I get to participate in a cross-cultural experience on Friday and Saturday. No, I’m not going to a Hmong festival or a quinceanera. It is the Holiday Marketplace Boutique at the Visalia Convention Center.

My idea of shopping is the Mercantile and Creekside Yarns in Three Rivers, Winco in Visalia or Amazon in my living room. My clothes come from the local thrift shop, a very few catalogs, eBay and my knitting needles. I have no idea what is in style, and shopping is the furthest thing from my mind when a friend suggests “doing something together”.

Despite my lack of a shopping gene, this coming weekend I will set up a booth in the convention center and happily accommodate those who enjoy shopping. I might even learn a thing or two about what the current fashion trends look like! (But I am NOT giving up my long floral April Cornell skirts, so there.)

Oil paintings, cards, reproductions of my pencil drawings – that’s what I’ll have available.