Crafting: a Labor of Love

Two excellent questions await my response, but I proved too lazy to answer them this weekend. So, for now, I'll instead regale you with Tales of a Very Short Road Trip.

My friend Tina and I decided to take a mini (or maybe micro) road trip on Labor Day to a nearby town known for its stately Victorian homes and quaint downtown. One of the downtown attractions is a refurbished warehouse, partitioned into booths that display the wares of local craftspeople. In fact, not just craftspeople...this place bills itself as "yesterday's architecture, today's artisans."

Well, I'll leave it to you to determine whether the offerings qualify as artisanal.

Yes, indeed, that's a hand-made Elvis knick-knack box.

Tina, looking very stylish in this lovely hair bow.

You know, Tina, Dawn, and I are planning a trip to Rome. Maybe the chic rolling bag, above, will come in handy. Or this special purse, as Tina demonstrates with her cab-hailing pose:

But, then, these are nice, right? Dignified pictures of someone's great grandparents, perhaps?

Nope. Wrong. When you shift your head from side to side, Maw-maw and Paw-paw morph into this freak show:


After hamming it up throughout the store, snapping pictures and giggling like little girls, we were somewhat chagrined to find this sign tucked away amidst the Barbie doll fairies:


Yikes. At first I brushed it off, figuring that this sign was just a ruse to put off would-be shoplifters, but then I noticed a huge monitor that was, in fact, being monitored by a salesperson in the front of the store. Fortunately, because the views from about 12 cameras appeared on one television screen, no one picture was big enough to do justice to our antics.

And, finally, on the way back to Durham, we stopped at a grocery store, where I was sorely tempted to purchase this magazine:

I mean, I've been fed up with squirrels digging up my impatiens, so maybe this would be the perfect subscription! My birthday's coming up in November, hint hint.