I’ve taken my shop on the road more than a few times. I’ve packed up the U-Haul and set up shop all across Nova Scotia and beyond. Belleville, Ontario is the farthest I’ve traveled but I’ve dragged my goods to Moncton, Yarmouth numerous times, Black Point Rug & Quilt Show several years running, St. Margaret’s Bay, and of course all the Nova Scotia Guild Rug Schools. I’m not a fan of all the work so I've semi retired the traveling show until I can find a lackey, I mean an assistant, to do all the work so I can just fly in and do the fun stuff; but of course that would be Fantasy Island and I don't have da plane boss.
No one would believe the amount of preparation that goes into taking a large shop on the road and truthfully, I take it to the nth degree. If you’re going to go through all the trouble of setting up shop to sell your wares, you might as well take everything! There’s nothing worse than having to tell a customer, ‘Sorry, I didn’t bring that!” So, I pretty much have always been the largest vendor wherever I go...…you have to make it worth your while! Dyeing wool, designing new patterns and stocking the supplies, takes months and like Santa's toy sack the trailer bulges at the seams. Then there's the packing which usually takes five to seven hours, it isn’t just a random throw in a box procedure. The goods have to be packed carefully to maximize content and avoid being crushed and wrinkled. Loading it into the U-Haul, that first time, takes a lot of maneuvering to make it all fit securely. Like any moving company, special care has to be taken so your precious cargo makes the trip safely; you can’t have things flopping around and getting damaged.
Then you hit the road with all the enthusiasm of a child with a new adventure on the horizon,
but you grow up real quick as reality sets in and the kilometers pile up in a slow agonizing count. You drive until your butt goes numb, your legs fall asleep and you swill coffee to keep sleep at bay that in turn, forces pee breaks at every exit. Finally you arrive at the destination. Half of you is elated the trip is over but then you groan, knowing the work ahead of you. You unload, then unpack, set up the display, paint a smile on your tired face and stand on your swollen feet all day long selling your goods and chattel. This isn’t a job for sissies; you work your derriere off!
Then, after the show's over, when you’d kill to crawl under one of the tables and have a nap, you can’t because there’s usually a limited amount of time to tear the display down, pack it all up and lug it out to the vehicle before the custodian locks the door behind you. Then more driving until you arrive dead tired back home, but there’s still no sleep, you have to unpack and set it all back up so you can open for business the next morning. Every day the near empty shop runs on wool fumes you suffer lost revenue and rug hookers, traveling from afar, are always disappointed they don’t get the full Encompassing Designs experience. The shop resembles the scene after the Grinch has stolen the Whoville's Christmas, and this bareness does not inspire return visits.
No one would believe the amount of preparation that goes into taking a large shop on the road and truthfully, I take it to the nth degree. If you’re going to go through all the trouble of setting up shop to sell your wares, you might as well take everything! There’s nothing worse than having to tell a customer, ‘Sorry, I didn’t bring that!” So, I pretty much have always been the largest vendor wherever I go...…you have to make it worth your while! Dyeing wool, designing new patterns and stocking the supplies, takes months and like Santa's toy sack the trailer bulges at the seams. Then there's the packing which usually takes five to seven hours, it isn’t just a random throw in a box procedure. The goods have to be packed carefully to maximize content and avoid being crushed and wrinkled. Loading it into the U-Haul, that first time, takes a lot of maneuvering to make it all fit securely. Like any moving company, special care has to be taken so your precious cargo makes the trip safely; you can’t have things flopping around and getting damaged.
Then you hit the road with all the enthusiasm of a child with a new adventure on the horizon,
but you grow up real quick as reality sets in and the kilometers pile up in a slow agonizing count. You drive until your butt goes numb, your legs fall asleep and you swill coffee to keep sleep at bay that in turn, forces pee breaks at every exit. Finally you arrive at the destination. Half of you is elated the trip is over but then you groan, knowing the work ahead of you. You unload, then unpack, set up the display, paint a smile on your tired face and stand on your swollen feet all day long selling your goods and chattel. This isn’t a job for sissies; you work your derriere off!
