Our Market Stall...

A few years ago a friend and I decided to have a market stall at a Country market in a nearby town...they supply the dinky little stalls with blue and white striped awnings and it was held in a sheltered courtyard...

Becky keeps about six Alpacas...stupid creatures who hiss and spit and curl their lips up...she has them shorn twice yearly and then cards, spins and knits the resultant wool into sweaters and cardigans...the yarn is very soft and isn't itchy in the way pure sheep's wool can be.

I'd been making plaited rag rugs and growing a wide variety of herbs, both medicinal and culinary...had a few plants used for dyeing as well.

Our little stall attracted much attention...but the first time we went we sold nothing at all...plenty of interest but no sales. The second week we fared little better...I sold a couple of pots of curly parsley to someone who'd really wanted flat leaf...Becky sold a pair of child's mittens.

By the third week Becky had stuffed her spinning wheel into the back of her car along with a basket of wool...and she made up a board with photos of the gormless Alpacas with their undershot bottom jaws...I'd printed out basic leaflets describing the history of rag rugs...

The first customer picked up one of my rugs and asked what were they used for...then she turned to Becky spinning away like a woman possessed and asked her...Isn't it less trouble to buy a jumper from Heaton's? These are very pricey, she announced...I beat a hasty retreat to the coffee shop for two take-out Cappuccino's...

When I came back the woman had gone and Becky was still spinning furiously...the next one asked what would she be doing with a pot of Sage...you could make stuffing I said brightly ...but I always buy the packet stuffing she answered...well you could add some fresh Sage next time? Why-ever would I be wanting to do that she said...

We sat down and made a roll-up and drank our coffee and the Silversmith who had the stall opposite ours came and asked if we'd made any actual money yet and we had to confess we hadn't...he said the people who were looking at his goods were saying they could buy cheaper in the high street and he'd told the last person who had said that that she was a Philistine and she'd thought it a compliment and had said...Thank you.

Just before lunch that day I actually sold a rug and spent the cash on visiting the Tarot reader who'd set herself up in a corner...she was un-unnervingly accurate and scared me silly.

We persisted...we began in the March and finally admitted defeat by June...Becky had sold about half a dozen sweaters and I'd sold four rugs and some herbs. We were both dark brown from the sun and as thin as rakes from all the work we were putting into making stuff...we'd learned to be polite when we felt like being very rude indeed and many people went away with having had a go on the spinning wheel and with written instructions of how to use Dyers Camomile...

It's hard to understand the Irish psyche sometimes...the inner dread they have of anything 'handmade' because handmade means poverty...the remembrance of a Grandmother spinning wool to be sold on to contribute to the family income...rag rugs were for the middle classes for it was only they who had scraps of fabric and old clothes to be used...the poorer people wore their clothes until they quite literally fell to pieces...there was nothing left to make a warm rug for your feet.

Dyeing wool in pretty colours from plants gleaned from the fields and hedges was beyond the poor...that was a luxury again confined to those who owned shops and 'pubs, the village school master and those like them...not to the cottagers.

My attempts to sell small clay pots of Coriander and Basil to women who recalled a childhood of eating bread and cabbage and potatoes was bound to fail...they'd much prefer to buy a packet of some flavouring for the Shepherds pie from the supermarket...that very act of buying shows they've risen above the poverty of their childhoods.

I still make rag rugs from duvet covers and sheets bought for pennies from Charity shops...Becky still knits and spins the Alpaca fleece...she knits for her grandchildren and her daughters...soft sweaters made with love and care.

You can't buy that quality in Penneys.