Reality bites

So I guess I knew this would happen sooner or later, but it didn't make it any easier to take. One of my favorite samples got stolen last Friday from a trunk show in Baton Rouge, LA. It still makes me a little sick when I think about it.

Evidently the store owner had done everything right. The bags were were very securely displayed & kept near the center of the "action" in the store. Every evening, the entire display was moved to a locked and secure storage area. But sometimes, a person that is determined to do wrong, can circumvent all the right things, and that's just what this person did. Theft is an unfortunate fact of life for store owners.

The bag will be replaced for me. It probably won't look like this, but I'm sure it will be nice. Bernina has been very gracious. Police reports have been filed & apologies have been made. I'm comforted by this... but I'm still very annoyed about it.

For a while I thought, that's it! No more trunk shows. But I never should have sent my precious "cover bag" out to a trunk show. That's my fault. I know that now. Maybe I should have sent a less attractive , more resistable version for the show. But on the other hand.... Why should a thing of beauty such as this, be left to languish unappreciated in a plastic tote box on a shelf? That would be analogous to hiding my light under a bushel basket. Why should the act of one low-life change the way I handle my business? I'm a go-for-it, all-or-nothing kind of a girl, and I think what success I have attained so far, is to a large degree, because of this.

So for now, I'm thinking I probably won't change too much about the way I handle my business in general, or my trunk shows in specific. I am encouraged by the fact that the overwhelming percentage of women who sew are honest & hard-working and would NEVER do something like this. I also know from experience, something that this bottom-feeder evidently doesn't...that the sewing community is a tight-knit group. We "have each other's back", and unless she intends to leave this beautiful bag languishing in a plastic tote box where no will see it, eventually someone, somewhere, will recognize it as the bag that was on the cover of the Gadabout pattern & let me know about it. So until then, I hope she enjoys it.