Santa Fe

United States pop-up #8

Before I made it to Santa Fe I stopped in Amarillo where I was expecting to do a pop-up, but only ate lunch at a Whataburger. I continued on and landed in Santa Rosa for the night.

I got to Santa Fe the next day just in time to see the end of the No Kings protest. My Grandfather Pa is here with my Aunt Sara, Grand Uncle Chris, Grand Uncle Ken, and Grand Aunt Rosewitha. There are a ton of galleries here, and a ton of shops, and a ton of artisans selling their crafts on the street. A good place to pop-up.

My first day here I just hung out with family, we walked around the paint out gallery street and had lunch with the artists. I took a long nap, and then went to a nice dinner with Pa, Sara, and Chris. The next day after breakfast I went searching for a location and after about 30 minutes of driving in circles around the town, I opted for a different district. That’s when Pa showed up and he packed into the tight passenger seat as we drove to a car wash at the edge of town to get the thousands of dead bugs off of my windshield. With a clean car we returned to the Old Santa Fe district and tried my luck again. After 1 loop we found a spot right at the edge of the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, a seemingly perfect spot. Here I sold the shirt I had woven through a project week and 2 trimesters of the school year and wore to graduation, which was a sore to see go.

After the sale a security guard approached me and told me selling was unfortunately prohibited on museum grounds. So I went back to circling the town, and after 1 loop again, I found a good spot right next to the most popular shopping street. While the location was good, the shoppers were not. Since I was in a big shopping district surrounded by developed store fronts and clothing stores, no one really paid any attention to my little pop-up. Even though I’m sewing the clothes right there, and I’m the designer, without any substantial store front that inadvertently says “I’m a successful business that is reputable and quality,” my business is slow if any.

Pa came around after I was out there for a while fixing a cami top and starting a very basic 3-rectangle shirt out of some pattern fabric Margi and Keith gave me. He stood there and watched me sew for about an hour as some customers walked by and said hi. Only one young worker for the store right next to me actually looked at any of my clothes. When I finished the sleeves for the shirt I realized I drastically underestimated the average size of an arm, and the sleeve wouldn’t go up past my forearm. Maybe a shirt for a child? But then Pa pointed out that since the sleeve was sewn onto the body at a 90 degree angle, there would be a massive crease and puckering around the shoulder. I knew this would happen, but Rosewitha had been talking about sewing a shirt with cap sleeves, a technique where you just cut the rectangular body and then the sleeve requires minimal extra work. I hadn’t put together that she meant not to sew an actual sleeve onto the hole after you cut it so that when you bend the arm, the armpit doesn’t bunch up. So, this shirt attempt will likely become a pillowcase or something similar.

Me and Pa packed up early and then went to dinner with everyone. It was a calm dinner that ended with easy goodbyes. I went to bed late after writing a little and playing some chess. This caused me to wake up late the next day so I rushed to take a shower and pack up at 10:30. I left and went to Chris’ house to do my laundry and finally publish the Kansas City blog with his wifi. I had leftovers for lunch and went out to try another pop-up after my clothes had dried, and then get a head start towards Boulder. This time I set my pop-up across from The New Mexico Museum of Art. I was there for 4 hours, and in that time some people came by interested by what I was doing. I had one young couple come up and purchase a mint cami set with the Japanese petite bows. There was also a fellow designer who came by and invited me to his shop for coffee before I headed north.

Sold cami set

At 6 I packed up and went to his shop, Poetic Threads. It was a very cool shop with thousand year old textiles and garments created with fair trade hand woven and printed fabrics.

The co-owner/designer, Shah, made me some light coffee and introduced me to his girlfriend, Natalie who is a film producer for cross-country food review shows like Somebody Feed Phil. It was very cool to meet these interesting people and get their contact in order to eventually do a line with them and later invite them into the Notapyramid IE. With a little extra caffeine in my blood, I drove to Pueblo, a town 2 hours away from Boulder, finishing Till We Have Faces audiobook on the way.

See you,

RK