domestic dilettante, humorless feminist shrew

Over the weekend, Nick, Maura and I piled into the car and headed up to Cleveland to go to the Bazaar Bizarre.

Well, all right–Nick and I went, and Maura went and hung out with my mother and two of my aunts, who were (conveniently) also in the area that day. We caravanned up with our friends Kelli and Noel, and then spent a few hours wandering around the bazaar. I was impressed at how much traffic they had–and apparently, this is the smaller of the two Cleveland-area bazaars this year.

We’re sort of thinking that we might get a booth next year. I have this gocco press that I should be getting more–or, you know, any–use out of, and sometimes having a very obvious goal motivates me in a way that no intangible objective can. Also, surprisingly to me, there was no one there selling yarn or roving. I realize that it’s not a craft supply fair, but it seems to me like it’d be the perfect venue for that sort of thing–you’re surrounded by people who are clearly interested in craft; surely some of them craft themselves. Since I have multiple pounds of quite nice roving that’s just waiting for someone to dye it, I might try to do something with that, too. Stay tuned for more exciting developments regarding things that I may or may not do at a future date!

Yeah, quality content here today.

I’d actually planned on writing something (or, okay, posting a bunch of pictures) about Cleveland’s tree-lighting, which we went to after the bazaar, but instead I’ve found myself sick–again–and not feeling up to even the effort of pushing my “resize for blog” action over and over. So instead, I’ll direct you to people from whom we bought awesome stuff over the weekend.

First and foremost, Get Felt Up is totally awesome. Here’s the thing: secretly, I don’t really like felt. I don’t like felting things I knit, I don’t really like working with felt, and I don’t usually like the look of things made with felt, because it reminds me of third-grade crafts with paste in pots and sticky fingers and messy children and gross. So when I tell you that I dropped $20 on a wallet from this guy, what I’m actually saying is that this is awesome. I bought a wallet, and then we liked it so much that Nick went back and got himself a wallet before we left. That’s how awesome it is: two wallets of awesome. Mine looks a lot like this, only the greens are more muted. I love it.

Nick, because he loves me, bought me a scarf from Garbella–green with silver screen-printed cogs on it. It’s fantastic, and I love it. It’s pleasingly long, eight feet instead of the more common but much more annoying six, and it looks fabulous. That said, if you’re interested in one of her shirts, they looked to me like they ran a lot more than a little small. A men’s large will usually fit me okay, but having looked at the shirts in person, I don’t think that an XL would’ve fit me–it would’ve needed to be more like XXL. Don’t get me wrong, the shirts looked great, but unless you’re a beanpole, you might want to ask for measurements.

We bought a couple of notepads from Candra Squire. I wish that I’d thought this purchase through a bit better first, as I really don’t like the construction of the pads–it’s difficult to tear sheets off without shredding the pad, but it’s equally difficult to flip them up or over. A bit of padding compound would have gone a long way on these. Her cards, however, were hilariously awesome. I love bitchy greeting cards.

Finally, I bought a dyed silk scarf and a copy of AlterNation from KnitGrrl. She also had very pretty felt scarves, but I couldn’t get past how ungodly hot they’d be. If you’re always cold, though, that’d be the way to go.

Anyhow, all of those people are lovely people to whom you should consider giving money.

I’m hoping that tomorrow I’ll have some time to sit down and resize the photos from Public Square. I thought the lights were less impressive this year than they’ve been previously, but seeing the Terminal Tower and Old Stone Church all lit up is always pretty amazing.