ICE Re-cap

What a great great weekend. I’m writing this in a very relaxed, very grateful state of mind. It’s not very often you’ll find me like this at the end of a festival. The getting ready wears me out to the point that I usually enter the weekend exhausted, so I’m on the verge of collapse once the weekend is over. Something was different about this one, and though I haven’t quite been able to succinctly define why, I do have some thoughts about the matter.

I’ve been pretty frank about how I feel about doing festivals. But I’m starting to feel a shift in my attitude. Festivals have a lot of the same familiarity that film sets do. You can be in different cities with different crews, but you make fast friends. There’s a “we’re all in this together” comraderie that you don’t get very often in life. And I happen to have chosen two jobs that have brought that into my life. That can’t be an accident.

One of the aspects of my business that has always greatly appealed to me was being a part of my community, and now that I'm out and about in the festival circuit more regularly, I'm feeling that tenfold. It is the best feeling when people come into my booth saying, "Oh, I bought your products at (insert place) and I love them!" Or, "I've heard about your products and I've been wanting to try them." Mama felt invisible for a lot of years because I was so in and out of it. And now that I've put myself and my products out there, I'm loving all of the new connections that I've made with people in the community.

I want to give a big hats off to Christy and Shannon and all of the people that went into making ICE a success. Centennial Park was a fabulous back drop for this show, and it was hot hot hot, but that didn't keep people from coming out in droves. I was really impressed with the vendor line-up. There were a lot of talented crafters and artists who I had never seen, and the ICE crew did a great job of getting them there.

This marks the end of spring festival season for me, and will be my last until the fall. I just found out that I was accepted into Grant Park Summer Shade, which will kick off the fall festival season in August! In the meantime, you can find me at some farmer's markets around town, or you can stop by the store and shop in air conditioned comfort!