Market Picking Up

The Hamilton Market was much busier today. I got there late and thought I would be setting up with customers walking by, but the sidewalks were empty. An hour or so later the crowds came and I actually had some sales. What a good feeling, especially to see people petting and stroking the bags, then leaving, then coming back later for more petting and stroking and cooing to the totes, then two finally sold. That's what keeps me sewing. As long as I have electric, a sewing machine that works, a fan or two, and my movie channels I will sew. Big soap making push on this week, along with creme and dyeing of fiber. My veggie vendor friend, Ron Wagner, had a giant box of cabbages, cauliflower, and broccolis at $1 each. I bought a dozen with the intention of making cabbage soup. I adore cabbage - must be a Swedish thing - and I know it keeps colds and flu away. Matt, who is a real fan of Alexander Solzhenitsen and read all his books, says cabbage soup was a mainstay of the Russian gulag prisons. He hates the stuff, and says I am treating him like a "zek," a prisoner in a Russian prison. Too bad, says I. It's cheap, healthy and good for you! I went to the local grocery with my earnings and bought some Rit dye. I'm a Jacquard snob, but in precarious economic times, Rit will do. Purple is purple is purple. After lunch at Hamilton Whole Foods with some customers from Staten Island who have a "camp" up here, I gassed up and came home determined for a bit of a rest, then heard the hay elevator start up over my head. Two more wagons of gorgeous, green, sweet-smelling second cut hay from the Postma brothers arrived. Matt stopped at the Brookfield General Store to ask the ladies working there if they knew of any local kids who want work stacking bales. They said kids who want to work are in short supply, even here in Northern Appalachia. Oh, well, Nurse Tanya says I have to do weight bearing exercise and 50 pound bales ought to do the trick. Matt says he will stay home and work on the motor to the far end of the barn. OH, that would help me so much. If only Lukie were here. He would be in heaven with all these bales to climb.