Gimme a medal

for self control - the picture above shows you honestly and without under-embellishment what I bought at the Make It! show at Farnborough yesterday. I think the picture's bad because I'm a bit shaken by my tiny haul. Pleased nonetheless. I went with a completely impartial but totally enthusiastic Lunch Lady Jan. I think it was twice as busy as last year on the Friday, but the layout works so well - large aisles (are you listening, Ally Pally?) We cruised half the show and then met up with Chrissie and Mandi and made them join us for a lunch break; they had a sandwich and we had roast pork in a giant roll. Not so much self control there, huh! We rejoined the stands at the half way point and carried on mooching. Julie Hickey was swamped, I think she had a small demo area and I was disappointed to miss Jennie, the Artistic Stamper who was doing demonstrations with all her lovely stamps - they said she had gone for lunch; I couldn't see her - she wouldn't exactly have been sitting alone, huh!

I thought that there were a few more new shop names on the exhibitor's list this year - alongside established names. Good for them I say, it's great to see people taking the plunge. There was, to my perception, less scrap booking than I'd have liked to see - but I wonder if the logistics of carting papers is just too difficult, after all, they don't exactly get handled well in a shop environment, let alone a packed and pacey exhibition space.

Actually, having had past experience of this show, I'd say that this year was as good as ever in terms of organisation, stands and blahdy blah. What the organisers have no control over is the lack of demonstrations on stand; disappointing. I wonder if the space is so expensive that room for a demo has to be ruled out? I do not know. What I do know is that nothing sells an idea or product to me better than a chatty, friendly demonstrator who inevitably makes it all look so easy! Pretty much real life WOYWW! The show is open till 5pm tomorrow.