Just stopping in for a brief update as I’m not feeling so well today. If you’re a local or coming to visit New Mexico (as you should, it’s a kick-ass place!) soon – as in this weekend – you simply must travel at least a bit on the 2nd annual New Mexico Fiber Crawl. It runs Friday through Sunday. Download your passport(and maps) and head for your vehicle. As I mentioned last week, Kathy Kelly and I will be vending and demonstrating at Casa San Ysidro in Coralles. We hope to see at least one or eight of you. Maybe margaritas afterwards???
So, say your big New Mexican adventure has you here the week AFTER the New Mexico Fiber Crawl. No worries! Come visit High on Hooking during our first Sunday at Albuquerque’s 2018 Rail Yard Market. There you’ll find…us!, yummy food, music, farm-fresh produce, and other artists selling their wares. What? Your dog is with you? No problem! Dogs are always welcome. Come get a doggie biscuit at the High on Hooking booth. Remember: Dogs love rugs!!!
You know, when I lived in New England, we never combined Cinco de Mayo and rug hooking. Rarely even margaritas and rug hooking. We ain’t living in Kansas Massachusetts any more, señor! Saturday, Cathy Kelly and I will be under our joint tent selling rugs (and doing demos, of course) at the 11th annual Cinco de Mayo Folk Art Fest here in Albuquerque. If you’re local, stop by. It’s happening right at La Parada and Farm & Table. There’ll be music pretty much all day, and Farm & Table will be offering food and beverages on their patio. That would be where the margaritas come in. And if I don’t manage to get one there, Tom will have one or three waiting for me when I get home. Woohoo! (And, trust me, he doesn’t skimp on the tequila. His margaritas are yet another reason that I had to marry this man.)
So, Saturday dawned bright and COLD – about 35 degrees. At least the windstorm had passed.(If you’re from New Mexico, you know that spring goes by another name here: wind.) Tom and I toodled down the road a couple of miles to Albuquerque’s Open Space Visitors’ Center to participate in the Recycled Art Fair.
Got the tent up and all the rugs and such in place by 10:00’s opening. People were already showing up looking to score good stuff made from other folks’ waste. Music was playing. It was gonna be a great weekend. Certainly better than last year when it snowed and rained and winded the first day. All I had to do was wait for the customers to come to me.
And they did. To see what I was working on. I like to hook when I do shows. For one thing, it draws people in either to 1) figure out what the hell I’m doing or 2) tell me a story how they (or their mother/father/grandparent) used to hook. And, of course, there are the latch hook tales, but we’ll skip over that today. Fortunately, I love to chat up folks and to spread the hooking gospel, so no problem there.
The problem was that no one was buying.
And then, suddenly, none of that mattered. A woman approached my tent; I was in my camp chair working away muttering trash talk about people who weren’t buying my trash-to-treasures. She says, “Laura?” I respond affirmatively, pleasantly even, because I have to I’m that kind of person. And then she tells me who she is: Amy Buesing of Las Cruces!
If you don’t know Amy, and I know many of you do, she’s a member of my guild but can’t make the monthly meetings given the five-hour drive between Albuquerque and Las Cruces. I’m pretty sure that she and I became Facebook friends before I left Massachusetts and even knew there was such a thing as the Adobe Wool Arts Guild. We bonded over family matters and such. Last October she and Mary Ramsey, our guild president, roomed together at the ATHA Biennial. Neither had met the other, but hookers are game for that kind of thing. Mary told me that Amy and I would hit it off when we finally met.
Here’s the thing, I thought that would be in September when Sharon Smith of Off the Wool Rugs comes to give a workshop. But Amy surprised me. She was in town and, knowing that I had a show, she made time before driving home to come meet me. I was touched. So touched
and discombobulated that, when she bought one of my rugs, I 1) almost didn’t give her her $10 of change and 2) sent her home with a mug that didn’t match the double mug rug that she bought. Duh! I’ll get the right one out to you later this week, Amy!
Not only did I get to chat with Amy and her friend/travel buddy Michele, but she must’ve brought some good luck for me too. I managed to sell a few rugs the next day, including the sunflower table runner/wall-hanging I just finished. And then I was invited by the fair’s organizers to participate in their Cinco de Mayo Folk Art Fest on May 5 here in town. Woohoo! And all because of Amy. Cathy Kelly, also of AWAG and general hooking fame, will be doing that one with me. Come visit us!
Have you met any Facebook folks years after friending them? Heaven or a horror story?