Then, after the show's over, when you’d kill to crawl under one of the tables and have a nap, you can’t because there’s usually a limited amount of time to tear the display down, pack it all up and lug it out to the vehicle before the custodian locks the door behind you. Then more driving until you arrive dead tired back home, but there’s still no sleep, you have to unpack and set it all back up so you can open for business the next morning. Every day the near empty shop runs on wool fumes you suffer lost revenue and rug hookers, traveling from afar, are always disappointed they don’t get the full Encompassing Designs experience. The shop resembles the scene after the Grinch has stolen the Whoville's Christmas, and this bareness does not inspire return visits.
Where the "Little" wools are all hung in a row.
"These yards of great colour" I grinned, "are the first things to go!"
Then I slithered and slunk with a backache most unpleasant,
Around the whole shop, to take all things present.
Dyed wool! And Patterns! Scissors! And Frames!
Dye spoons! Cutters! And more of the same!
And I stuffed them in bags, boxes and baskets.
Leaving little behind for anyone's asking.
Then I packed all the bags in the U-haul with glee.
And hit the road, after coffee and a pee!
"These yards of great colour" I grinned, "are the first things to go!"
Then I slithered and slunk with a backache most unpleasant,
Around the whole shop, to take all things present.
Dyed wool! And Patterns! Scissors! And Frames!
Dye spoons! Cutters! And more of the same!
And I stuffed them in bags, boxes and baskets.
Leaving little behind for anyone's asking.
Then I packed all the bags in the U-haul with glee.
And hit the road, after coffee and a pee!
So, I’m no stranger to hauling my shop around and when I was invited to attend the Ontario Guild AGM being held in Belleville that year, my hubby said “let’s do it!” If not for his help I would have declined but because he was available to lean on, do the driving and all the heavy lifting, why not! This might sound sexist but quite frankly, I firmly believe that any job you can break a fingernail on, is man’s work!
So we packed up the U-Haul and hit the road. We called it our ‘Little’ adventure, pardon the pun, and although it was a working vacation, we thought it would be nice to get away, just the two of us for a bit of R & R. But OMG.....it was a lot of driving! Did I say it was a lot of driving? Well, it sure was a heck of a lot of driving! No stopping for anything accept to eat, sleep, refuel and go to the bathroom. How exciting! Two days up and two days back. Hubby took the helm while I slept most of the way being the helpful navigator that I am. I tend to doze in the car having nothing to do but look at long, boring spans of hypnotic highway.
The trip was uneventful except for the time I ran out of gasoline on my only driving shift. Hubby was napping and I didn’t want to disturb him so I figured I could hit the next Irving Big Stop but fell short of it with less than two kilometers to go. Too far to walk, the long wait for the CAA guy was brutal, especially when we were pressed for time. Finally gassed up and back on the road, we drove through town after town and I saw antique shops that I would have crawled naked over glass to check out, but there wasn’t any time! Being devious, I mean clever and resourceful, I secretly made mental notes of stops to make on the way home. It would be my reward for all the hard work, not that I needed an excuse to shop. So we finally made it to Belleville late, checked into a hotel and fell asleep as soon as our heads hit the pillow. The next day we rose early, had breakfast and drove to the venue to set up shop.
So we packed up the U-Haul and hit the road. We called it our ‘Little’ adventure, pardon the pun, and although it was a working vacation, we thought it would be nice to get away, just the two of us for a bit of R & R. But OMG.....it was a lot of driving! Did I say it was a lot of driving? Well, it sure was a heck of a lot of driving! No stopping for anything accept to eat, sleep, refuel and go to the bathroom. How exciting! Two days up and two days back. Hubby took the helm while I slept most of the way being the helpful navigator that I am. I tend to doze in the car having nothing to do but look at long, boring spans of hypnotic highway.
