Stitches West

Wow! What a weekend of total sensory overload! Our guild chapter manned the Warm Up America booth at Stitches West. We had a great time, met lots of really nice folks and had plenty of time for classes and shopping.
The Warm Up America booth was in the first aisle amidst very good company, The Lace Knitters Guild, CGOA, TKGA, The Embroiders Guild, WUA, then the Foxyknits booth finished off the aisle.
Peter and Cay arrived around 3:30 on Thursday evening to find Tom already in the booth. He wasn't even on Thursday's schedule. We opened the boxes from WUA and found one afghan for display, some squares for assembly, brochures and some Vanna's Choice yarn to work with. We had a long table and 2 straight back chairs. We requested an easel for our poster and a couple more chairs. Thursday was a market preview for folks signed up for classes over the weekend, so it was a short evening.
Friday morning, Peter and Cay arrived with a small folding table and a laundry rack to use as a quilt rack. We hung the completed afghan on the laundry rack and used the small table for the overflow for squares and yarn. By the time Cay & Peter arrived, Tom had already scoped out the blocks and had planned a layout for assembling what we had to start. People dropped by all day picking up brochures and buying the special bags and dropping off more blocks.. We were completely sold out of the bags before noon! How great is that? When we told them to pull the bag from the fashion show, they told us we had sold more bags in the first half day than any other Stitches event had for their whole weekend. We had 50 and could probably have sold 200. Maybe next year. Tom and Andy were our folks taking turns in the booth Friday..
Kris arrived bright and early on Saturday for her turn in the booth. By noon on Saturday, we were completely out of the brochures that were provided by WUA. So, we asked for 200 copies. We must be good! We ran out of both bags and brochures less than half way thru the weekend. Audrey and Kitty relieved Kris in the booth mid-day and we continued to spread the word. Andy was back at Stitches with some friends and popped in and out during the day as did Cookie, who was taking market session classes.
Marikka had everything under control Sunday morning when Cay arrived. Tom popped in and out a couple of times during the breaks in his all day class. People were fascinated with the method of joining that Marikka was using, so she demo'd her method as she passed out literature on WUA. Audrey came back in the afternoon and stayed until the final bell!
Recap: we sold all 50 tote bags. We passed out probably 400 brochures. We assembled one complete ghan and most of a second. Very productive weekend, both for Warm Up America, and Men Who Crochet.