A Beginning

The selling of the raffle tickets for the quilts was something of a big deal for me.  I'm moderately accustomed to selling my own work (quilts, various fabric things), but it's always stressful: I do not have the soul of an entrepreneur or the outward-oriented nature of a good sales person.  One thing about selling goods in Point Roberts, though, is that I often know the people I am selling to, even if only casually.

My life-time experience with retail sales is decidedly limited, but largely not so pleasant.  People can be rude, short-tempered, strangely critical and thoughtless when they are buying things.  The Saturday experience, however, was absolutely lovely: people were kind, pleasant, cheerful.  They spoke admiringly of the three quilts that we had on display and were generally enthusiastic about buying tickets.

It was a somewhat small turnout for the book sale/bake sale/quilt raffle ticket event, probably because the weather had turned brutally cold (for here: high 20's, F.).  Nevertheless, the people who did come, man, woman and child, all bought lots of books and a really large quantity of baked goods.  I talked to one lady, urging her to buy a German chocolate cake which looked very appealing.  She said it was her husband's birthday and that's his favorite kind of cake, but he was away right now.  I suggested she buy it anyway and invite the neighbors in to share.  'You'd be one of the neighbors,' she laughed, at which point I realized I had failed to recognize one of my across the street neighbors, all dressed up in winter coat and hat.

I spent the slow time knitting a long red and white piece, about 4 inches across.  A little girl, maybe 6 or 7, asked me what I was knitting?  'A scarf for the stop sign at the end of my street,' I said.  'Why?' she countered.  'Because it's cold,' I said.  'Oh,' she said.  And then she bought one ticket on the 'I Spy' quilt and went on her way.

I'm thinking that, given the number of tickets we sold, if we had 3,000 more days like this, the quilt group would be able single-handedly to fund the $500,000 library renovation.  Others' help in fund-raising would probably be a good idea, though.  I don't know that I've got 3,000 sales days in me.

If you want to buy tickets on the quilts, you can do so until the end of December at The Blue Heron on Gulf Road.