Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Selling Scarves at at the Holiday Craft Fair

It all started when my favorite yarn shop went out of business. Well, it actually started before that, but this last round of knitting addiction began with the bags of yarn I brought home from BB's Knits in July. I had been knitting scarves for gifts and to wear for a long time. It's a much more creative and rewarding project for me than sweaters or afghans - you submit to the lure of some luxury yarn or luscious color, buy a few skeins, pick out a design you love, and start the project. It will be done in a short time and you can wear it or give it as a gift. Instant gratification! Longer projects are too boring and expensive.

When BB's marked down all the yarns I'd been lusting after, I went a little nuts. I bought two shopping bags full of merino and cashmere, silk ribbon, multi-stranded yarn.....you name it, I probably had some. I began to create wonderful scarves in patterns I loved, but by Fall, I realized that I had more than 30 scarves. Too many to wear, too many to give away. They were overflowing the bags I used to store them. I began to think about selling them.

When I carried them with me to Portland in October to sell them to some stores which sell handmade clothing, I found out that I was too late. They had already purchased everything they were planning to sell for the season. If I still wanted to sell some of my designs next year, I should talk to the proprietresses again in March or April.

A friend who sells collectibles at swap meets and vintage fairs, offered to let me display my inventory at some of the Fall shows for which she was registered. So I have been spreading out my handknits among wooden bowls and crystal candlesticks for the last few weekends. People loved my stuff, picked it up, tryed it on, fingered it lovingly. But they were not buyers. They were looking for bargains, for household chochkes and willing to spend two to five dollars for their prizes. Handmade cashmere neckware was not on their shopping list, nor was a $150 price tag. It was fun to hang out and show off my wares, and helping my friend pack up all her fragile merchandise cemented a friendship. But it didn't move any of my inventory.

She suggested the Holiday Craft Fair that was an annual event in the tiny town just south of Santa Barbara. People come looking for gifts and beautiful things, she suggested, and that was the customer base I was looking for. So I signed up, offering to share a space with another friend of hers - a sculptor of whimsical constructions of stainless steel serveware. It did sound like a good idea, but as it turns out, my scarves got less attention from the holiday craft shoppers than the collectibles customers. The only scarf I sold was to a friend, who wouldn't let me give it to her as a gift. So all my inventory came home with me again.

Everyone I know will be getting a scarf from me for Christmas. I guess I'll have to start wearing them, too, because there's still more yarn in those bags. I can't stop knitting now, I am just hitting my stride. I'll probably have created enough new inventory to show up at those Portland boutiques in the Spring. If you are in need of warm neckware, give me a call.

Monday, November 12, 2007

Reclaiming the Past

Driving down the Pacific Coast Highway to First Lutheran Church in Venice was like driving back into my past. This was my old church. This was my parent's church. So much of my own faith formation is centered in that community, that when I found out that they were installing their new pastor, I wanted to be there to celebrate with them. The pastor we all loved left for another postition just before my father died nearly three years ago.

It was a dark day, threatening rain the whole way down the coast. How beautiful. The sea so dark, the highway empty. The old neighborhood was familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. Lincoln Boulevard has become so seedy, and the traffic lights longer than I remembered. I couldn't remember where the bank was, so I just kept driving toward the shopping center nearest my old apartment. Ah, yes, there was a Bank of America in that shopping center where I used to get my nails done. The center looked so different and I hardly recognized the bank. There were big stores that I don't remember and the bank all frilled up to look like it dropped out of Art Deco Paris.

The church looked beautiful, and friends were gratifyingly glad to see me. No one knew I was coming, so there were lots of widened eyes and huge hugs. These are the people who were there at the very beginning of my journey to a pastoral vocation. We sang together, planned worship together, ran a school, welcomed children and their parents, prayed each other through tragedies and triumphs. These are the people who visited my mother faithfully for five months when she lay in hospital bed on a respirator, unable to move or talk. They brought food for my father for months after my mother's hospitalization, and the men in the congregation visited my Dad every week during the year and a half he was alone after Mom died. It was good to be surrounded by them again, to feel part of the Body of Christ in that place. I gasped as the processional cross that my Dad carved for them moved down the aisle at the head of a procession of pastors and singers.

The story of their three-year search for a pastor was inspiring. These days I am frustrated and close to despair. I have done everything I know to find a call. And everything I have done seems to be useless. Every avenue seems blocked, and I am suddenly unsure of my next move. I want to wait with patience, to be open to the Spirit's work, but instead I am agitated, anxious, crabby and grieving. The Venice congregation looked at 26 resume's before they met this new pastor. Some of them told me that the first two pastors they called were not pastors everyone was sure of, but that they seemed overall to be a good fit, so a call was issued. But those pastors chose not to come. This pastor was one that everyone agreed on. And he wanted them. He told them that it was a good thing that they hadn't called him at the beginning of their search, because he would not have been a good fit then, and would likely have declined the call as well. This is an encouraging story. And just being with them all as they celebrated made me happy. Much like the love-fest of a wedding, I was swept up into their joy, as if he were my new pastor, too.

So many people told me how much they missed my parents. The older people said they had missed my Dad during the discussions of procedure could have been helped by his understanding of the past and his strong voice against change simply for the new. My mother had been such a model for young women who had no church experience growing up and were now raising families in the church. They remember her dedication and energy with such easy fondness. I have been missing my parents especially in this season of All Saints, and it felt good to be sad about their loss at the same time that I experienced their community going forward with Spirit into the future. All that love is still there, gathered inside those walls, ready to be touched, to be taken home, to be held in my heart, to be shared as I look into my own future.

