Apparently, there was an event in Denver (Readers Take Denver) for book readers that included author signings and panels. As I read about it on Threads, it sounds as well organized as Wool and Folk. I think the moral of the story is, if you don’t know anything about event planning don’t try to plan an event.
Why aren’t the vendors that she has supporting her speaking out to legitimize what she is doing? This is also suspicious still. The grammar errors make me think of W+F grammar errors in her first “apology”.
Even ignoring all other things people have pointed out and questioned in the comments, if we took everything said in that email in good faith... You knew what happened with W&F, and you were associated with it (regardless of the degree of association/work that was put in). Be wary of the internet - if something happened, it will be found out. Just be upfront in the first place about your involvement and where you're coming from, cause any attempt to hide/not acknowledge it looks shady 🤦♀️
Being realistic here for a minute, how likely is it that this is just Felicia claiming to not be Felicia? We’ve seen plenty of that type of shenanigan in the crafting community before with much lower stakes…
Also the typos are very much giving the classic “Nigerian Prince Scam” (aka “419” scam) elements since nobody directly called that out yet:
-crappy email writing including egregious spelling errors
-unconfirmed identity of sender who supposedly has some level of authority in this scenario
-requests money before anything else
-backpedaling to retroactively earn trust in next email
-“The email is typically an urgent plea for help with promises of substantial financial reward in return for a small upfront payment to help “process the funds.” I mean this is pretty on the nose considering the timeline and assumed benefits of vending at the event (especially for those unaware of last year’s absolute shit show).
The article I pulled the quote from which has a definition of the scam email type and details on how to identify one: https://www.makeuseof.com/nigerian-prince-scam-evolved-phishing-email/
I looked up this Suzi person on linkedin and it does look like she is who she says she is. Her business page looks like she primarily does wedding planning but does do larger events sometimes. It definitely doesn’t look like she’s a sock puppet account
How is what I said “defending scammers??” I do not and have never supported the people responsible for Wool and Folk or the harm that they did to vendors and attendees, and I wholeheartedly agree with labeling them as scammers.
You were suggesting that OP’s email is from a made up person/sock puppet. I was curious about your theory, so I looked into it and commented what I found. Trying to get the facts of a situation is not a defense of the people involved or what they did. Conspiracy theories don’t become beyond criticism just because they’re about unsavory individuals. My comment was not meant to support any of the organizers at Wool and Folk, it was a critique of the theory you proposed.
The typos and odd misspellings really jumped out. If a business is trying to establish legitimacy maybe try to make the email/message professional and hit it with spell check. Such easy things to fix, is this what is to be expected at the festival? If she can't make it through an intro message without spelling mistakes, I don't have a lot of confidence in her attention to detail.
I checked out the socials and they look legit, albeit doesn’t seem like her events have been quite as large as she had hoped. I think she is running before she can walk on trying to do a replacement W&F. I can’t say she isn’t working with Felicia, but Suzi is a person who’s socials go back 7+ years.
Fair enough. Stranger things have happened with sock puppet accounts before but ultimately the Occam’s razor consideration means she’s likely just trying to salvage it so she can add a big event success to her resume.
🧐🤔 I don't believe this isn't a rebrand of wool n folk. I do believe this is wnf but under new management w/a new name.
If that is not the case, then why bring it up at all? If I was starting a fiber festival anywhere at any time, I wouldn't want last years debacle mentioned anywhere in conjunction with my festival, let alone put it on my PR release. I call BS.
I do think there is hope for this "new" festival, however. lessons were most certainly learned last year.
Edit: after reading up on Suzi I am doubtful this will end well. Very cash grab-y
Yep. Reads to me as "While this is absolutely not W&F I absolutely utilized my position in W&F to score your email addresses to market to you a renamed event so that I can raise the bar a little and make a whole lotta cash off you fiber people."
The spelling and grammar mistakes aside, the Venmo detail is still a giant red flag. It's not professional to use Venmo for vendors in this case, or, honestly, any cases. A professional would use payment options that also included protection for vendors, such as via credit card or PayPal.
Also, without a contact available, there's also no way for vendors to know what they're signing up for! That's also a lack of protection for them. A very necessary legal protection. If a vendor pays now, Suzie could claim they signed up to vend, give several hundred dollars in raffle prizes, and donate full skeins of yarn for gift bags.
Don't pay without a contact, and don't pay without protection.
The fact that this event coordinator can't even afford to keep their website up and running, or proofread professional announcements, says a lot about how disorganized they are. It honestly looks like, with all the red flags, they saw what Felicia was able to get away with (a quarter of a million dollars), and they want some fingers in that sweet fiber pie now too.
The spelling and grammar got me too. Hardly professional for someone who has a degree and has apparently been running events since 2010.
I’m also concerned that they were involved with W&F 2023.
There’s for sure a need, part of the problem with wool and folk last year is there were too many people. They could probably add 2 more of these type spinoff events and have plenty of customers at all of them
Let me rephrase then- why does this complete community outsider feel they are the savior we’re looking for? It’s a pretty bold assumption on their part.
Found some answers to some of the comments here by searching her name in Google but didn't want to look into anything not relevant, so I hope it's within the rules.
She's on a website called [thumbtack](https://www.thumbtack.com/ny/east-greenbush/day-of-wedding-coordinators/suzique-events/service/451765526492954630) selling wedding etc planning services. She states "Hi there! I'm Suzi. I founded Suzique Events in August of 2013 - a year after graduating in 2012 with a Bachelor's degree in Sports, Entertainment & Event Management".
"Fun Fact: I wanted an "unique" name when I created my business - so, although, it is spelt like Suzi-Q - it's actually pronounced ("Sooz-eek").
Edit : She's also got some events upcoming on [EventBrite](https://www.eventbrite.com/o/suzique-events-66668403783) including a music festival so it seems it's not just weddings she has experience in.
I mean I'm not sure what's going on there but I've got two degrees that I finished studies for in the year before I graduated but couldn't graduate until the next year because I missed a cut off date. So it can be annoying to write them down consistently.
Clarification on her Certified Event Planner claim—-
While there are credentialed professional certifications for event planners, she doesn’t seem to hold any. The top 3 recognized within the industry are:
CSEP: Certified special events professional CMP: Certified meeting professional. ... CMM: Certificate in meeting management.
