Well, what should I say. First of all, I get the award for the worst timing of catching a cold! Two days before our departure to San Francisco I was not able to go to work. I did not feel good at all on Wednesday and Thursday, especially on Wednesday the cold really caught me. Anyhow, I did not want to miss San Francisco for any circumstances: I really wanted to see the city and I didn’t want Karin and Kyle having to handle the show on their own. There has been a lot of organization behind the show so there has been a lot of effort in preparing everything. Keeping that in mind, I really tried to get as much rest as possible on Wednesday and Thursday to be able to withstand the stress for the whole weekend. That is why I was not able to write new blog entries for these days…
So, starting off with Friday morning: Our flight left at 6 o’clock so the day started at about 4 o’clock when we left the house. Knowing the weekend would get tough, I prepped myself with enough medication for the cold and bonbons for my throat. I wanted to help Karin and Kyle as much as possible so I prepped myself for any kind of indisposition.
After we arrived in San Francisco, we took a taxi to the Hilton hotel in downtown, where the show took place. Luckily, we had our rooms for the night in the same hotel, that way we could just fall into our beds after a long day at the show. However, we immediately started setting up the booth when we arrived at the hotel. It took us some hours to set up everything and the show did not start until 5 pm, that way we had time to build everything from 10 am up to 3 pm and having a little “lunch” break afterwards. We met at the booth at 4:30 to do a final preparation for all the visitors. My task during the whole show was to sell the legions that are available at Makers’ Mercantile.
Then the show started!
It went pretty smooth and kept us busy most of the time. Attendance was a good amount, not to be overwhelmed for that day. I had a lot of fun selling some of the leggings and also some wool, even if my knowledge about all the different wools and the information needed for knitting and crocheting leave a little to be desired.
The day ended at 9 pm, after the show had ended at 7 pm. We literally fell into our beds, tired and exhausted by the long day. Luckily, I had a very good sleep that night, knowing my alarm would not start until 8:30, as the show started at 10 am.
Saying Friday went off pretty smoothly, Saturday continued being busy but not too exhausting. I had a lot of fun meeting all the different people, knitters from all around San Francisco. Besides selling our products, I was able to have a little chit chat with some of the visitors which was a lot of fun and an enrichment for meeting that amount of new people. I started being curious about the last names of some of the visitors and vendors, as some of them wore a little name tag. Therefor, I recognized a lot of people having a German, or at least something that I would consider as a German surname. So I started asking people about their surname and there were a lot of stories about people having grand parents that once immigrated from Germany to the US.
There were so many different kinds of people on the show and it was great being able to interact with them. Of course, I never forgot to promote our products as well 😉
I also had the chance to see a little bit of the city as we took one of the bus tours around the town in the evening. It had already been a cold night but sitting on the open roof of the bus made us freezing. Thus, I was able to take some good pictures of the skyline. But afterwards we decided to take a seat in the lower level of the bus, not to make my cold any worse than it has been. Sadly, I wasn’t able to see the golden gate bridge or browse around in the streets of San Francisco, but at least I saw a little bit from the city. And of course I was able to capture the skyline by night, which was one of my goals for this trip!
Sunday, again, didn’t start until 8:30 am. The show was open until 3 pm and that was when we started dismantling everything. It took us about 3 hours to detach everything and to put everything back into boxes to be shipped back to Seattle. Afterwards, the three of us had a great dinner at a restaurant, talking about the show, relaxing a little bit and just enjoying the evening until we took our flight back to Seattle.
We arrived at home about 12:30 am and I fell into my bed immediately, knowing that I had Monday off to get some rest and regenerate after the weekend.
So, that’s how I got here, sitting at my desk in the office on this beautiful Tuesday morning, writing my blog entry about the weekend, knowing that this is gonna be the last week in the US until I go back to Germany on Saturday morning…