It was a gray and damp on Thursday when we drove to Asheville. We arrived about 1:00, therefore, went by the hotel upon arrival to check in and eat lunch before going over to the Agricultural Center to set up our booths. SAFF has a special place in my heart since it was the first fiber festival I ever attended. I was nervous at first but it didn’t take long to get comfortable with meeting and conversing with the customers and I was hooked. It was wonderful to meet people I knew online only and have much in common with. I knew that weekend, five years ago, that this was where I wanted to go with our business.
I began as soon as we returned from the festival in that fall of 2006, to plan the coming year’s schedule and get to work with designing and building the fixtures that we still use. We decided from many different ideas we saw that year how we wanted our booth to look to give it a look which was recognizable and “us”. I am still pleased with what we came up with and must also give most of the credit to my dear husband, Jerry. He did a beautiful job on these as he does with all the products he makes too. He really does put a lot of thought and care into each of his creations and it shows, if I do say so myself.
So, that’s a little of our history of how we came to be running all over the country like vagabonds and loving it. Well, not really vagabonds, since we are blessed to have a home and family waiting anxiously each time for our return. The 2011 show season is almost at an end for us already. We have one more local show next weekend, Fiber in the Boro, which is a branch off from the Cannonsburgh Festival which is this weekend. We have never been able to attend for that reason, but are excited about the chance to represent locally next weekend. If you are in the area, please stop in and introduce yourself. We may even have more of the family with us since it’s only a one day event and no hotel necessary. 
I hope you have enjoyed hearing a little of how we began this venture and seeing a behind the scenes view of what the venue looks like before it is all ready for visitors. I took these pictures on Thursday right after we had finished our set up, but as you can see in the picture below, trucks are still in the arena.
We have expanded our space here to three booth since we are on the curve, and it makes for a wedge shaped booth with more room at the back than the front. Having the third space makes the front side bigger. So, since we had extra space we tried a different layout with the tools displays in the middle. I like it and will keep it when possible to set up this way. I created a very nice traffic flow pattern and gave the booth a nice balance.
If you are in the Asheville area this weekend, come on out and spend the day. There’s still plenty of goodies and fun to be had!
Oh, I almost forgot, I do have a picture of my knitting progress to show you as promised.
