Christmas in Point Roberts

Which begins with the arts and craft fair at the Community Center over this weekend.  This year, it was restricted not only to hand-made goods, but also to those made in Point Roberts.  Which might have resulted in a smaller number of tables, but if so it was not noticeable.  There was a steady crowd all day as people looked and purchased and ate.  It was especially great (as ever) to watch the younger kids come in, all wide-eyed at the normally rather mundane Community Center turned into a glitter festival. 

The Point Roberts Quilters had a table this year, which we don’t always.  It’s a kind of on and off thing with us.  It often seems as if we mainly sell things to one another, but then we ought to be, in a way, our best customers.  We, particularly, understand the goods we have on sale, the nature of their quality and their use.  And often we have seen things before the craft sale and had some time to think about wanting to have them for our own. 

Rose was the stalwart behind our presentation this year, and she is probably the very best among us with respect to understanding display and selling.  I’m the worst.  But I’ve learned to live with this strange skillessness.  When I sell something to someone, in the very act of their paying me the agreed upon price, I am thinking about asking for less.  This is some kind of reverse negotiating skill, I’m afraid.  Anyway, Rose does it well and I sat about at the sale today watching her manage the constant flow of people, some looking, and some buying, and all touching.  Our table was highly touchable, I noticed.

Getting all these things ready for the craft sale was also a strange experience.  Normally, I work pretty steadily on a particular kind of thing.  It may not be just one thing, but it’s only one kind of thing.  It might be bed quilts, or lap quilts, or wall quilts, or postcards.  But the past six weeks, I’ve been bouncing around from framed quilts to embellished containers to postcards of quilts to dolls to creature pins, etc.  Leaves one with a very fractured feeling and gives me new respect for artisans who do this kind of work more than for a few weeks every three or four years.

Anyway, if you’re in Point Roberts, or nearby, the Christmas Craft Fair continues tomorrow.  Go and enjoy and buy if you have a mind to do so.  You’ll see lots of people you know and it is a very friendly and Christmas-y atmosphere, with live music.  Even though it’s commercial, it doesn’t feel particularly commercial because there’s no hard sell going on.  And there’s a lot of very lovely looking desserts and other edibles to keep your energies up.

And, if you’re not in Point Roberts, check out the arts and craft fair near you; there's bound to be at least one.  Your friends and neighbors have stuff to show you that you may not know about.  It's likely to be worth a trip out of the house on a weekend, whether you buy anything or not.  Think of it as going to a kind of pre-museum show: after all, all those things that end up in a museum started in somebody's studio or workshop and then moved on to some other venue, some other house or shop, usually, before they ended up entombed in a museum.