How unfortunate, and what restraint you showed. That's rather rude of the young lady to just help herself to someone else's work in the first place (I gather they didn't seek permission first), and rather assumptive of parent and child to help themselves. The old adage of 'assume makes and ass out of you and me' kind of works here for both of them (not you, though :-) ). Such pettiness is not becoming of them, and sadly it seems that some can't seem to accept 'No' (or its various forms) as an acceptable answer.
If they hadn't stopped after my first request to refrain from meddling with my pillow, I might've at that point paused in my attentions to the interested student and gone over to my pillow, politely inserting myself, and begun to re-restrain the bobbins and cover the work, commenting that this pillow was one that they could help themselves to (and maybe why, depending on the situation), and perhaps removed to my chair or under the table. They probably still would've been huffy and done what they did, but at least I'd done a little something to hopefully arrest their interfering. It would hard to diplomatically point out that they would not like it if someone came and helped themselves to the daughter's pillow and started working at will on perhaps a competition entry she might be working on. I would think such levels of empathy might be beyond them. The last few years when I've gotten back into a little demoing, I've had 1 of my 2 largish Beds UFO's with me to work on, and most people seem to want to touch the spangles and the bobbins, but I have pairs of the sections I'm not working on at that moment in time on knitting stitch holders. Fortunately, I've not had to deal with too many who have gotten huffy over being asked to please not touch my pillow. The last demo I did, was on the sidewalk in town, and I had company for the first 2 hours, but then was alone for the 2nd 2 hours, and that's when I had a few interested people stop and have a go on my have-a-go pillow. While I was helping them, I had my pillow covered with cloths and I think I moved it on my table to just behind me. With it covered and no pretty sparkly things on view to attract attention, it was somewhat ignored. I was more worried about myself knocking over my pillow :-) I know some people have in the past covered their pillow with a clear plastic pinned down that allows some viewing of the pillow and it's work in progress, but is a little bit more of a deterrent to those who desire to meddle. I think you probably did the right thing and showed your class and good breeding by taking the more passive route. It probably didn't help with the anger and emotions at the time, but perhaps some catharsis will come as you slowly untangle the mess. Cheers, Helen, in damp Duvall, WA - To unsubscribe send email to [email protected] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [email protected]. For help, write to [email protected]. Photo site: http://community.webshots.com/user/arachne2003
