romancing the hut

OK, so last month we schlepped down to Pittsburgh and bought a used Craft Hut canopy. I have been avoiding the "real" canopies since we started this odyssey into art show world a dozen or so years ago. Too expensive, too complicated. 4 cheap canopies and some scary storms storms later, we caved.

My first outdoor show of the year is this weekend. We had to drag the canopy out of the storage room and clean it up, set it up, organize the parts our way. Make sure we knew what we were doing. I was still a little concerned about setting it up. We are used to a pop up tent that has no parts to assemble. We are used to its idiosyncrasies. We've learned to live with its faults. While I envied others their fancy dancy "pro" canopies, I often felt happy to have the pop up when I would watch them laying out parts and assembling, especially in the rain. But I knew once the tents were up, there was no question who was safer, dryer, cozier.

Anyway, Russell said he was confident that he would remember how to do it. We brought the folder of info Larry gave us when we bought the tent just in case. But Russell has a good mind for logical, construction things, so I wasn't worried. We brought everything to my Mom's suburban back yard so I could scrub the components while Russell organized the parts. I dragged the canopy top to the lawn and began scrubbing. I looked over at Russell and he was holding a pole in his hand and staring at it as if it had fallen from the sky. I was not reassured.

But it was like most learning activities. Once you get the first piece in place, the rest made sense. And so it was. There were some moments of confusion, adjustments were made. A panel was found to be missing a zipper but we had an extra. Before you knew it, the thing was up. I love the roominess of it. It feels like a cathedral without the zigzag mechanism of the pop up overhead.

OK, bring on the rain, the wind, the typhoons, We are ready to weather the storms. Although I much prefer sunny, 75, light breezes off the lake. If that's not too much trouble.