Passing on the Goat

Happy Wednesday Morning! Ni Hoa!(knee how)= Hello!

Let me catch you up on how are Tuesday went.

Michael and Gracie picked us up at our hotel at 10:30AM. We drove directly to the textile market. It took about an hour to get there. It may have been in Sham Shui Po. I don't know of any other textile market but am not sure if that is where we were. Gracie's english is enough to get by but it's pretty thin. For example, I would ask her to tell Michael "Thank you for taking us to the market...we really enjoyed it and are very grateful". She would translate and say "shea shea" which means "thank you". HA! Lost in translation takes on a personal meaning now.

Michael navigated us through the market to the vendors who had the poly-fleece that we were looking for. We want two-sided sided 250 gram anti-pill poly fleece and are preferring recycled plastic-bottle poly fleece. Whenever I would try to explain this to Gracie, she would get confused and try to find a beverage for me. HA again. I have been told by Kindnoon rep Dan (from Mpls) that recycled poly fleece is hard to buy. There appears to be a monopoly on the supplier side that restricts availability. I will keep trying to get this because I prefer to be eco-friendly. This may have to come later as I suspect that recycled will become easier to purchase when our purchasing volume increases.

I am so glad Megan had been clicking away with her camera. At one point we came across a lunch vendor (pic with silver bowls). We asked Gracie to ask if we could take a picture. Super cool. Lunch time we came across groups of men playing card games on their break or some sort of domino game. Two would be playing and there would be about 10 men standing around watching. We also saw two women in the market playing that string game that I played when I was younger. You know the one where you use your fingers and there is a series of string and finger weaving with unique patterns? Very cool. I almost wanted to join in. RUDE!

We looked at fabrics and nodded or shook our heads. I tried to insure that what we were choosing would wash well and not fade in color. We are also looking and poly-fleece colored to order. Apparently it's not a big deal and takes only 15 days. They lent us a Pantone Color book for us to choose colors! This may make it tough to have inventory by Sept but might be worth it to get some really neat colors. Creative Kidstuff buyer, Jennifer Dunne, encouraged color exploration. She loved the brown one. Maybe the other jewel tones are over-done.

From the market we went to lunch at a nice hotel restaurant. Each table had a glass lazy-susan in the middle. We sat down and Gracie asked if she and I should go get the food or if Michael should. I said Michael should, suspecting this would be more respectful/trusting. We copied what they ordered for drinks. It was a chilled and canned herbal tea "for health". It reminded me of the old-fashioned horehound candy. In a short amount of time, a series of plates to share were brought out. Gracie told us what they were. We had beef with peppers, brown glazed fish, shrimp, sauteed asparagas, some sort of green and burgundy plant with brown sauce, pillowy brown cup shaped buns to insert a vegetable medley in, oranged colored cubes of pudding and spicy goat with lemon grass (see headline). It was fun and very pretty. Apparently it looked like we didn't eat much so Gracie asked if we wanted some rice or something. We said we loved it and we were fine and they laughed.

After lunch we ventured back to their office to show them the drawings we did of the details of the brown blanket. It showed them the embroidered freckle placement. They warned me that these changes would cost extra. They asked me the name of the other manufacturer that we were meeting with Wed. They copied my pattern pieces for the brown blanket (ears, spikes and such) and asked to borrow the brown blanket and the sample I did of the new satin edging. They said they would need x-number(couldn't tell) days to complete this sample. I couldn't tell how many. This would help them determine the price.

They played a U2 music CD continually. Michael would turn it up on one particular song. It was that one were they use a mono-tone voice "don't expect...blah blah blah suggest" and bono is in the background squealing "I feel numb". I think Michael finally got tired of this and towards the end of the day he switched to local music flavors. YES!

They brought us back to our hotel around 3:30PM. They told us if we need anything to call them. So nice. I really like them. I must confess that Gracie seemed extremely shy and I didn't get the impression she was completely comfortable translating for us. She would appear to be startled whenever I would ask her something from the back seat. Matter of fact, that may be why they played the music so loud in the car. HA!

I hope that Saibo Mfr. rep Kevin, that we are meeting Wed, has a bit more english. It would be fun to be able to joke with them.

Megan's blonde hair is causing quite a stir. She is famous! They are taking pictures of her like she's an albino.

Ok so we got to the hotel with every intention of doing more drawings. I said, let's take a nap first and Megan agreed. We hit our beds at 4PM and I woke up at 8:30PM! Megan was fast asleep too. We just stayed in bed. We both woke up around 3:30AM and decided to stay in bed.

That's all for now. It's Wed at 10:20 and our ride will be here soon. Kevin!

Toodles friends!

Well-rested Megan and Sheila