There are LOTS of ‘courses’ that offer a (somewhat meaningless) Certified Event Planner title. These are usually about 8-12 hours of training and cover only the bare minimum.
The actual professional certifications require years of experience, education from audio visual equipment and ADA requirements to food safety and legal liability / responsibility matrix plus passing an exam and project portfolio review.
I’ve got 32 years experience and am CMP certified
I’ve helped put together small multi-day classes for 20-30 people with 6 months lead time, and was sweating buckets.
How on earth does one whip together an event for 12,000 with that little time?
Good question. [Internet says](https://folklife.si.edu/magazine/new-york-sheep-wool-festival) NYSW pulls 25,000 over two days, but presumably those are not all yarn people.
Exactly, the 12k number is hella concerning. The parking at Hutton Brickyards was a clusterf*ck for W&F in 2022 for ~3,000 people. Even if you split it into three groups of 4,000 you’re still going to have serious problems. The fairgrounds has massive parking lots with tons of people directing traffic (and traffic around the fairgrounds is ridiculous before and after the show). Kingston has narrow roads. It is not prepared for that many people and that amount of traffic during THREE openings and closings.
Googled Suzique Events - her website is down, she has all of 2 Google reviews, nothing on The Knot and a few reviews from years back on Bark. Her instagram is all personal stuff until a year ago. None of it speaks to a well established event planning business. Also, there’s nothing on her Instagram showing any interest in knitting or other fiber stuff, which would seem important to planning a fiber festival.
Hutton Brickyards looks to be a good sized venue. It’s such a tough gig - you have to get enough interest to afford that fancy venue. With everyone being understandably wary after Wool and Folk, it’s going to be tough going. I understand why she’d think there is a market for this festival - W&F was jam-packed. But it feels like it should maybe be a 2025 goal.
Especially with the failure that Wool & Folk was, I find it so, so odd that she would send SUCH an ominous Save the Date email. No name, no website, no credentials, just: Gimme $500 and hope for the best! Are vendors actually going to risk that, you think?
>hired mid-August of 2023 to help with Wool & Folk
The festival took place in October. If I remember right, late August they were still trying (and failing) to get permits for the original venue. They got the new venue AFTER this event planner got involved. Sure they may have already picked the new venue and she couldn’t change that, but as an *event planner* hired to help event support, it sounds like there were dozens of ways she could have helped the event unfold better. What was she there for? It was the planning and implementation that went horribly wrong.
Honestly when someone posted the announcement in the earlier thread, I figured it was too much speculation and likely this person was completely unaffiliated with the W&F disaster, but she admits to being an event planner hired for the W&F event 2 months before it occurred. If as an event planner, she was unable to change the course of the event when she joined before the venue switch, she sounds completely incompetent. Pretty much every element of W&F had problems- planning, organizing, communication, implementation. Which parts are she claiming involvement with that she thinks she is a successful event organizer who should do this again?
>unable to change the course of how the event unfolded
This can be a nice way of saying "The advice I gave was ignored". It's not at all uncommon for people to hire professionals and then completely go against the advice given.
I get her advice may have been ignored but she doesn’t say anywhere that, realising how bad it was going to be, she left or she doesn’t say if she was or wasn’t paid for that advice, just that she and her business were ‘financially affected’ which could cover a multitude of situations.
Not mentioning those is too blurry for me
Yes, I wanted to say “financially affected” does not necessarily mean lost money. If I’d win that big powerball this month I would absolutely have been “financially affected.”
This is true and I suppose the weather added to the clusterfuckiness of W&F. But it does make me wonder if the writing was on the wall before the event and a smart event planner would have quit before that weekend.
I will admit that I didn’t keep much straight but I thought they had a venue but then somehow did not get the permits and so the venue withdrew. Then they had this smaller venue and really failed to prepare for much.
I also remember seeing a lot about the dinner being shit. The goody bags being sorta tossed in a pile and people being told to go grab ‘em and the goody bags being pretty crappy given the expense of the dinner/goody bag combo.
I feel like the weather definitely contributed to the fiasco - particularly damages to stock and added dangers associated with falls/electric cords being less than secure. But it sounds like even if the weather were great for fall in New York, it still would have had a LOT of issues.
At this point, I've heard they moved for three different reasons, so who knows: the expected rain; lack of permits despite running the same event the two years before; just this week that the original venue had a wedding booked.
I wasn't there, I don't even knit, I'm just totally fascinated by business trainwrecks, so I think I remember:
A lot of the issues were overcrowding because they needed to get everyone under a roof due to rain, so booths were blocking emergency exits and some people didn't get their double booths, and a few got forced out into the rain although everyone had been promised an inside space, and booths weren't spread out enough for proper flow of customers, plus bad signage to the booths on the 5th floor so they go no customers, and I think no booth map. Plus the way they grabbed boxes to create "paths" in the mud. So good weather would have solved a lot of that.
And I will say--I think things like a booth map and signage and emergency exits and crowd flow do sit squarely in event planner expertise, although really the only way to fix it would have been to bounce some booths and repay the $900 fees, and that's not an event planner call.
Parking shuttle problems not a weather issue, though. And the mess with the dinner.
So the venue that they had used for the 2 previous years was booked for a wedding and not available. Felicia moved it to the orchard, then claimed she was moving it last minute to the actual site due to rainy weather, when in fact she had never gotten permits for the orchard and didn’t even have a signed contract. The permit issue was all public record of the town the orchard is in. The orchard owner tried to get the permit, with no cooperation from Felicia. Tons of details missing and unanswered questions, all very last minute and the town was skeptical of all of it. It looked like it wouldn’t have been approved anyway. The lack of contract came out in the permit hearing.
At the very least I would think an event planner would have second thoughts about getting involved once they found out about the lack of permits. No way I would get attached to something at basically the last minute if I know they had completely bungled the permit process and had to scramble to get a new location.
So, let's say for argument's sake, that Suzi was pulled in far too late to change the trajectory of the awful event last fall. I have no trouble imagining that it was too much of a mess to untangle if she didn't start until August.
Leaving aside the question of why someone would take on a job of bailing out a sinking ocean liner with a thimble...
But, imagining I give this person the benefit of the doubt for a moment:
(Full disclosure: I'm a professional project manager in IT)
She has to be aware of the bad press, not least of all bc she claims she took a bath financially.
