The Gathering and St. Distaff Day
May has been a pretty busy month so far as Francine (of Fancy That – Creations by Francine) and I have already attended two events as vendors.
The first event was The Gathering in Port Hope, Ontario on Saturday, May 3rd. This is one of our favourite event to attend and we look forward to spending time in Port Hope the day before. We headed to Port Hope on the Friday and we stayed at the Summerhill B&B again as we had enjoyed our stay there last year. We arrived about mid-afternoon and after we had the tea and scones (it comes with the room), we wandered around the downtown area and did a little bit of shopping before having dinner at the Thai restaurant we liked. After a lovely breakfast, we headed to the Recreation Centre to setup before the show. The Gathering is one of the best organized event that we attend and there are so many volunteers available to help the vendors unload/load that we only need to make a couple of trips to the car. There are lots of chairs set up in the middle of the gym, so people can sit and knit or spin and chat, and of course, do some shopping. This year, the attendance at The Gathering seemed to have increased by quite a bit and we were busy at our booth all day. This turned out to be our most successful event so far. We had a great time that day and we are already looking to attending The Gathering again next year.
I also recieved a very pleasant surprise that day. My SIL(ex actually, but we have remained friends), Tanya, plotted with a couple of my friends so that I would be surprised when she showed up at The Gathering to see me. I haven’t seen Tanya in person for a few years, but she has given my birthday present to my friends, Natalie and Debbie at the Sheeps Ahoy booth during the Knitters’ Frolic to deliver to me for the last couple of years. This year, she emailed me to say that she had given the gift to Natalie and Debbie again but she hadn’t. 
It turned out that she had instead asked them to go along with the pretense so I wouldn’t suspect that she was planning to attend The Gathering the following weekend. Francine said that I had a stunned look on my face when I first saw Tanya talking to her before I raced out from behind our table to give Tanya a hug. Here is the picture of Tanya and me with her dog, Data taken later that afternoon just outside the gym. You can see how happy we were to see each other again. Tanya also brought my birthday present with her that day and it was this beautiful skein of Madelinetosh sock yarn in the Wilted Flowers colourway and a tape measure with a magnet on the back.
The second event was St. Distaff Day yesterday, (Saturday, May 24th) at Williamstown, Ontario hosted by the Twistle Guild of Glengarry. We had a great time despite the fact that we had to be on the road before 6 am. 
The attendees shopped before and after the workshops and during the lunch break. While the workshops were ongoing, us vendors got some rare down-time and a chance to socialize with each other which we thoroughly enjoyed. We were well taken care of as they invited the vendors to eat lunch first before the morning workshops ended so that we got the chance to sit down and enjoy our lunch without being rushed. The guild tried something a little different this time in that usually this event is only open to the registered attendees of the workshops, but for the first time it was opened up to the public during the lunch break and from 3 – 4 pm. Hopefully this allowed some more people to attend and shop from the vendors. This was another well run event and we are very glad that we were invited to be a vendor at it. One of my favorite things about this event was the cute tartan name tags that were created for everyone. The pictures below are of our table setup for St. Distaff Day. This was another successful event for us and we even made some new contacts at it.
