A Dollop of Daisy

Cara and I ventured out to the annual "Yellow Daisy" Festival at Stone Mountain Park today. Yellow Daisy (YD) has been around for many years, and has become one of the largest arts-and-crafts festivals in the south. I think they have something like 500 booths. And it's free with admission into the park.

Unlike the Atlanta Dogwood Festival, of which I am VERY familiar (being a member of the Board of Directors and Executive Committee has a tendency to do that to you), YD is not a fine-arts festival. In fact, most of the stuff offered for sale is more likely to have been created in someone's garage, not studio. That's not to say that the stuff is not of good quality, but you are much more likely to hear something like, "Momma 'n 'dem wood like 'dis" as you walk the paths from booth to booth.

Cara and I have very similar opinions about things, and we share a very twisted sense of humor, so hanging around with her turns into a fun event as we make "keen observations" about the things going on around us. About a third of the way into the festival, we heard Country music playing. That in and of itself is not a problem. But.... Country music also often signals the possibility of something VERY scary: c-l-o-g-g-i-n-g! And, sure enough, we round the corner to find just that! Oh no! But wait, what's scarier than cloggers? Cloggers dressed in matching outfits that look like bad Star Trek uniforms! But wait, what's scarier than cloggers in Star Trek uniforms? Hearing, "And now, we'd like to do something for you that we call 'Flashdance Remixed'"! Arghh!!! I WISH I was making this up! Of course, I can't tell you what it actually was like, because the only thought Cara and I had was "RUN AWAY!"

Another observation: we stopped to watch a woman create an impressive piece of art using scratchboard. If you're not familiar with this, it is a white board covered with a very thin layer of (usually) black wax. You use sharp tools to scratch away the wax to create your image. Now, I'm not really a fan of this technique, but I really can appreciate the skill and workmanship that goes into creating these pieces. And watching her create a scratchboard piece of a tiger freehand from a photo was pretty impressive. But I was shocked at the number of folks that, while we were standing there, made comments like "honey, here's the scratchboard" and "oh, here's the scratchboard" and "don't ya' want to stop and look at the scratchboard?" I never realized scratchboard was a destination attraction.

Another big difference between YD and the Dogwood Festival is the number of food "crafts" for sale. Things like pickles, beef jerky, stone-ground meal, honey, fudge, nuts, and all kinds of soup and dip mixes. Mind you, these are above and beyond the regular carnival food vendors. These are thing you can take home and put in the cupboard. I give them credit - a lot of the stuff is pretty tasty. One vendor, selling drink and instant coffee mixes, has a line of sugar-free mixes made with Splenda, and paid attention to his target audience. I was impressed that he had the marketing savvy to post a "zero Weight Watchers points" sign on his booth. Remember, a large portion of the visitors to this festival think nothing of putting a pink pig made from a propane tank on the front porch of their trailer (and, sadly, you can buy such a thing here). Often, these folks are, shall we say, "big boned?' Needless to say, they were quite drawn by the marketing sign.

To be fair, there were a decent number of genuine artists and craftsman there, and the whole thing gives you plenty of things to look at. I bought a few things at the food booths, and an item that might end up as a gift for a friend. And considering that the park admission of $10 per car was split in two, it was a pretty inexpensive way to have a lot of fun.

I still think the beaded palm tree yard art would be perfect for Cara, but she disagrees....