Fest not so festive.

Today I spent a long time on the road to get to the Philadelphia Bead Fest.  Every year I go and every year they have it farther and farther from Philadelphia.  This one was about 45 minutes away but with the heavy traffic, (why oh why traffic on a Sunday??), it took longer!  The so called Greater Philadelphia Expo Center,  was neither greater nor a center!  The whole place was like a warehouse, the areas for classes were messy, depressing and just yuck!  I hope I'm not offending anyone here, but comparing this to the Needlepoint Seminars...  what a million light years of difference.

Now, for the vendors...  lots of long tables of semi-precious stones, lots and lots of those.  Some vendors with merchandise from "the silk road", or from "Africa".  I put this in quotation marks because it is obvious that between the original vendor and the merchandise on the tables today, the prices were sent up and up only to reach us, the customers, at a markup of hundreds of %!  Really ridiculous pricing!

In past years, when I used to go to these shows, I did so to see the interesting new ideas, findings, innovative artists who showed their wares at the show.  This year there was nothing!  I sound a bit harsh and again, I don't want to offend,  I apologize if I am.  I just feel it's wrong to lure people a great distance to a show that is sub-standard, charge $12 entrance fee and then provide the opportunity to pay for overpriced merchandise.  It's wrong.

OK, I'm done.

I only took one photo, a pile of pearls and crystals, so as not to be a total loss...