Winter Market

ACK! Yesterday after school, Andrew and I jumped in the car (picked up the 'rents first) and drove down to Baltimore for the ACC's Winter Market. It was a crazy trip but we HAD to go last night because I'm in rehearsals all weekend. The show was open until 9 and we got there at about 6, so that left about 3 hours to try to soak it all in. There were rows and rows and rows of things to soak in. Giant pendulum clocks made entirely out of wood with their spindly guts all hanging out. A woman selling felted shibori scarves in every color of the rainbow that looked so delicious I could have thrown them on the floor and rolled around in them. An artist who made teeny-tiny sculptures out of things like makeup brushes and a booth filled with patchwork clothes assembled from thrifted cashmere. I bought the felt ring here which is so fabulous AND can be made even more so by taking out the felted ball in the center. Hours of OCD fun! I also got a lovely felt brooch made of layers and layers of colorful felt, the end result being an all-sorts candy kind of thing. My final purchase (it's called restraint, people) was a pewter cast of a horseshoe crab because a) horseshoe crabs are incredible if not for their appearance, than for the fact that they are prehistoric, and b) I have a few tiny molted horseshoe shells that I collected in Maine last summer and I'm going to try to mount them together with my new pewter guy. Despite the fact that the only part of our brilliant last-minute (as in Thursday night planning) road trip scheme that was lacking was how to incorporate dinner (which sadly became a slightly dry croissant from a rest stop Starbucks at 9:30 pm); it was a wonderful trip in that it filled me with lots of ideas and inspiration.

And if anyone is wondering what the theme song of the evening, it was "If I had a million dollars...I'd buy you that entirely hand-stitched quilt over there for $8,400..."