It was bound to happen!

This past weekend was the Nashville Cherry Blossom Festival.  As you may know, last year this was one of the biggest shows for me, so I was extremely hyped up about.  I knew for sure as of the night before that I wasn’t going to be able to do all the super hyped up decorating that I was planning on doing, nor could I even do my typical set up.

Keeping those things in mind, I over night’ed some tent walls from Amazon, decided to take only my two tables and set up as best I could on those.  I got there, had a person help me set my tent up, put the tent walls up, and found out fast that my weights weren’t going to handle the day.  Mind you we weren’t allowed to use stakes, and I use those PVC/ Quickcrete Pinterest kind of weights.  My tent walls were just kind of acting like sails, and it wasn’t super windy yet, but it was just enough to blow my tent around some.  I made a couple of trips to get all my stuff up from the parking garage, moved my tent back to where it was originally set up, and started setting up.

Just after I got my tables set up and mostly organized, the wind really picked up, and one table got knocked over, sending all the plushies on that table to the ground.  I picked all that back up, and tied my tent to a large tent and it’s big water barrel weight (which really pushed into my tent space, there was no way for me to work around this thing) on the two back legs.  I got everything set back up again, and then it really started to rain hard and the wind was blowing very hard.

My sails/walls were really not helping, and I just held on to one corner of my tent, trying to hold it down, meanwhile there were volunteers just standing around like “whelp, guess it’s raining” and went into a tent.  Two very white men who knew more than I do (obviously, because men know better than any women) came over and tried to help, but even after I screamed at them to lower the tent, that the wind wouldn’t be an issue if they JUST LOWERED THE CORNERS, they didn’t, because why would they even listen to me?  They threw some cinder block weights on the front corners of my tent and left, basically looking at me like “you’d better be thankful.”  I did thank them, but they were kind of awful.

Thank you, white men.

I mean really, they weren’t listening to anything I said.  I really wanted to tell them to leave and I’d handle it myself but I doubt they would have listened to that either.  They really needed to be knights in shining armor coming to help me, complaining about being soaked.  Oh, I’m sorry, EVERYTHING IN MY TENT WAS SOAKED, I’m sorry you were inconvenienced for a little while.  My FEET were soaked to the bone, I’m sorry that you had a rain coat and your legs got wet.  I digress.

So once it stopped raining and I got a look at all my stuff, everything was wet.  I mean some more wet than others, but obviously all wet.  I decided it was time to go home, because I’m not about to sell my stuff when it’s not looking it’s very best.  I slowly started packing up, loaded everything back into my car and drove back home.

I got home and I washed all my quilts and plushies because I didn’t them to potentially mold, and they came through just fine.

I was pretty sad that the day didn’t turn out like I’d wanted.  I think if I would have waited to set up until I knew the weather had blown through I could have stayed, because the event continued after I left.  I was thankful that those stupid white guys helped keep my tent down, I just wish they would have listened to me.  I don’t like asking for help, so when someone forces help on me, if you’re not listening to me, it’s best you just don’t come over here trying to help me.

However disappointing that event was, I am glad that I have a whole lot of stuff already ready for my next event, which is on May 5th!  It’s way too early to try to predict the weather for now, but I’m just really hoping it’s a nicer day.  I’m also going to see what I can do about making some heavier weights.  Here’s hoping I can bust out my whole display in full force!

Until next time, happy sewing!