shopping at the sparrow mart

okay, so sparrow mart.  i took about four bazillion pictures in the half hour we were in there, and although every single thing in there was pretty fantastic i'll hold myself back from posting all of them.

this is how excited we were to go in:

the hub was there too, i promise, and while the whole thing was his idea in the first place he was, shall we say, slightly less stoked than we were.  heh.

so it's a "market," yes?  well, in case you need some "cash"...

we grabbed a basket and got started.  there was so much to see, it was hard to decide what to look at first.  lucy sparrow and her team of seamstresses sewed up 31,000 pieces for this exhibition, and she personally hand painted each and every piece herself.  remember, everything here is made of or covered in felt - every.thing.  well, okay, not this.  but everything else!

it really did look just like a market, with aisles and aisles of products to buy.  except here, they were organized a little differently with some pretty hefty price tags.  i'd read that items ranged from $1 to $50,000...but i never did find any of those dollar bin items.  boo.

i was, of course, drawn to the candy aisle first.

there were lots of 7-11 style snacks.

meat and fish counters:

the most adorable fresh produce ever.

some of our most favorite dry goods.

the health & beauty department was well stocked with lots of important products.

 thirsty?  here, have a nice cold drink.

oh, you wanted something stronger?  how about something from this aisle:

need some cheese?

there are frozen goodies, too:

leave it to the bean to zero in on the sushi bar.  this kid is not a cheap date, fellas.

hot foods are available too.

even some cleaning products:

the checkout counter has those little last minute items you forget about till you're almost the door.

and if you venture behind the checkout area, there's this fun little exhibit.

before you enter the shop, they let you know that you're welcome to take as many pictures and videos as you want.  the one thing they ask is that you don't pick up items for pictures unless you know you're going to purchase them - which makes sense because while everything is carefully handmade, they're all so intricately detailed that they're really not meant to be handled a ton.  they're really not toys - it's art.  of course, we saw lots of people who didn't pay attention to the one rule (and found lots of their pictures later on as we looked at posts online).  and so we totally took advantage of the one photo op back in that room:

the bean was pretty amused when she took a closer look at what exactly was inside that cart...stuff she would never think to pick up.

she did manage to sweet-talk her daddy into letting her have something to take home, carefully wrapped by the nice ladies at the checkout counter.  and i'm sure her product of choice is no surprise to anyone.

it was such a fun half hour!  i could have spent much more time just wandering the aisles, looking at everything there.  i do have a ton of pictures though, so i can kind of revisit it anytime i want.  the shop is there for a month, although i read that her london pop-up sold out completely in two weeks.

and now the bean is re-inspired to make more felt creations.  maybe she'll be the next lucy sparrow one day.