I'm finding that "craft" shows in my neck of the woods are fairly miserable things--in part, probably, because many let buy&sell retailers in with those of us who make all our own product. It doesn't take much talent to order things from Oriental Trader, y'know.

And the kind of people attracted to shows like that, who happily toss their money at rhinestone-encrusted, mixed-metal, glue-and-plastic low-quality wares . . .


Three customers stand out from this weekend, amongst the people who wanted to try all my earrings on (Eew eew eew no!), and the idiots who tried to tell me my belts are really necklaces (yeah, for those of you with 40" necks), and the bastard children picking things up and literally throwing them on the floor, and the worthless parents who stood by and watched their child grab & twist handfuls of my hair sticks' dangles.

The first really memorable one was a woman who came up, put a finger on my sign for maille bracelets, and said, "Malley?"

"No," I said. "Maille." Sounds like "male." Anyone who's ever seen the stuff, or gone to a ren faire, or even just paid attention in history class knows this.

"Are you Malley?"

. . .

"Maille," I said, in case she'd missed it.

"Malley," she said, and poked the sign again.

"No. Maille. Like chainmaille." I poked a different sign, since that seemed to be the language she was speaking.

"Is your name Malley?"

Apparently not.

"It's not malley. It's maille. Chainmaille."

Blank stare.

"Like knights wore. You know--middle ages?"

Blank stare.

I tried again. "Ren faires?"

Even more blank stare.

"You saw Lord of the Rings?"

She brightened. "Oh! Okay, I get it now."

"Okay," I said, and went to roll into the sales pitch--idiot or not, her money'd still feed me--but before I could get going, she started talking again.

"So you're not Malley?"


I miss convention crowd kids. They understand what you're doing if/when you feel the need to headdesk yourself into a coma.


Then, the next day, Maille turned up. With her mom. I looked up from the anklet I was making to find a tween girl & her mother in front of the table, poking my sign again. Thinking nothing of it, I started talking to them--and got a bit of deja vu when the woman asked, "Are you Malley?"

Actually, it wasn't like deja vu. It was more like waking up from a nightmare, only to realize you're still in the nightmare when the creepy-crawly launches itself out from under your bed.

I'd learned, though. "Nope. That's the bracelet, and it's maille."

The daughter's face at this point went from a bland smile to completely blank. The mother kept grinning and talking.

"She's Maille. We've never seen anyone spell their name like this before."

I did not shriek or headdesk or throttle her. "Well, that's maille. Like chainmaille. Like knights in armor. Or ren faires, or Legolas."

The daughter's face started falling. The mother started to look confused. "So that's . . . maille?"

"Yup." I held up my anklet, which at this point was just a shiny silver & purple chain. "This, too."

"That's . . . Her name is spelled the same way, and we say it Malley. No one else spells it like that. I . . . I've never seen it like this before."

"That's okay," I said. "That's what I guessed," is what I almost said. But I figured the kid was probably already scarred for life, so I held back. It's not every day you find out your parent is an illiterate uncultured moron--and thankfully, it's not every day that their being an illiterate uncultured moron saddles you with an unfortunate name.

At least her name wasn't Chlamydia, I guess.


The third . . .

So it was the last day, it'd been raining, I was burnt out and cranky and somewhat miserable, and this woman walked up to my booth, looked at me, and said, "Belly button."

It was my turn for a blank stare.

The woman stared back. After a few seconds, she tried again. "Belly button."

Staring wasn't working; so I blinked a few times, shook off the urge to run screaming, and finally said, "What?"

"Belly button!"

. . .

Maybe, I thought, she was asking to see my belly button. Or maybe she'd slipped her handler.

I took a deep breath, looked around for anyone who might've been looking for her--didn't see anyone, of course--and tried once more. "I'm sorry--what?"

"Do you have . . . belly button?"

I gave up at this point and poked myself in the stomach. "Yes I do! Right there."

The woman started gesturing at this point, and as she started speaking in something more closely resembling a sentence I realized that she wasn't handicapped--she was just phenomenally stupid. "No, like . . . do you have . . . like . . . belly button!"

At this point I realized she was trying to ask for body jewelry.

At this point I also decided that I'm not a fucking mind reader, I'm not being paid enough to translate someone's halfassed attempts at sentences, and it's not my fucking responsibility to ask myself the question about my own stock for them. So I played dumb. "I'm sorry, what are you asking?"

With what looked like a monumental mental effort, she finally coughed out a full question. "Do you have, like, the things for belly buttons?"

"Body jewelry? No m'am--I only carry jewelry that I make myself."

"But do you make jewelry for belly buttons?"

. . .


It really is amazing that I did not kill her.




This coming weekend theoretically puts me at a long-running show where the populace is more artistically minded and the crafters all definitely make their stuff by hand. I've already upped my game with a spiffy new tablecloth and some new displays--hopefully I'll do better there. And not kill anyone. At least not while there's witnesses around.