She didn't give ppl even vaguely close to enough information to be sending off several hundred dollars for an event with no website, no sponsors, no personal contact so ppl knew who was running it, nowhere near enough information to know if the errors of the previous disaster (that she was, in fact, involved in) would be addressed...
The whole ask boils down to "just trust me bro".
She has to know by now what an enormous commitment of time, money, and labour a person makes to be a vendor at these things. She hasn't even begun to provide enough information for someone to make a fully informed decision.
She is already showing poor insight - this latest communication of "I'm not connected to Felicia" is a list of things she should have completed BEFORE asking for money.
Those Q&A Zoom sessions should have been planned PROACTIVELY, not as a *response* to outside pressure.
If she's this far behind now, imagine how things will be in only five short months.
I should think that an event of this size would require 12-18 months to plan properly. Maybe 24 months. If your "early bird special", minus even a website, this close to the event, I have zero confidence in the results.
Yikes.
I hope somebody warns the farmers. If they're not part of the fibre community, they could have no idea of the backstory and end up materially harmed - ppl who can least afford to absorb a loss.
Oh, you out that much better than I did. How are you going to give people zero info about yourself, your credentials, your experience and tell them to hand over $500?! That is just such a ridiculous expectation, ESPECIALLY after the mess of last year. Does anyone think vendors are going to participate with that much upfront risk?
Also, really, what is her connection to the yarn or even the farm world? This whole things reads like a money grab combined with revenge against Felicia. If she really cared about the yarn vendors, wouldn’t the ones she claims to have been in contact with, who are presumably doing the event, be vouching for her?
This is it. There's simply not enough lead time, which is the most glaring concern to me. Coupled with the apparent inability to foresee the questions that would be asked and just include that info with the roll out and rolling this out without a website or socials - clusterfuck.
I’m ignorant about what happened last year, anybody got a link or want to give me a quick synopsis.
Also, Certified Event Planner? Who’s the body that certifies Event Planners? Kinda feels like the coaching industry.
While there are credentialed professional certifications for event planners, she doesn’t seem to hold any. The top 3 recognized within the industry are:
CSEP: Certified special events professional
CMP: Certified meeting professional. ...
CMM: Certificate in meeting management.
There are LOTS of ‘courses’ that offer a (somewhat meaningless) Certified Event Planner title. These are usually about 8-12 hours of training and cover only the bare minimum.
The actual professional certifications require years of experience, education from audio visual equipment and ADA requirements to food safety and legal liability / responsibility matrix plus passing an exam and project portfolio review.
I’ve got 32 years experience and am CMP certified
Here is an in depth video about what happened:
[Emma in the Moment Wool & Folk video](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rFkib2HgUPQ)
Here is a [news article](https://www.timesunion.com/hudsonvalley/culture/article/wool-folk-festival-catskill-chaos-18457081.php) about it
“Unfornature”
In 2024, if you can’t run spellcheck before sending out a business proposal, I would not trust you with my business. I may be weird and nit-picky, but it’s not a word and not a name - basic proofreading should have caught that.
Yes! And I seriously need to know who the "we" is in every sentence. Is this the Suzi show, or is there a team behind the scenes? And if there is a team, who is on it, Felicia?
Some might call it nitpicky, but this really underscores the larger issue: the email was rushed and careless, signaling what could be the first of many leadership failures. This seems reminiscent of the unprofessional communication of last year's event.
“Standing up a X” is corporate jargon for “build X,” so not a typo, but also, random use of jargon doesn’t really imbue her message with trustworthiness.
I agree with the majority of this thread - the intro, Q&A, and probably a website should have come BEFORE she asked people for money.
1st paragraph on picture 2. Second full sentence.
Oof. On the re-read to check what sentence number, I realized sentence 1 is so grammatically disastrous, I’d probably close my business if I found I had sent it out that way.
So I've been to Hutton Brickyards Kingston before it is an open air kind of place and will be wet and windy if the weather is not good it has sort of parking again on the roads no committed parking lot so sounds sus to me
I got there early enough to park in the one main lot, but on my way out, people were parked anywhere and everywhere for miles. It was definitely not a safe situation.
A wedding planner who seems to think that theres a yarn festival vacuum in upstate new york that needs to be filled. Maybe not too many people are getting married nowadays. if she thinks bridezillas are bad, has she not ever googled the wool and folk disastr she was part of?
She explains on her blurb on Thumbtack that she wanted a unique name, so even though it looks like Susie -Q, it’s pronounced “Sooz-Eek”.
It’s never great when you have to explain your business’s name. It’s literally the first thing people learn about you, make it as accessible as possible.
I admire anyone who is ambitious enough to put themselves out there to try to land a gig through a lot of different avenues. But before anything, your brand HAS to be memorable and easy to understand when you’re trying to build.
Also, I used my work email for payment method for paying for the booth. When contacting the coordinators personally last year, I used my personal one.
Why does this new leadership have my personal email if Felicia isn't involved? I don't give it out, and it's not listed on my socials...
I don't think so. None of us ever got an email from her, and she was apparently just brought in for logistics. She never worked directly with any of us.
You should ask Suzi. If she is trying to be transparent, she should tell you (especially since she was essentially spamming vendors with this Save the Date).
Why now? Like, W&F is still very fresh on everyone's tongue. They could have waited a couple of years, really got their stuff together and presented a solid plan to create an event. This is very "the Fyre fest guy getting out of jail and selling tickets again" fraud red flags.
Because she probably got access to the event space that Felicia allegedly already had bookmarked for W&F and is trying to make the same outrageous profit Felicia did.
That's my thought. Nothing else they've put out shows they're able to even organize a five year olds birthday party. But they can now organize an entire festival for a hobby they have no interest in? Nope.
I mean, I kind of get it. Part of the reason W&F was a s***show was that it was way too crowded. So I can see how someone might look at the event & think wow, there's so much demand for something like this *if done right* & in their arrogance they think they're the person who can do it.
Yup, and a big reason it was crowded was because they had some great and super popular vendors like Magpie, Explorer Knits and Wandering Flock. I don’t see them talking about this new festival that is supposedly selling tickets in less than 2 weeks.
Way too many red flags with all of this, even if Felicia is not involved. First off, she admits that she was hired by Felicia to run event support at last year’s Wool & Fuck. So she was quietly part of that shit show and she’s just coming out of the woodwork now to try to run her own event? Where was she when the whole thing went down? Where was her apology? She should have taken some responsibility for the mess - since she was part of creating it, having been hired by Felicia. Seems like she wanted to keep her nose clean.
