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Not even a lot of rain, Tori! You and Amanda and Trish were indomitable – the iron women!
We left home loaded with old sewing machines, some of them in boxes, plus bags of morsbags, kits, thread, labels, a gazebo, chairs and a small table. We even managed to fit in a few clothes!
The photo above was taken before the last few chairs were added.
We got to Ragley Hall in plenty of time on the day before the show opened and helped Rosie and Grumpy put up their new gazebo (a posh one with three walls), then started on ours – which wasn’t new and didn’t have walls, but this was its first outing as the event it was bought for had been abandoned due to gales a couple of years ago.
Thursday night / Friday morning were wet and windy and we arrived back to a couple of damp gazebos, but fortunately we had expected that and had packed everything under the tables to keep the rain off. Before we left the site on Thursday Frank had tied the tables, sewing machines and gazebos all together with handy bits of rope we had in the boot of the car (do you think he was a boy scout?) so it was all still there in spite of the strong winds. The site security had even hung a large piece of sacking over the front of the gazebo that had walls, so it was relatively snug
Wendy and Mike were there before us, so we were set up in time for the punters to arrive and spent the morning doing our stuff – sewing bags on the hand cranks and handing out ready-made bags, talking to people about plastic bags and giving kits to people who could sew and didn’t want to wait, as the queue grew quite quickly.
This young man was queuing and decided to entertain us all – juggling. We didn’t have any balls, but we did have bowls – much harder to juggle with!
The weather deteriorated during the afternoon and we had several monsoon-like showers. That was when we discovered that Rosie and Grumpy’s gazebo wasn’t waterproof, and our gazebo REALLY NEEDED walls! Would you rather be rained on all over by fine drizzle or have lashing rain coming in from the side? Neither option gives you a dry environment. We discovered that wet sewing machines don’t like sewing wet kits with wet thread, and Trisha and Tori were incredibly stoical when having rain pouring off the roof of the gazebos, onto their heads and down their backs. The showers were short and sharp with lovely warm sunny intervals between them – are we sure it wasn’t April?
We took some things back to our hotels to dry them out. The lovely ladies with the converted caravan beside us – the Pampervan – let us use their waterproof polypropylene gazebo to store the sewing machines in overnight and Frank used guy ropes to hold our gazebos down as before.
Saturday’s weather was reasonable – probably because Grumpy went out to B&Q and bought a couple of tarpaulins to sling over the roof of the leaking gazebo plus some rope to tie them down, and we managed to dry out some of the kits and bags that had got wet on Friday. Sorry I have no photos of that day, but it went well – we had help from Carol and Jacqui from Macs Bags, as well as Sue from Mrs So Bags.
Sunday was Patrick Grant Day! I spotted him being driven round the site on a quad bike before the show opened – we were right opposite the theatre where talks etc went on all day. I expect he was getting the guided tour.
During the morning Patrick dropped in and completed a partly-made bag that Tracy had ready.
Also at the Fair that day was Bryony whose bag came third in the competition – here she is, carrying it –
Later that afternoon Tracy presented her winning bag to Patrick in the theatre –
(Sorry I missed the actual presentation! 🙁 )
Sincere thanks go to Sarah who saved my life every afternoon with a welcome cup of tea and a bun or biscuit! You don’t half get dehydrated talking all day long!
Our “customers” made 162 bags over the three days of the Handmade Fair – not bad for a load of old handcranks! Also, about 500 morsbags were given out, and approximately 300 kits, ironed and ready to sew.
Thanks for starting this thread Tori! I will post a few photos when we unpack the car. It’s been raining since we got home so we’ve delayed getting everything out til we can do it in the dry. Those poor old machines have had enough of a wetting!
Congratulations Scallywagbags! What a lovely bag, and what a difficult decision when voting! I’m sure Patrick will enjoy using your bag.
Sorry Anne-Marie, I only just saw your post. You’re welcome! I find the stats interesting, and it’s encouraging to see such long lists of other pods, also making bags each month.
Do you have a plan for how you’re going to give your bags away? I find it quite exciting to bag people in the street, but there are lots of ways of giving them away.
You’re welcome Agwen. Looking forward to seeing you again in May!
You’re welcome Offcuts! I WAS going to say they come round quickly because February IS short – then realised that the latest month with stats is March – and that’s not short at all!! Derr! 🙄
Very pretty Offcuts! 😆
Hi Cathapple! I’m sorry you’re having problems. Could it be an ipad thing? I use a laptop and when I click on “pods” on the menu bar under the stats a map loads with a pin for each pod. Under the map on the right there’s a box to “Search pods” which finds all pods containing whatever you type in the search box in their name or location.
Hope this helps!We’re back from our hols, I’ve de-spammed the forum (sorry about that…) and had a look at the stats for the last day and a half of February.
I hope you’ll be interested to learn that 9 pods added another 214 bags, bringing the total for February up to 3240, and one more pod should be added to the Roll of Merit for that month – congratulations HopStitching!
Do you know, Offcuts, I think it’s “Darting Frog”!
Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, Dartfrog 🙂Wow, that’s fabulous Cathapple! Congratulations to you and all the members of Bude Baggers! I see lots of additions to the global tally from you when I collect the stats for my monthly round-up of active pods and numbers. Bude Baggers is often the first pod to add bags each month, and then follows up regularly with more.
Great job! 😀
💙👏💙👏💙Well, actually, not quite Offcuts. Today we’re on 225280 bags made and a quarter of a million is 250000 so there are 24720 to go, and that may take some time… like about a year.
We’ll be ready then! 😀
Thank you for posting this Offcuts! Have a wonderful Leicester teaparty! Is it going to be at Brock’s Hill?
I have lots of happy morsbags moments. I loved doing the Festival of Quilts (several times)
and the Knitting and Stitching shows and other craft shows.
I had a superb time at the garden party at Clarence House – didn’t meet Prince Charles, but enjoyed a squint at his gardens
and the exhibit from Beth Chatto’s garden.
That’s great Kathy! 😀 I’m sure they were well received. I had a few bags to give away but didn’t as it was raining. It’s even worse today – I will rehome them when it stops.