stall. Seriously, when you are sweating away, trying to get things hung and writing signs, 10 minutes before the doors open - then you didn't get yourself enough time.
Luckily, I juuuust made it in time to snap a few quick pictures and get behind my stall for the opening of the doors.
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Unfortunately, the opening of the doors did not mean a big rush of people. In fact, there wasn't really a big rush of people all day.. it was quite slow. Sales were made, but not an awful lot.
I'm not complaining though, not really. I got to meet a lot of lovely people, see some lovelies I'd met before, and buy/swap for some gorgeous things. (More about all of those things in part 2)
Abraham was so wonderful, entertaining Mollie, fetching me food - and manning the stall so I could wander round and natter with those lovelies, and purchase the goodies. I'm so thankful he agreed to come with me, it would have been no fun without him. That was lesson number two.
I also learned a lot about the workings of my stall, and display. And about which of my items seemed to gather the most interest (for this particular crowd, anyway. The demographic seemed to be a lot older than I was expecting..). I have some good ideas for next time, and that's always helpful.
(One thing that cracks me up about markets is the comments people makes, almost as if the seller isn't standing right in front of them. I got a lot of 'Ohh, I could just make that..' or 'Well, that's a bit pricey isn't it?'. But my favourite of all was an older lady, who uttered to her friend, in regards to my doily-adorned bags 'They'd be a lot nicer without the table cloth on them!' Haha!)
After a long day, we were quite knackered. One might think this would be a good time to relax, ready for the long trip the next day, right? Well, not us. We decided that, rather than draw out the tiredness, we would just hop straight in the car and head home that evening. We'd be exhausted, but we'd be home and have the whole Sunday to unpack etc. So that's what we did.
We made our way back up the country, chit chatting, making fun of road signs.. and stopping for Burger fuel, of course. We listened to music, and sung a few rounds of nursery rhymes to calm Mol, who had well and truly had enough of being strapped in. We got home just before midnight - 14 hours of travel in two days! BANANAS.
(I think, maybe, I might need to stick to markets a little closer to home. I just need to find a good one.)
Will write a post about the lovelies I saw, the things I came home with, and a very cool idea, tomorrow. In the meantime, I have photographing and listing to do - so much stock for the Felt shop! Holy!