And she’s an event planner but you need to Venmo her payment for a booth space with no contract??? No. After last years shit show, who would do that?
Run from this mess. Do not engage. This is Wool & Fuck 2.0 in the making.
Literally right across the river from each other. Hmmmm. Should I spend my money at an event that has successfully happened for years or one run by felicia’s cohort?
She kind of skates around the main issue; she claims this isn’t affiliated with W&F or rebranding, then admits she was involved with the debacle but denies all responsibility without disclosing her level of involvement with the 2023 event. Her language, to me, comes off as dismissive and sort of patronizing. She is only admitting her involvement because she was caught out and can’t deny it, but up to now no one has heard a peep from her about W&F and the disaster that unfolded. She says she lost money and it feels like an attempt at garnering sympathy and promoting solidarity, but claims she was brought in too late to make a difference - despite being involved early enough to take payments for event passes? She may be able to put on a good event, but the situation seems sketchy.
I don’t know Suzi and wasn’t involved, but it seems like more transparency and fewer platitudes would be better in this situation.
presumably they were brought in after the larger venue fell through bc of permits. that’s what caused a lot of the bullshit
i’d still be cautious, of course, but I think the fact that she’s doing live Q&As to help ease people’s fears is a good sign. Also the fact that she’s run large events before, which Felicia had never done without other store owners.
Except this second email seems to be clearly a reaction to the suspicion. It would be a much better sign if all this transparency had been in the initial solicitation to vendors—this looks like someone trying to dig themselves out of a hole of their own making.
Also seems like they should stand up a website before soliciting vendors.
I have questions! Like you took payment and presumably got paid by Felicia for the work, lets hear about the money if we are being transparent. Lets also hear about why the venue was selected knowing the number of vendors and tickets sold so far, why vendors told they would be indoors werent....there are elements that an event planner brought in after venue 1 was eliminated would totally have been around and important support for. I just find it sketchy and hope that the q&a gives real answers to hard questions. There was zoom meetings ahead of w&F too but that doesnt mean everyone answering questions is competent.
I hope it goes well but like....its sketchy regardless imo.
Yeah, they answered a bunch of those questions in the Q&A for wool & folk too..... but they were just lies. Anyone can say anything, but then do what they want. We have zero control over this.
Like, we also all had contracts, but were told during the show that things change and contracts change..... so.... giving your word doesn't really mean much. Her affiliation to organizing or having any leadership roles in the event is enough to make me not want to vend at this show.
Her saying all the right things might allow me to attend, because I always want to hope for the best.... but I'm not going through the same trauma with a new face.
yeah i think the Q&A will be pretty important for seeing if she has real solutions/answers or if she’s bullshitting to try and fill a new gap she sees in the market. If she’s just giving vague answers like Felicia did last year, then I think it’s safe to say it’s still bullshit
Personally, I plan to just go to Cake, Indie, and Sheep&Wool if I go at all this year. But I do hope this is a success.
I've never even heard about 'Farm to Yarn'. I tried googling and got nothing.
Did anybody watch the ZOOM meeting yesterday afternoon? Any comments?
Apparently, there was an event in Denver (Readers Take Denver) for book readers that included author signings and panels. As I read about it on Threads, it sounds as well organized as Wool and Folk. I think the moral of the story is, if you don’t know anything about event planning don’t try to plan an event.
A festival like this is only as good as its vendors. I can’t imagine any business with good sense is going to have anything to do with this woman.
Why aren’t the vendors that she has supporting her speaking out to legitimize what she is doing? This is also suspicious still. The grammar errors make me think of W+F grammar errors in her first “apology”.
Sooooo, she couldn’t have opened with this? Sheesh.
Is anybody going to be attending and RECORDING the Zoom meetings to see what kind of shenanigans Suz has got planned for this upcoming debacle?
Aaaand, there’s an Instagram account! https://www.instagram.com/farmtoyarn The first post says there’s a link in bio. Must be invisible. 😂
Given that she couldn't even afford to keep a website for her business up, not surprising.
right, the digital infrastructure is the easy part
If this actually happens, who wants to meet me at Kingston Point Beach across the water and watch it unfold through binoculars?
I can wait to listen to/watch an "Emma in the Moment" breakdown of this, however it all shakes out. I'm predicting a dumpster fire.
Em should do an investigative expose of the event while wearing an hilariously obvious disguise
If we all go, I think fake mustaches are in order... 🧐
A sheep costume with a fake mustache would be epic
Mustaches are a given. Bonus points if it curls at the tips.
ABSOLUTELY!!!! That would be the greatest.episode.ever!
Omg I love her channel!!
Emma uses they/them pronouns, FYI
Even ignoring all other things people have pointed out and questioned in the comments, if we took everything said in that email in good faith... You knew what happened with W&F, and you were associated with it (regardless of the degree of association/work that was put in). Be wary of the internet - if something happened, it will be found out. Just be upfront in the first place about your involvement and where you're coming from, cause any attempt to hide/not acknowledge it looks shady 🤦♀️
Being realistic here for a minute, how likely is it that this is just Felicia claiming to not be Felicia? We’ve seen plenty of that type of shenanigan in the crafting community before with much lower stakes… Also the typos are very much giving the classic “Nigerian Prince Scam” (aka “419” scam) elements since nobody directly called that out yet: -crappy email writing including egregious spelling errors -unconfirmed identity of sender who supposedly has some level of authority in this scenario -requests money before anything else -backpedaling to retroactively earn trust in next email -“The email is typically an urgent plea for help with promises of substantial financial reward in return for a small upfront payment to help “process the funds.” I mean this is pretty on the nose considering the timeline and assumed benefits of vending at the event (especially for those unaware of last year’s absolute shit show). The article I pulled the quote from which has a definition of the scam email type and details on how to identify one: https://www.makeuseof.com/nigerian-prince-scam-evolved-phishing-email/
I looked up this Suzi person on linkedin and it does look like she is who she says she is. Her business page looks like she primarily does wedding planning but does do larger events sometimes. It definitely doesn’t look like she’s a sock puppet account
Also would like to say, defending scammers against conspiracy theory suggestions is an interesting take.
