Wee Green Market and the Pink Sweater!

I had a spot of luck on Friday - I found 10 tweed hearts that I had made ages ago in a corner of the workroom. I had thrown them aside after a strop. When I was working on them I couldn't get them right but now several weeks later and a little calmer I did a little unpicking, some re-sewing and some trimming, filled them up and they were good to go! Some new stock for the craft fair! I always looking for ideas of ways to display stuff at craft fairs and I wandered into one of the local charity shops in search of inspiration.....and I found some. I bought a mug tree and a wooden expanding wine rack for a pound each. I used the mug tree to display the hearts....

.....and the wine rack was used to hold up the felt covered cork board displaying my corsages (last time it was leant on a pile of cushions - didn't look too good!) I think I will get some more mug trees or something tree like for the mini-stockings. It is always a problem finding things to give the stall interest and get different heights etc without having to tote shed loads of stuff around - stuff like this seems to work quite well and it's cheap!
Saturdays' Wee Green Market was good fun - I managed to sell a few things but best of all I had the opportunity to catch up with fellow crafters Jane, Lynne, Karon and blogless Isobel and Rebecca (Rebecca is also a colleague of mine from the BBC as is Isobels' sister Mairi who was there too) so all in all a great deal of chatting was done! I managed to fit a little shopping in - essential shopping, I did restrain myself which was difficult as there were so many good things there.
I got a birthday card for my sister and a card for my friends FJ and Scott who have recently had a baby girl from Bella Bheag (Isobel) and a gorgeous sheep for baby Poppy from My Baboo (Lynne). The sheep is so cute it will be hard to part with! I can post pictures as I am pretty sure that neither my sister or baby Poppy read my blog!

Also in attendance was the lovely lady with the pink jumper who was manning a stall of locally produced organic veg grown by one of the youngest growers in the village - she looked about 9 but I am not good with kids ages! I can now relate the story of the pink jumper and how it came to be in my possession.
A while ago I mentioned in a post that it is really hard to find pretty coloured jumpers for felting in charity shops. A few weeks later, out of the blue, I received an email from a lady called Daye (who had seen my stall at Killearn and subsequently read my blog) relating the story of her favourite pink jumper - I hope she won't mind me relating it to you (taken from the email)........

The Story of My Pink Sweater;

In days gone by when I was nearer your age and brimming with energy and creative enthusiasm, a friend and I created a company called SOURCE. Scotland's wonderful knitwear industry was suffering the effects of economic global changes particularily from the Far East on which they had put too much reliance.
We came in like scavengers, picking up units of high quality knitwear on a sale or return basis. We built good relationships with many companies and provided a small cash flow relief for them.
We worked the "top end" of the market, we were dealing with designer cashmere made for top fashion houses such as Ralph Lauren, Joseph, and many others. We even designed and produced our own line using one of the companies.
Our outlets were equally "top end", beautiful country house venues throughout Scotland in which we created a mix of social gathering with shopping frenzy. We built up an enormous customer base. It was a "win win" situation short term, although clearly not sustainable long term as proved to be the case.
The companies from whom we made the most profit did not survive. The saddest of which was Bryants at Tillycoultrie. The quality of their knitwear was outstanding. The skills and dedication of their workforce deserved' but was not given recognition nationally.
My heart went out of it when I saw these talented people made redundent.
The pink Joseph sweater came from a small company which worked out of Jedburgh. Their clientele were very niche market. There were only four of these Joseph tunic sweaters, two tan, 2 pink. The pinks and one tan were snapped up at the first sale and I bought the second tan for my mother and have inherited it.
I really coveted the pink sweaters but business was business in those days.
One day, many years later, trawling through my local Oxfam shop, as one does!
Amongst the bland, crammed abandoned gear, a small flash of stunning pink caught my eye, triggering memories, recognition and disbelief all at once.
Joy of joy, there it was, the pink sweater!
The pink leapt out from its drab neighbours as if screaming " get me out of here"!
I grabbed it, rushed to the counter, paid for it and took it home with a sense of triumphal joy!
Together, my sweater and me, have had years of happy joyful escapades and experiences since.
My sweater has been a support, it has lifted my spirits, and spread joy.
And now I am the instrument of its death as a sweater.

You could be the right person to give new life to my sweater and help to spread much of its pleasure to others.
Phone me or email if you would like to meet my sweater.
Kind regards,
Daye.

What a great story! Of course I knew I had to meet the sweater (and Daye) in person and so a couple of emails later I was visiting her at her home (she runs a livery stables among other things!) drinking coffee and eating cake. The sweater is indeed a gorgeous shade of pink.........

........ perfect for cupcakes among other things. I knew that I wanted to make Daye a cupcake so she could at least have a little reminder of her sweater and I also had some birthdays coming up so I mixed the pink with a cream cashmere cardy given to me by my friend Lynn (she has a huge collection of cashmere that has recently been attacked by moths hence I now have alot of felted cashmere!) and made these four cupcakes.

One went to Daye and one to Lynn as a birthday gift (very apt as she is a costume designer) and one went to Caireen - hopefully she will soon have time to make use of it! It is incidents like that make blogging so worthwhile!
Thank you Daye! Just one sleeve of your sweater has indeed bought joy to several people already and hopefully the rest of it will bring joy to many more!

Comments

[monica]

what a fab story!!

that's why I love blogging. You never know what goodness and kindness is coming your way...

Brilliant.

Love your stall too.

[Billy Hunter]

Like your story as I know the Scottish knitwear industry well - Bryants etc. Give us more knitting stories. I'll put a link on www.knittingindustry shortly.

Thanks
Billy Hunter

[Frances]

That's a lovely story and lovely cupcakes too.

[Diana]

What a wonderful tale....and great that the pink jumper is finding a new life as cupcakes (and more!). x

[caireen]

The fairycake has been sitting on my desk at home waiting to become a pincushion, and then became a rather fetching paperweight - highlighting boring things I have to do and making them jolly by sitting on them. I think I like it like that as it brightens up my desk! x

[ginny]

i remember you mentioning the pink sweater in an earlier post and it all sounded very curious...what a fabulous story.. love it!
hope the fair was good for you... the corsages look great all displayed on the board together.
x

[snapdragon]

Daye is lovely isn't she? As soon as you wrote about the pink sweater at Killearn I knew it would have been Daye!
J
x