The trip was uneventful except for the time I ran out of gasoline on my only driving shift. Hubby was napping and I didn’t want to disturb him so I figured I could hit the next Irving Big Stop but fell short of it with less than two kilometers to go. Too far to walk, the long wait for the CAA guy was brutal, especially when we were pressed for time. Finally gassed up and back on the road, we drove through town after town and I saw antique shops that I would have crawled naked over glass to check out, but there wasn’t any time! Being devious, I mean clever and resourceful, I secretly made mental notes of stops to make on the way home. It would be my reward for all the hard work, not that I needed an excuse to shop. So we finally made it to Belleville late, checked into a hotel and fell asleep as soon as our heads hit the pillow. The next day we rose early, had breakfast and drove to the venue to set up shop.
Out of gas and patience, (that would be me), hubby stretched his legs and took this shot of me, waiting for the CAA guy to rescue us with the $10 can of gas.
Ahhh breakfast! That trip marked my first meal at a Cora’s Restaurant. The food was excellent and I was mentally preparing ahead for upcoming breakfasts while I was stuffing the current one in. Holy Hannah the food was fabulous, by far the best breakfast I’ve ever had. Decadent crepes, French toast with real maple syrup, Eggs Benny, crème fraîche and sliced fruit, not only delicious but arranged like edible art on our plates. When I think about the trip to Belleville, Cora’s is the first thing to come to mind.; obviously I place my stomach before wool. Cora's was the place I got the idea for the Chinese Lattice surrounding the dye kitchen in the shop. Yes, Cora's was just a fabulous experience!
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So we made it to the venue and unpacked the U-Haul. That’s exhausting in itself, but instead of having a rest you have to open up all the boxes and arrange the wares in a pleasing display PDQ. This would normally take hours but usually you only have a short time to do the job. I was one of many vendors and the building was abuzz with excitement and a flurry of activity, rushing to meet the opening that speeds toward you like a freight train! As per the usual, people arrive early and are picking through your goods while you are trying to unpack. They love to chat you up when you need to be working so you try to do both in a friendly, frazzled kind of way. I’m hammering out orders for hubby to put that here or there, and hang this or that, while I’m moving at warp speed in all directions. I’m losing my mind on the inside but manage to keep control on the outside although a blood pressure reading would have been frightful.
Once everything was orderly and ready for the customers I was able to relax and the event went very smoothly. I met lots of new rug hookers and put faces with names I’d talked to on the phone or emailed over the years. I was surprised at how many familiar faces I'd met at rug schools. Everyone was so happy to see my shop and made us feel very welcome. Hubby found the various reactions to me interesting and at one point when a woman walked through the doors and her scream “Oh my god, its Christine Little!” ricochet off the walls, he leaned over and whispered in my ear, “It’s like being married to a rock star.” People seemed so happy to meet me that I was thrilled and embarrassed at the same time. The ole noggin swelled so by the end of the event I was slightly off balance and walked with a list to the left.
Despite the hectic rushing and all the work, it was a truly great experience and I am so happy to have it under my belt. And oh the perks! Miles of rug hooking stuff! I got to meet the other vendors and saw ‘need to have’ items everywhere! I purchased a fabulous scarf made by Wanda Kerr, a colourful prismatic hook and wool. And then some more wool. Did I say wool? Yah, I took my share home! I think I dragged more stuff home than I took cause there didn't appear to be any more room in the U-haul!
Now to get to the point of my story. One vendor across from my setup didn’t have a lot of traffic at her table and I don’t know why. She had some pretty fabulous British Woolens to drool over.