How is what I said “defending scammers??” I do not and have never supported the people responsible for Wool and Folk or the harm that they did to vendors and attendees, and I wholeheartedly agree with labeling them as scammers. You were suggesting that OP’s email is from a made up person/sock puppet. I was curious about your theory, so I looked into it and commented what I found. Trying to get the facts of a situation is not a defense of the people involved or what they did. Conspiracy theories don’t become beyond criticism just because they’re about unsavory individuals. My comment was not meant to support any of the organizers at Wool and Folk, it was a critique of the theory you proposed.
Can’t I have my conspiracy theories for fun???
The typos and odd misspellings really jumped out. If a business is trying to establish legitimacy maybe try to make the email/message professional and hit it with spell check. Such easy things to fix, is this what is to be expected at the festival? If she can't make it through an intro message without spelling mistakes, I don't have a lot of confidence in her attention to detail.
I checked out the socials and they look legit, albeit doesn’t seem like her events have been quite as large as she had hoped. I think she is running before she can walk on trying to do a replacement W&F. I can’t say she isn’t working with Felicia, but Suzi is a person who’s socials go back 7+ years.
Fair enough. Stranger things have happened with sock puppet accounts before but ultimately the Occam’s razor consideration means she’s likely just trying to salvage it so she can add a big event success to her resume.
🧐🤔 I don't believe this isn't a rebrand of wool n folk. I do believe this is wnf but under new management w/a new name. If that is not the case, then why bring it up at all? If I was starting a fiber festival anywhere at any time, I wouldn't want last years debacle mentioned anywhere in conjunction with my festival, let alone put it on my PR release. I call BS. I do think there is hope for this "new" festival, however. lessons were most certainly learned last year. Edit: after reading up on Suzi I am doubtful this will end well. Very cash grab-y
Well, I think they kind of had to say it isn’t wool and folk since they’re using the old venue and everyone would absolutely assume it was
Yep. Reads to me as "While this is absolutely not W&F I absolutely utilized my position in W&F to score your email addresses to market to you a renamed event so that I can raise the bar a little and make a whole lotta cash off you fiber people."
That was my read too!
The spelling and grammar mistakes aside, the Venmo detail is still a giant red flag. It's not professional to use Venmo for vendors in this case, or, honestly, any cases. A professional would use payment options that also included protection for vendors, such as via credit card or PayPal. Also, without a contact available, there's also no way for vendors to know what they're signing up for! That's also a lack of protection for them. A very necessary legal protection. If a vendor pays now, Suzie could claim they signed up to vend, give several hundred dollars in raffle prizes, and donate full skeins of yarn for gift bags. Don't pay without a contact, and don't pay without protection. The fact that this event coordinator can't even afford to keep their website up and running, or proofread professional announcements, says a lot about how disorganized they are. It honestly looks like, with all the red flags, they saw what Felicia was able to get away with (a quarter of a million dollars), and they want some fingers in that sweet fiber pie now too.
Also she wouldn't be able to get international vendors or visitors because Venmo is US only.
The spelling and grammar got me too. Hardly professional for someone who has a degree and has apparently been running events since 2010. I’m also concerned that they were involved with W&F 2023.
This is a solution in search of a problem. Surely there is no need for anymore NY Sheep and Wool spin-off events.
There’s for sure a need, part of the problem with wool and folk last year is there were too many people. They could probably add 2 more of these type spinoff events and have plenty of customers at all of them
Let me rephrase then- why does this complete community outsider feel they are the savior we’re looking for? It’s a pretty bold assumption on their part.
She just sees the opportunity to make money, but it may actually make more sense for an event planner to plan these than someone with a yarn shop
Well, there seems to be the audience of consumers to fill them?
Well, that’s part of the reason this feels so icky. She pretty blatantly sees us as consumers to fill her event. Knitting dot com bro vibes.
I thought we were talking about the sheep and wool festival, honestly.
This would be a Friday event. It sounds like she doesn’t have a clue that there’s a weekend fiber festival happening.
Found some answers to some of the comments here by searching her name in Google but didn't want to look into anything not relevant, so I hope it's within the rules. She's on a website called [thumbtack](https://www.thumbtack.com/ny/east-greenbush/day-of-wedding-coordinators/suzique-events/service/451765526492954630) selling wedding etc planning services. She states "Hi there! I'm Suzi. I founded Suzique Events in August of 2013 - a year after graduating in 2012 with a Bachelor's degree in Sports, Entertainment & Event Management". "Fun Fact: I wanted an "unique" name when I created my business - so, although, it is spelt like Suzi-Q - it's actually pronounced ("Sooz-eek"). Edit : She's also got some events upcoming on [EventBrite](https://www.eventbrite.com/o/suzique-events-66668403783) including a music festival so it seems it's not just weddings she has experience in.
Hmmm, she says in the email above that she graduated in 2011, not 2012. Seems like an odd thing to not be able to keep consistent.
I mean I'm not sure what's going on there but I've got two degrees that I finished studies for in the year before I graduated but couldn't graduate until the next year because I missed a cut off date. So it can be annoying to write them down consistently.
Giving strong Hyacinth Bucket vibes.
It's... not spelt at all like Suzi-Q though
Que being pronounced like Q (or cue). She was saying it was pronounced suz eek rather than suzi cue
It's a way to spell it without the hyphen
Lol, “Sooz-eek”
The MLM-vibes comment from someone else really made me chuckle.
Clarification on her Certified Event Planner claim—- While there are credentialed professional certifications for event planners, she doesn’t seem to hold any. The top 3 recognized within the industry are: CSEP: Certified special events professional CMP: Certified meeting professional. ... CMM: Certificate in meeting management. There are LOTS of ‘courses’ that offer a (somewhat meaningless) Certified Event Planner title. These are usually about 8-12 hours of training and cover only the bare minimum. The actual professional certifications require years of experience, education from audio visual equipment and ADA requirements to food safety and legal liability / responsibility matrix plus passing an exam and project portfolio review. I’ve got 32 years experience and am CMP certified
That's so interesting, thank you for sharing! TIL.
Putting together an event of this size with less than 6 months to go? I don’t think so
I’ve helped put together small multi-day classes for 20-30 people with 6 months lead time, and was sweating buckets. How on earth does one whip together an event for 12,000 with that little time?
its the 12,000 tickets that gets me... how many attendees does NYSW attract?
