Slightly Off Center

At this point, Holiday Market is a blur. We still need to go down Tuesday to dismantle our booth, but the pots are home and stowed in the shed, along with twenty-two (!) empty boxes. To say it was a good year is perhaps an understatement. It's our second-best ever, after 2021.

What few things I do remember all seem to involve kids.

• The little boy who was sure, no matter how hard his parents tried to convince him otherwise, that what Grandma really wanted was the $65 panda serving bowl, not the $48 owl baker they favored. They finally took a picture to show Grandma, but didn't take my hint that they should get the $24 panda dessert/sandwich plate for him.

• Brother and sister, about eight and ten years old, who wanted to buy mom--there with them--a mug for Christmas. They chose the size, she paid, then they chased her out of the booth. Conferred, looked suspiciously over their shoulders at Mom, perusing Cortney's pendants across the aisle, then chose her a butterfly mug, which I quickly wrapped for them.

• A little girl with stuffed lamby and tiny wolf (named "Ruff!"), who was delighted to see I had both animals on my pots, lamb in the toddler bowls and wolf on plates.

• And lastly, the little girl with a brand new tiny needle felt doggie, who responded to my bear's waving by 1. Waving dog's paw back, 2. Wagging its tail, and 3. Scratching behind its ears. Clearly one of our people.

Set-up Thursday was a rushed affair, because of the weather prediction. I came down just before noon to find they'd opened early, got everything in and set, then scampered up to Trinity Methodist at 1 pm to set up the Eagan Warming Shelter. I've been volunteering on set-up crew for several years now, even did a shift lead spot this fall when Larry, our regular guy, wasn't available. Between the two of us, we knocked out the set-up in about an hour, came out to find the beginnings of freezing rain on my windows. It was worse at home, ramp to the studio well-iced. Fortunately, I have a bag of de-icer that came from Wisconsin in the trunk of Denise's car when we got married. A couple of applications made the surface safe, and allowed me to easily scrape the ice off Friday morning.

There was a good quarter inch of ice over everything else, but the van was clear, under the carport, and River Road was well-sanded, so we skated out our driveway, but didn't have any trouble the rest of the day, save for a slick patch in the left-turn lane from Chambers onto 13th. A lot of vendors trickled in late, customers later, but they did some serious shopping--we had a surge around 2:45 to 3:30--and we did over two thousand in the last two days. Including a pie plate to Larry, who decided to thank me for all my help with a hummingbird plate for his wife's Christmas present.