I would have killed for her source but it’s rude to ask and she didn’t offer. In the past, I'd spent hours on the internet looking for wool jobbers in Britain but have always come up empty. So when she unpacked her wares my jaw dropped. I can spy a piece of wool at fifty paces and I kept my eye peeled to make sure no one bought what was to be mine! I feared having to make a scene while wrestling yardage out of some other hooker’s hot little hands! Plaids are a favorite of mine. I love the way you can strip them down the lines of colour and get different looks. Her plaids were earthy and rich in colour, just what I had in mind. ‘Catch of the Day’ was a design of mine that I always planned to hook and knew plaids would do it justice. I didn’t want to do any dyeing for the project, just use the plaids as is. It was to be a teaching tool to demonstrate how textured wools look when they’re hooked, considering that’s a frequently asked question at the shop.
So at break time, I left hubby in charge, grabbed my wallet and rushed over to the vendor’s table and commenced the lusting. I knew how many fish I needed to hook and how much wool would do the borders so I dove into the piles and made my selections. I was her biggest sale of the day and my arms were groaning under the weight of the acquisitions as I made my way back to my station. The woman had previously washed all the wool so it was soft and luxurious although the smell was a bit overwhelming. I have allergies to a lot of man-made scents and Downy or Fleecy are both nasty for me, so although the wool was the stuff dreams are made of, it became a bit of a
nightmare on the drive home, enough so that we had to stop and buy garbage bags to stuff it all in and move it into the U-Haul as it smelled up the car until I was forced to hang my head out the window gasping for air. When I got home I didn’t want to wash it and risk felting it thicker, so
I let it sit in the back room to off gas for almost a year before I attempted the rug.
So the AGM went smoothly, the time whizzed by and before I knew it we were packing up, checking out of our hotel, saying goodbye to my beloved Cora’s and hitting the road. It was a very expensive trip and I was in a deep hole by the time we reached Mahone Bay. After totaling up the gas, hotels, food, vendor rental space, insurance and U-Haul it was an expensive outing, but I knew that would happen even before I left. The weekend was about PR for the business, connecting with customers and meeting new rug hookers. It was also a bit of a getaway for us and although we were exhausted, it was a good kind of tired. As always, the drive home appeared faster but it was still a long haul.
The cherry on the Sundae had been the anticipation of a bit of shopping in those antique shops I’d sourced on the trip there, but that was a big disappointment. They were all closed! I was just a sad face pressed up against the windows, like a penniless kid outside a candy store. Closed signs stared back at me, some shops we'd missed by mere minutes!!! We were driving into a later time zone and should have left earlier! So there were no souvenirs or baubles to remind me of our little adventure. I pouted most of the way home.
Once everything was orderly and ready for the customers I was able to relax and the event went very smoothly. I met lots of new rug hookers and put faces with names I’d talked to on the phone or emailed over the years. I was surprised at how many familiar faces I'd met at rug schools. Everyone was so happy to see my shop and made us feel very welcome. Hubby found the various reactions to me interesting and at one point when a woman walked through the doors and her scream “Oh my god, its Christine Little!” ricochet off the walls, he leaned over and whispered in my ear, “It’s like being married to a rock star.” People seemed so happy to meet me that I was thrilled and embarrassed at the same time. The ole noggin swelled so by the end of the event I was slightly off balance and walked with a list to the left.
Despite the hectic rushing and all the work, it was a truly great experience and I am so happy to have it under my belt. And oh the perks! Miles of rug hooking stuff! I got to meet the other vendors and saw ‘need to have’ items everywhere! I purchased a fabulous scarf made by Wanda Kerr, a colourful prismatic hook and wool. And then some more wool. Did I say wool? Yah, I took my share home! I think I dragged more stuff home than I took cause there didn't appear to be any more room in the U-haul!
Now to get to the point of my story. One vendor across from my setup didn’t have a lot of traffic at her table and I don’t know why. She had some pretty fabulous British Woolens to drool over.