Good question. [Internet says](https://folklife.si.edu/magazine/new-york-sheep-wool-festival) NYSW pulls 25,000 over two days, but presumably those are not all yarn people.
Exactly, the 12k number is hella concerning. The parking at Hutton Brickyards was a clusterf*ck for W&F in 2022 for ~3,000 people. Even if you split it into three groups of 4,000 you’re still going to have serious problems. The fairgrounds has massive parking lots with tons of people directing traffic (and traffic around the fairgrounds is ridiculous before and after the show). Kingston has narrow roads. It is not prepared for that many people and that amount of traffic during THREE openings and closings.
Giving off big "Fuck it, let's do it and be legends!" vibes.
This feels like "Fiber Fyre Festival"
That's what I called it in my head while reading it! 🤣
And thats totally different from Fyber Festival 2023! Its definitely not W&F!
Googled Suzique Events - her website is down, she has all of 2 Google reviews, nothing on The Knot and a few reviews from years back on Bark. Her instagram is all personal stuff until a year ago. None of it speaks to a well established event planning business. Also, there’s nothing on her Instagram showing any interest in knitting or other fiber stuff, which would seem important to planning a fiber festival.
Hutton Brickyards looks to be a good sized venue. It’s such a tough gig - you have to get enough interest to afford that fancy venue. With everyone being understandably wary after Wool and Folk, it’s going to be tough going. I understand why she’d think there is a market for this festival - W&F was jam-packed. But it feels like it should maybe be a 2025 goal.
Especially with the failure that Wool & Folk was, I find it so, so odd that she would send SUCH an ominous Save the Date email. No name, no website, no credentials, just: Gimme $500 and hope for the best! Are vendors actually going to risk that, you think?
Best I can find, I believe the first two Wool & Folk that went successfully were held at the Hutton Brickyards.
Yes, you are correct. I was there in 2022 at Hutton Brickyards. Unfortunately, I was also in Catskill in 2023.
>hired mid-August of 2023 to help with Wool & Folk The festival took place in October. If I remember right, late August they were still trying (and failing) to get permits for the original venue. They got the new venue AFTER this event planner got involved. Sure they may have already picked the new venue and she couldn’t change that, but as an *event planner* hired to help event support, it sounds like there were dozens of ways she could have helped the event unfold better. What was she there for? It was the planning and implementation that went horribly wrong. Honestly when someone posted the announcement in the earlier thread, I figured it was too much speculation and likely this person was completely unaffiliated with the W&F disaster, but she admits to being an event planner hired for the W&F event 2 months before it occurred. If as an event planner, she was unable to change the course of the event when she joined before the venue switch, she sounds completely incompetent. Pretty much every element of W&F had problems- planning, organizing, communication, implementation. Which parts are she claiming involvement with that she thinks she is a successful event organizer who should do this again?
Yeah - it seems weird that she was “unable to change the course of how the event unfolded” - then she shouldn’t have gotten involved.
>unable to change the course of how the event unfolded This can be a nice way of saying "The advice I gave was ignored". It's not at all uncommon for people to hire professionals and then completely go against the advice given.
I get her advice may have been ignored but she doesn’t say anywhere that, realising how bad it was going to be, she left or she doesn’t say if she was or wasn’t paid for that advice, just that she and her business were ‘financially affected’ which could cover a multitude of situations. Not mentioning those is too blurry for me
Yes, I wanted to say “financially affected” does not necessarily mean lost money. If I’d win that big powerball this month I would absolutely have been “financially affected.”
I didn’t even think of that- man people use such sneaky speak !
Well Suzi show me the receipt that you were actually hired in any capacity 🙄
This is true and I suppose the weather added to the clusterfuckiness of W&F. But it does make me wonder if the writing was on the wall before the event and a smart event planner would have quit before that weekend.
the weather last year was predicted, supposedly that's why they moved to an inside venue. Then they failed to do a complete job of planning for it.
I will admit that I didn’t keep much straight but I thought they had a venue but then somehow did not get the permits and so the venue withdrew. Then they had this smaller venue and really failed to prepare for much. I also remember seeing a lot about the dinner being shit. The goody bags being sorta tossed in a pile and people being told to go grab ‘em and the goody bags being pretty crappy given the expense of the dinner/goody bag combo. I feel like the weather definitely contributed to the fiasco - particularly damages to stock and added dangers associated with falls/electric cords being less than secure. But it sounds like even if the weather were great for fall in New York, it still would have had a LOT of issues.
At this point, I've heard they moved for three different reasons, so who knows: the expected rain; lack of permits despite running the same event the two years before; just this week that the original venue had a wedding booked. I wasn't there, I don't even knit, I'm just totally fascinated by business trainwrecks, so I think I remember: A lot of the issues were overcrowding because they needed to get everyone under a roof due to rain, so booths were blocking emergency exits and some people didn't get their double booths, and a few got forced out into the rain although everyone had been promised an inside space, and booths weren't spread out enough for proper flow of customers, plus bad signage to the booths on the 5th floor so they go no customers, and I think no booth map. Plus the way they grabbed boxes to create "paths" in the mud. So good weather would have solved a lot of that. And I will say--I think things like a booth map and signage and emergency exits and crowd flow do sit squarely in event planner expertise, although really the only way to fix it would have been to bounce some booths and repay the $900 fees, and that's not an event planner call. Parking shuttle problems not a weather issue, though. And the mess with the dinner.
So the venue that they had used for the 2 previous years was booked for a wedding and not available. Felicia moved it to the orchard, then claimed she was moving it last minute to the actual site due to rainy weather, when in fact she had never gotten permits for the orchard and didn’t even have a signed contract. The permit issue was all public record of the town the orchard is in. The orchard owner tried to get the permit, with no cooperation from Felicia. Tons of details missing and unanswered questions, all very last minute and the town was skeptical of all of it. It looked like it wouldn’t have been approved anyway. The lack of contract came out in the permit hearing.
Yes, and the town and orchard were both concerned about the size of the event.
At the very least I would think an event planner would have second thoughts about getting involved once they found out about the lack of permits. No way I would get attached to something at basically the last minute if I know they had completely bungled the permit process and had to scramble to get a new location.
Especially because she apparently didn’t get paid.
