Neighborhood Craft Show

Ronnie brought Kate to a neighborhood craft show. This was happening twice a year in the house the friends all called “The Manor House” which was a grand and glorious old house that even the maverick French general Lafayette would even have been proud to call his own. All of the girls in the neighboring cul de sacs and the ones even from the main streets connecting the cul de sacs one to another were crafters. They made jewelry or handbags or knit hats for babies or made cranberry cookies or tiramasu almonds or whatever. Some created aromatherapy. Some created soap.

The soap maker owned the house and set up her table in the foyer. She also was in charge of placing a freestanding sign out in front of the house that said, “Craft Show Today: 2-6” in pink. For two weeks previous, Ronnie had been agonizing over how much to charge for sets of infant hats and boas made of a feathery yarn that was very soft and strange. She settled on twenty dollars. At the craft show she sold three such sets. Then she bought a patchwork handbag, $22, and a set of semi-precious gemstone earrings made by a new neighbor, $38, and a bar of soap shaped like a rabbit and nestled in a pile of raffia, $5. Factoring in the cost of the yarn for her three hat sets, she came out even.

Isn’t this kind of ridiculous? Asked Kate. Everybody here is too rich to be worrying about selling beaded handbags.

Look, she said, it’s not so much a craft sale as a present exchange. And if more people like the presents you brought from home to exchange, then you get to pick out more presents to take home. See?

Like a barter then.

Well don’t put it all icky. Like an exchange and a competition and a show. And putting a price tag on your things let people know how much of your things they’re going to have to buy in order for you to buy any of their things.

Someone who claims to have adult ADD has brought absolutely everything in her house. She’s also brought wine glasses painted with paint. Someone with an enormous mole over most of one cheek has brought several tables of aromatherapy things including varicose vein treatment and sex enhancing lotions. That room is like a damn sideshow and a damn whorehouse, and that’s where the French doors are where Ronnie has hung her little hat sets. Which are out of season. It being spring. Miracle she sold one single set.

In the next room there’s a table in the middle with food and the truly choice exhibitors are here where people congregate and pick at the shredded bagel with sugary cream cheese, or the inevitable brie. Someone brought Ritz crackers, probably the ditz who painted wine glasses. Kate finds herself staring at the wine glass painter and asking her what she’d brought to the show. The wine glasses, she reminded her, and everything else on that table over there. Including lemon pound cake in a fancy tin, which was also laid out for samples on the food table. No one was eating it.

Everyone’s trying to start their own business. Everyone’s using their husbands’ money to make themselves web sites that have color schemes. Everyone’s got little price tags with small prices written in tiny print with a gel pen. The top sellers are the aromatherapy crap, the soap, and the hair clips. It’s a damn day in fancy urban mommy fantasy land.