You have probably heard both myself and Ann, chat about the 2025 OVWSG Sale and Exhibition. We continue to have the Guild sale at the Glebe community centre, which started life as a church, changed congregations then became a community centre. It has had some renovations over the years, and this year, there is scaffolding surrounding part of the outside of the building. Other than the challenge of parking, it is a beautiful site.
As with every year, it was a busy time leading up to the sale. You may have noticed I posted for myself and covered for Ann to give her a bit of a break. Ann is not only baking for a local Farmers Market, a Fabulous felter and felting teacher, Guild Librarian, but also the coordinator for the sale, so she is very busy leading up to the sale and then really tired afterwards, but all her hard work was both worth it and appreciated.
You have seen lots of shopping opportunities lately, so this time I would like to show you a bit of the “behind the scenes”, some of the photos from the sale, then in the next post, finish by showing you the Exhibition.
Although Ann and the Guild sales team have been working since shortly after the last sale ended, the largest part of the volunteer teams get to work the week before the sale. On the Monday before the sale, we had gathered all the boxes and display grids in the studio ready to head to the sale on Friday. At 6 pm, we have the set up team at the Glebe, busy marking booth spaces and placing tables in booth spaces. The Team with Pickup trucks, loaded everything and met us at the sale around 6:30 pm.
As soon as the tables were up, the vendors started bringing in their wares, with the help of the “assist-the-vendors-bring-stuff-in” team. The Guild Co-Op booth, Guild info booth, Make and Take table, the Exhibition and the demo teams were also setting up. We didn’t get to start as early on Friday as previous years (since the room was used as an after school daycare until 6 pm), so it was extra busy!
I took a few (126) photos Friday night, to both document the guild activity and to create images we could post Friday night to entice shoppers on Saturday morning. (The postings seem to have worked, since Saturday morning was very busy with shoppers!) If you were curious, I took 873 photos in total over the weekend.
By this point, it had already been a busy week, and I was extremely tired. As I stood looking at Molly’s lovely trees, I wondered what needle she had used to attach the felt to the birch bark….. (Yes, I needed more sleep!)
Besides felt, there were also booths of weaving, handspun yarn and commercially spun and hand died yarns.
The guild booth had the door prizes. When you filled out a questionnaire (it was short), you got a sticker and were entered for the door prize. For those of us whose phones are luddites and don’t recognise QR codes, they had a tablet to fill out the questions.
Once you have filled out the survey (this gives us info on where our shoppers are coming from, and a bit of what they were looking for) and picked your sticker, we can take a quick peek at the Guild Demo area.
The guild also had a “Make and Take” table, which had various small weaving, felting, and sometimes spinning projects to do and take home. This has been fun to see, with lots of younger new people, but also quite a few adults trying their hands too.
Let’s look at the booth, time for some virtual shopping!!
Booths:
Booth 1 is the Guild Co-Op booth, which gives members the opportunity to sell their work when they don’t have enough to have a whole booth.
Booth 2 is Wendo Van Essen. She is a Needle Felter and has needle felted brooches, vegan taxidermy, needle felting kits, and pin cushions.
You may have spotted His colourful braided fibre at a few other events.
Spindles, heddles, shuttles, tapestry looms, fibre
Booth 5 is a group of weavers, Studio Three Fibre Arts and Unwoven (Jean Down, Roberta Murrant and Deb Templeton), handwoven clothing, accessories, table linens, and fibre art.
Spindles, spindle bowls, spindle totes and fibre in a variety of formats.
Hand dyed yarns, books, and notions.
Wood yarn bowls, crochet sets and art yarn.
Handspun yarn, fibre, hand knitted and handwoven items
Handwoven garments and accessories, baskets, household linens, rugs
Handwoven straps and bands, including guitar straps, bag straps, hat bands, key fobs, lanyards, and bracelets.
Mohair locks and yarns in natural and hand-dyed colours, mohair/wool blends, handspun and mill-spun yarns, rovings, batts, and handmade wool dolls.
Handwoven scarves and shawls
Felted and wool based children’s play materials. Adventure Playmats, Woodland Gnomes and Fairy Houses.
Woven landscape tapestries.
Hand dyed fibre, Natural Fibre, Felted DIY kit, Felted Fabric, Art Yarn, Interactive Art Batt station
Handwoven wall tapestries and finished handwoven scarves
Felted goods
Roving, locks, felted objects, handwovens
Yarn certified 100% Canadian wool and hand dyed, also certified fibres
Oh my, that was a lot of show in not that big a hall! Maybe we should wander up to Bank Street and pop into a restaurant for lunch? We can meet back here afterwards and look at the Exhibition. If you are not parked in the city lot a block away, don’t forget to move your car when you drop off your purchases; it’s 3-hour street parking in most of the Glebe!
PS Sorry!!! i must not have saved properly, some of the photos were missing they loaded but did not attach, i must not have pushed save correctly!!! i hope this works now!!