Friday, November 09, 2007

Red Silk Pajamas

It's time for the Half-Yearly Sale at Nordstrom's, a time to stock up on bras at half-price and other necessities. But then, for someone for whom shopping is a healing event, walking into a store with all the newest goodies spread out all around you.....well, I save up for this. It's one of the highlights of my year. The store opens at 7:00 am, but I wasn't among the first to walk in the store this year, as I have been in the past. But it was before 9:00 when I arrived with my Nordstrom's card in hand, ready for those double points. I shopped all morning, looking for inspiration. It's fun to find a few colorful pieces that change the way your current wardobe looks. I found a pair of pumpkin-colored cashmere gloves, and I was off - the coral cashmere scarf for the neckline of a jacket or around the shoulders, several pairs of winter socks with mixtures of red, pink, coral and aqua to pull all my colors together. Then there was the pink cashmere sweater on the top floor. It wastough to choose between the T-Neck and the V-Neck, but it had to be pink, my new favorite color, and with the coral scarf -- Wow! Then to the Lingerie Department for those half-price bras and other practicalities.

When I came home with one big bag full of goodies, Marti wanted to see everything. It was fun to pull out all my treasures and spread them across the table where she was eating a late breakfast. She oooh'd and ahhh'd appropriately over everything, helping me justify each purchase's practicality, and agreeing with how a coral cashmere wrap would spark my wardrobe and that $65 for a cashmere sweater was, indeed, too good a price to pass up. But when I pulled the red silk pajamas out of the bag, her mouth fell open and her eyes went wide. "Red silk pajamas? Did you have some specific event in mind?" She began to laugh. I told her that I was thinking of them as practical for winter travel - warm as flannel, but smaller to pack. They were a really good price, too, under $100 dollars. But of course, the truth is that I just wanted them because they were beautiful. They will be practical if Richard and Dianne and I do take that trip to New York for Christmas that we've been talking about. They will be warmer and take less suitcase space for winter travel to Oregon and Berkeley events I am planning in January. And.....they are wonderful to slip into at the end of the day, like some secret that is all mine. Ummmmm.

Friday, November 02, 2007

Going Girlie

It might have been the pink velvet shirt at J Jill that did it, but I suspect I was already on the way to going Girlie by the time I saw it. In any case, although the shirt came in gray or burgundy, much more practical colors, I chose the pink one. And then I also bought the cream silk charmeuse shirt with the pintucks and crocheted trim on the front and the silky bow tied at the v-neck. What is happening to me?

Several years ago on a trip to Mexico City, I was stirred deeply by meeting women with no resources except each other. They were certainly poor, but the community they created to care for each other and their children was an inspiration. I came home feeling that I was the poor one, isolated and without important resources. It was an opportunity to re-examine my priorities, my image of myself in the world, and how I wanted to be seen. I gave up wearing makeup - partly to take away the financial pressure of worrying about having the right stuff and partly to become more honest about making my face be a reflection of my inner self. I also threw away my hair dryer, opting to let the curls I had been fighting all my life be part of my honest presentation of myself to the world. I loved being relieved of the financial burden of investing in what felt like a false presentation, and I became comfortable letting my wrinkles and spots tell the story of where I had been in life. My clothes bdcame more practical, washable rather than needing the dry cleaner. I think I was in recovery from the sales rep/sales manager presentation of my pre-seminary days. My "working wardrobe" was way overdressed for grad school and I found myself in jeans and T-shirts most often.

Things began to change when I left school and began to worry about interview clothes. Suddenly I had some money to invest in "good" clothes that would work for a Lutheran pastor and how I looked to a group of professionals became more important. It is like some self from my past began to emerge and I looked at my un-made up face as "unpolished" and my jeans and t-shirts as "unprofessional." I began to long to look a little different.

I guess the first change was the haircut - shorter, perkier, requiring a hair dryer to get the right effect. It has caused much comment among friends, they like it and tell me that it makes me look younger. It makes me feel good, too. Then I went shopping for make-up. It has been so long that I've almost forgotten what I used to wear. It seems strange that after all those years of something that was daily habit, you could just forget in two or three years what all that stuff was. So I went to the Aveda store for a makeover. Wow. Now there's foundation and powder and brow color and eyeshadow and.....well, you know. It has been weird. It takes so long to do it for very little effect,and then I have had to get comfortable with stuff on my face all day. I am getting better at it, and learning to appreciate the subtle difference in the way it does make me look more "polished."

A new man friend said, "I don't know what you've done exactly, but your hair looks fabulous and you look 10 years younger." Hmmmm. Oh, yes, and about the man friend. I have two new-ish men friends. Not anything more than friends, but they are really guys. It is so different than my woman friends, and how I dress and see myself with them is different, too, I think. Maybe men friends is the catalyst for the new Girlie me, as if I am reclaiming some earlier manifestation of something and bringing up into my MDiv-Lutheran-Pastor-In-Waiting persona. I'm still spending most days in jeans and t-shirts without makeup, but then, there are those days with the make-up, the red lipstick and that pink velvet shirt. Welcome back, Girlie.