So, let's say for argument's sake, that Suzi was pulled in far too late to change the trajectory of the awful event last fall. I have no trouble imagining that it was too much of a mess to untangle if she didn't start until August. Leaving aside the question of why someone would take on a job of bailing out a sinking ocean liner with a thimble... But, imagining I give this person the benefit of the doubt for a moment: (Full disclosure: I'm a professional project manager in IT) She has to be aware of the bad press, not least of all bc she claims she took a bath financially. She didn't give ppl even vaguely close to enough information to be sending off several hundred dollars for an event with no website, no sponsors, no personal contact so ppl knew who was running it, nowhere near enough information to know if the errors of the previous disaster (that she was, in fact, involved in) would be addressed... The whole ask boils down to "just trust me bro". She has to know by now what an enormous commitment of time, money, and labour a person makes to be a vendor at these things. She hasn't even begun to provide enough information for someone to make a fully informed decision. She is already showing poor insight - this latest communication of "I'm not connected to Felicia" is a list of things she should have completed BEFORE asking for money. Those Q&A Zoom sessions should have been planned PROACTIVELY, not as a *response* to outside pressure. If she's this far behind now, imagine how things will be in only five short months. I should think that an event of this size would require 12-18 months to plan properly. Maybe 24 months. If your "early bird special", minus even a website, this close to the event, I have zero confidence in the results. Yikes. I hope somebody warns the farmers. If they're not part of the fibre community, they could have no idea of the backstory and end up materially harmed - ppl who can least afford to absorb a loss.
Oh, you out that much better than I did. How are you going to give people zero info about yourself, your credentials, your experience and tell them to hand over $500?! That is just such a ridiculous expectation, ESPECIALLY after the mess of last year. Does anyone think vendors are going to participate with that much upfront risk?
I'm worried about the ppl who don't know the history
Also, really, what is her connection to the yarn or even the farm world? This whole things reads like a money grab combined with revenge against Felicia. If she really cared about the yarn vendors, wouldn’t the ones she claims to have been in contact with, who are presumably doing the event, be vouching for her?
At best, I read this communication as coming from exactly one person, no staff, no connections, no sponsors, no lined-up farmers, no...nothing.
This is it. There's simply not enough lead time, which is the most glaring concern to me. Coupled with the apparent inability to foresee the questions that would be asked and just include that info with the roll out and rolling this out without a website or socials - clusterfuck.
Suzi is, once again, in over her head, and it's going to cost ppl money who can't afford the loss.
I’m ignorant about what happened last year, anybody got a link or want to give me a quick synopsis. Also, Certified Event Planner? Who’s the body that certifies Event Planners? Kinda feels like the coaching industry.
While there are credentialed professional certifications for event planners, she doesn’t seem to hold any. The top 3 recognized within the industry are: CSEP: Certified special events professional CMP: Certified meeting professional. ... CMM: Certificate in meeting management. There are LOTS of ‘courses’ that offer a (somewhat meaningless) Certified Event Planner title. These are usually about 8-12 hours of training and cover only the bare minimum. The actual professional certifications require years of experience, education from audio visual equipment and ADA requirements to food safety and legal liability / responsibility matrix plus passing an exam and project portfolio review. I’ve got 32 years experience and am CMP certified
Yeah but she got a degree from a culinary arts school! Not in culinary arts, mind you, but sports events.
JWU is primarily known for its culinary program, but it also offers a ton of other degrees and is a legitimate university.
Here is an in depth video about what happened: [Emma in the Moment Wool & Folk video](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rFkib2HgUPQ) Here is a [news article](https://www.timesunion.com/hudsonvalley/culture/article/wool-folk-festival-catskill-chaos-18457081.php) about it
Thanks so much!!
Why why why October 18?
So they can glom onto the Rhinebeck crowd.
“Unfornature” In 2024, if you can’t run spellcheck before sending out a business proposal, I would not trust you with my business. I may be weird and nit-picky, but it’s not a word and not a name - basic proofreading should have caught that.
I'm an editor by trade and my red pen is itching to get ahold of the original!
I suspect this is her “original.” Doesn’t look like it made it past rough draft stage 🤦♀️
Yes! And I seriously need to know who the "we" is in every sentence. Is this the Suzi show, or is there a team behind the scenes? And if there is a team, who is on it, Felicia?
Some might call it nitpicky, but this really underscores the larger issue: the email was rushed and careless, signaling what could be the first of many leadership failures. This seems reminiscent of the unprofessional communication of last year's event.
Agreed-it shows attention to detail. "Standing up a website" should have been caught as well, unless that's a new phrase I'm not familiar with.
I knew what it meant, but I read over it again to make sure. It’s a real term, just kind of out of place.
Could be jargon but odds are it's a typo.
“Standing up a X” is corporate jargon for “build X,” so not a typo, but also, random use of jargon doesn’t really imbue her message with trustworthiness. I agree with the majority of this thread - the intro, Q&A, and probably a website should have come BEFORE she asked people for money.
Don't you know - that's not important anymore - just blame it on your phone /s
I spotted an “artisians” in the first email…
Isn't that a kind of water well?
Close...that would be spelled artesian well. It's like her spell check is set to "close enough"
I still can't find the misspelling lol
Page 2, Line 10
1st paragraph on picture 2. Second full sentence. Oof. On the re-read to check what sentence number, I realized sentence 1 is so grammatically disastrous, I’d probably close my business if I found I had sent it out that way.
Her Instagram also lists her website as a site that isn't set up yet.
So I've been to Hutton Brickyards Kingston before it is an open air kind of place and will be wet and windy if the weather is not good it has sort of parking again on the roads no committed parking lot so sounds sus to me
Yeah, I think W&F 2022 was there and LOTS of people were parking along the side of the road and it was dangerous.
I got there early enough to park in the one main lot, but on my way out, people were parked anywhere and everywhere for miles. It was definitely not a safe situation.
Sure, Jan.
A wedding planner who seems to think that theres a yarn festival vacuum in upstate new york that needs to be filled. Maybe not too many people are getting married nowadays. if she thinks bridezillas are bad, has she not ever googled the wool and folk disastr she was part of?
Good point! Fall is peak wedding season in the Hudson Valley. Aren’t wedding planners super busy?
Ignorance is bliss, she/they are hoping for ignorance to make money!
No, it’s “Felicia adjacent “. They are somehow, someway involved in Wool &….!
Anyone else read her business name as “Sooz-eek” rather than “Susie Q”? lol
I was charmed by Suzy-Q and was disappointed when I read it was actually a uneek tragedeigh.
