Days of tea and polenta

Lots of polenta and tea but not a lot of REM sleep. A long time ago this week, I was in Aachen for the Christmas market. I have been daydreaming of the type of holiday booth I would have up against the South side of the cathedral - small, fronted by a wooden counter with all my goods stacked on shelves behind me. There's a small converted camping stove to warm the booth and keep the coffee and bacon sandwiches warm. The booth to my left has a victrola playing Christmas ditties from the 1920s and the booth to my right sells cider in small buckets.

On the shelves wait quilted heating pad covers, hobo teapots with wire handles and cork lids, oven mitts with embroidered recipes, sand dune mitten kits, ceramic necklaces that resemble a string of mushrooms, paper mache primeval seed pods filled with candy, penny whistles shaped like Dutch houses, and cheeseboards shaped like violins. My big ticket item is a vintage tin picnic basket filled with Manos yarns and a watercolor blanket design. These go fast, but I also have a line of tobacco tin lunch pails with smaller pillow kits inside.

I wear one of Kaffe Fassett's Romeo and Juliet coats over a red linen apron lined with sheepskin. My pockets are filled with ribbons, tissue paper and little hand pressed holiday cards as well as hot potatoes, a pocketknife, chocolate, duct tape and cash. I sit there on my stationary bike, peddling handmade goods and generating enough energy to power the Christmas lanterns and work off the bacon sandwiches.