Just a few days before I was to head down to the Mahmoud Reda dance workshop in Iowa, I got an email from Fritha, a lovely dancer from that area. Fritha's mom Darlene Coltrain is my "dye mentor." (Darlene is an incredible artist who paints and makes gorgeous jewelry on top of her fabulous skills in silk painting, so I feel very honored that she should take an interest in my hobby. She's definitely "fine arts;" I'm simply "hand crafts.") Fritha wanted to know whether I'd be brining veils to Cedar Rapids, and when I said I was coming to dance, not sell, she suggested that Kahraman Dance (the hosting organization) could sell for me on consignment.
This was good news and bad news... good news because I might make a sale or two, but bad news because my stock was low! So I spent every evening between then and the show madly dyeing. I ended up taking thirteen veils along.
The Kahraman folks were very kind to me, particularly Carol Wick, who was obviously a massive organizing force behind the event. We determined their percentage and they found me space to set out the veils and my business cards.
By the end of the weekend I'd sold four veils! And I sold another on the way home to a Madison dancer who saw a veil fresh from Wednesday night and just HAD to have it. A particular satisfaction to me was that I sold my four yard veil. Sadly, I never took a picture of it (d'oh!), but it was a very deep gold color, tied arashi shibori style and overdyed with a dye that was named chocolate brown but turned into a deep coppery red color. I had been trying to talk Fritha into it (she's at least six feet tall), and then worked on Sonya a bit (she's a petite little thing, but she has total control of a four yard veil). They were both thinking about it... then it was gone... bought from under their noses by Carol Wick! That was pretty cool.
So! More money for the going-to-Cairo fund! Of course now I have to dye a whole lot more veils, since I'm giving a student discount to the Bellydancing UW club for the fall semester... back to the dye notebook....