I have been thinking about this for a while - we are lucky in the UK as to the amount of fairs that we have, but I've also realised that it's now raised a second problem - which ones do you go to.
It is too easy to spend 200 pounds at a fair without trying - and even if I'm being careful I can quickly spend 100 pounds just on good bobbins - so trying to balance the spend against the number of fairs that I go to is interesting. What I have found very thought provoking is the talk about Newham's pillows as it made me think about the fact that I spend the same at a lace fair today, 2005 as I did back when Newhams were at fairs 15 years ago. This has made me realise that as lacemakers we are very lucky because we are buying the same products at the same price as we did 15 years ago - great for us - not so great for the suppliers. And, I'm using pillows I bought 15 years ago - so a good pillow maker is unlikely to be selling replacement pillows to us as we take care of our pillows and buy only occasionally. I've used my travel roller pillow consistantly for 15 years and it is as good as new. How often do we buy a bobbin winder? Possibly once in our lacemaking lifetime. What we have to do to keep our fantastic suppliers going is take up more lace styles (and so buy the equipment for them - yes this is an excuse to have more stuff) but seriously, we have to keep up the good work of encouraging new people to take up lacemaking. So, I'm off to save up for the next lace fair I want to go to! Regards Liz in London I'm back blogging my latest lace piece - have a look by clicking on the link or going to http://journals.aol.com/thelacebee/thelacebee To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
