renegade chicago accompli

we apologize for the long delay in posting our adventures to the midwest and back. it has been a long week of driving, fast food, late shift sing-a-longs, and more driving.

as previously reported, we stopped in st. louis to pop in on my family. to my mom's chagrin, we spent our five days there sprawled out on her cherished antique dining room table with piles of fabric, sewing machine, and multiple laptops (basically lots of scuff and ding-prone items). we spent every break watching dvds with my dad whose newest hobby is copying the disks he rents on a daily basis. he's created his own blockbuster in his basement movie room. every meal - we overate with crazy wife and golfin' groom... 'til i got sick the night before we left.

we had a new tent shipped out to st. louis after last month's catastrophe.  thankfully, in suburban st. louis, there is plenty of space to unfurl a tent and douse it with water to make sure it won't leak.  golfin' groom was nice enough to drill a few holes in the legs for some additional mogo bling to be added later.  

we were blessed with stellar weather the entire time we were out there. and the sun and cool temperatures followed us out to chicago.



this year's renegade craft fair had a new venue joining the do division street festival through the heart of wicker park. for a total of twenty hours over a two-day period, we sat on the corner of division and honore streets under our new mogo tent and amid the bass-pumping bands and djs.

i tried to get a head start on our holiday shopping by knocking one name off our list.  i figure we're just at the beginning of the season.  i'll have many more shows to spend our profits at neighboring tents.

the picture above was our only view of chicago the entire weekend. besides division street and i-55, dabney and i saw absolutely nothing of the city due to rcf's new 12-10 pm hours.  our only nice meal was spent at milk & honey cafe for a quick but delicious brunch before we set up our tent down the street.  each night, we dragged our tired selves to senor tequila, a cheesy (literally, cheesy) mexican place next door to our motel, that served dinner 'til midnight and had delicious margheritas to cap off our evenings thankfully.  

twenty hours is a long time to be at a craft fair so we'd like to thank all the friendly chicagoans who bought stuff and our crafter friends who broke up the monotony of the day with the occasional comment. a special shout-out to the nice guy at the beer tent who took my gray hair as i.d.