I would have killed for her source but it’s rude to ask and she didn’t offer. In the past, I'd spent hours on the internet looking for wool jobbers in Britain but have always come up empty. So when she unpacked her wares my jaw dropped. I can spy a piece of wool at fifty paces and I kept my eye peeled to make sure no one bought what was to be mine! I feared having to make a scene while wrestling yardage out of some other hooker’s hot little hands! Plaids are a favorite of mine. I love the way you can strip them down the lines of colour and get different looks. Her plaids were earthy and rich in colour, just what I had in mind. ‘Catch of the Day’ was a design of mine that I always planned to hook and knew plaids would do it justice. I didn’t want to do any dyeing for the project, just use the plaids as is. It was to be a teaching tool to demonstrate how textured wools look when they’re hooked, considering that’s a frequently asked question at the shop.
So at break time, I left hubby in charge, grabbed my wallet and rushed over to the vendor’s table and commenced the lusting. I knew how many fish I needed to hook and how much wool would do the borders so I dove into the piles and made my selections. I was her biggest sale of the day and my arms were groaning under the weight of the acquisitions as I made my way back to my station. The woman had previously washed all the wool so it was soft and luxurious although the smell was a bit overwhelming. I have allergies to a lot of man-made scents and Downy or Fleecy are both nasty for me, so although the wool was the stuff dreams are made of, it became a bit of a
nightmare on the drive home, enough so that we had to stop and buy garbage bags to stuff it all in and move it into the U-Haul as it smelled up the car until I was forced to hang my head out the window gasping for air. When I got home I didn’t want to wash it and risk felting it thicker, so
I let it sit in the back room to off gas for almost a year before I attempted the rug.
So the AGM went smoothly, the time whizzed by and before I knew it we were packing up, checking out of our hotel, saying goodbye to my beloved Cora’s and hitting the road. It was a very expensive trip and I was in a deep hole by the time we reached Mahone Bay. After totaling up the gas, hotels, food, vendor rental space, insurance and U-Haul it was an expensive outing, but I knew that would happen even before I left. The weekend was about PR for the business, connecting with customers and meeting new rug hookers. It was also a bit of a getaway for us and although we were exhausted, it was a good kind of tired. As always, the drive home appeared faster but it was still a long haul.
The cherry on the Sundae had been the anticipation of a bit of shopping in those antique shops I’d sourced on the trip there, but that was a big disappointment. They were all closed! I was just a sad face pressed up against the windows, like a penniless kid outside a candy store. Closed signs stared back at me, some shops we'd missed by mere minutes!!! We were driving into a later time zone and should have left earlier! So there were no souvenirs or baubles to remind me of our little adventure. I pouted most of the way home.
When I finally got around to starting ‘Catch of the Day’, I did the entire grid in #6 dark charcoal/black wool and all the fish and borders in #7. With the wider cut, I was averaging a fish a night, and got halfway through the pattern quickly. But just like the carpenter’s house that’s never finished, I got distracted by the shop and the rug was set on the back burner. Shamefully, the normally two weeks to a month project stretched into three years! My Wednesday evening group kept up an annoying vigilance, dogging me to finish. Usually a hooking hare with lightning speed; I was a tortoise with no end in sight so it lagged on. After we decided to have a rug show in spring of 2012, I put a push on to have it to display. The finished rug hangs in the shop and gets a lot of positive comments and its had a few overtures to purchase it. I purposely haven’t sewn on the rug binding for an excuse to deflect their offers. “Sorry, it isn’t finished”, lets me off the hook. The rug is for my hubby’s study, his reward for being supportive on that wonderful trip to Belleville where I found the perfect wool to hook it. You can’t sell a memory, it’s always there to remind you of the time when……
The pattern 'Catch of the Day' is available in two sizes.
The larger, hooked one, is 40" x 63" and the smaller version is 39" x 31 1/2" Check out the pattern section for more details.
The larger, hooked one, is 40" x 63" and the smaller version is 39" x 31 1/2" Check out the pattern section for more details.
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