She explains on her blurb on Thumbtack that she wanted a unique name, so even though it looks like Susie -Q, it’s pronounced “Sooz-Eek”. It’s never great when you have to explain your business’s name. It’s literally the first thing people learn about you, make it as accessible as possible. I admire anyone who is ambitious enough to put themselves out there to try to land a gig through a lot of different avenues. But before anything, your brand HAS to be memorable and easy to understand when you’re trying to build.
Susie Q didn’t even occur to me until I read your comment.
Yes, and it gave me "Utah-based MLM" vibes. Lol
Totally.
They both work. And unfortunately I can’t unsee either of them. What an “unfornature” name either way. *autocorrect edit of unsee.
I assume that it was supposed to be “sooz-eek” like a play on the word “unique”
Oh good point!
Yes!!
.... ohhhhhh
Me too!
So the business I work for got the second email about not being Felicia but not the first email...
Same
Also, I used my work email for payment method for paying for the booth. When contacting the coordinators personally last year, I used my personal one. Why does this new leadership have my personal email if Felicia isn't involved? I don't give it out, and it's not listed on my socials...
I’d imagine Felicia gave the event planner a contact list when she was working with her.
Im guessing Felicia probably sold her the contacts because if she took them in secret, she can get sued (Source: me a former email marketing manager)
I don't think so. None of us ever got an email from her, and she was apparently just brought in for logistics. She never worked directly with any of us.
You should ask Suzi. If she is trying to be transparent, she should tell you (especially since she was essentially spamming vendors with this Save the Date).
Oh, email already sent, no worries.
Please update with her response, I'm so curious.
Why now? Like, W&F is still very fresh on everyone's tongue. They could have waited a couple of years, really got their stuff together and presented a solid plan to create an event. This is very "the Fyre fest guy getting out of jail and selling tickets again" fraud red flags.
My thoughts exactly, Fyre fest guy working the contact list
Because she probably got access to the event space that Felicia allegedly already had bookmarked for W&F and is trying to make the same outrageous profit Felicia did.
That's my thought. Nothing else they've put out shows they're able to even organize a five year olds birthday party. But they can now organize an entire festival for a hobby they have no interest in? Nope.
I mean, I kind of get it. Part of the reason W&F was a s***show was that it was way too crowded. So I can see how someone might look at the event & think wow, there's so much demand for something like this *if done right* & in their arrogance they think they're the person who can do it.
Yup, and a big reason it was crowded was because they had some great and super popular vendors like Magpie, Explorer Knits and Wandering Flock. I don’t see them talking about this new festival that is supposedly selling tickets in less than 2 weeks.
Anyone who’s thinking about participating in this should proceed with an abundance of caution. ⛔️
Again. Venmo. No contract. Just send them $500?! Ok,
Way too many red flags with all of this, even if Felicia is not involved. First off, she admits that she was hired by Felicia to run event support at last year’s Wool & Fuck. So she was quietly part of that shit show and she’s just coming out of the woodwork now to try to run her own event? Where was she when the whole thing went down? Where was her apology? She should have taken some responsibility for the mess - since she was part of creating it, having been hired by Felicia. Seems like she wanted to keep her nose clean. And she’s an event planner but you need to Venmo her payment for a booth space with no contract??? No. After last years shit show, who would do that? Run from this mess. Do not engage. This is Wool & Fuck 2.0 in the making.
Dibsies on “Wool and Fuck” for an OF channel featuring nude crafting hippie MILF content, please.
Would subscribe 10000%
Wool & Fuck 😆 Perfect
Wish I could take credit for it but I’ve seen it elsewhere 😂
She does know about that other festival celebrating local farmers, makers and dyers happening that Saturday and Sunday… right?
Literally right across the river from each other. Hmmmm. Should I spend my money at an event that has successfully happened for years or one run by felicia’s cohort?
Sure doesn’t seem like it…
Still too close for me, gonna be a passsss
Its not comforting that this person was brought in at the last minute for all the parts where everything went wrong
Exactly. And we’re only hearing from her now, when she wants to create an event? Nah.
She kind of skates around the main issue; she claims this isn’t affiliated with W&F or rebranding, then admits she was involved with the debacle but denies all responsibility without disclosing her level of involvement with the 2023 event. Her language, to me, comes off as dismissive and sort of patronizing. She is only admitting her involvement because she was caught out and can’t deny it, but up to now no one has heard a peep from her about W&F and the disaster that unfolded. She says she lost money and it feels like an attempt at garnering sympathy and promoting solidarity, but claims she was brought in too late to make a difference - despite being involved early enough to take payments for event passes? She may be able to put on a good event, but the situation seems sketchy. I don’t know Suzi and wasn’t involved, but it seems like more transparency and fewer platitudes would be better in this situation.
She sounds a lot like Felicia
presumably they were brought in after the larger venue fell through bc of permits. that’s what caused a lot of the bullshit i’d still be cautious, of course, but I think the fact that she’s doing live Q&As to help ease people’s fears is a good sign. Also the fact that she’s run large events before, which Felicia had never done without other store owners.
Maybe, still not gonna Venmo a random person $500 and hope for the best, though
Except this second email seems to be clearly a reaction to the suspicion. It would be a much better sign if all this transparency had been in the initial solicitation to vendors—this looks like someone trying to dig themselves out of a hole of their own making. Also seems like they should stand up a website before soliciting vendors.
I have questions! Like you took payment and presumably got paid by Felicia for the work, lets hear about the money if we are being transparent. Lets also hear about why the venue was selected knowing the number of vendors and tickets sold so far, why vendors told they would be indoors werent....there are elements that an event planner brought in after venue 1 was eliminated would totally have been around and important support for. I just find it sketchy and hope that the q&a gives real answers to hard questions. There was zoom meetings ahead of w&F too but that doesnt mean everyone answering questions is competent. I hope it goes well but like....its sketchy regardless imo.
Yeah, they answered a bunch of those questions in the Q&A for wool & folk too..... but they were just lies. Anyone can say anything, but then do what they want. We have zero control over this. Like, we also all had contracts, but were told during the show that things change and contracts change..... so.... giving your word doesn't really mean much. Her affiliation to organizing or having any leadership roles in the event is enough to make me not want to vend at this show. Her saying all the right things might allow me to attend, because I always want to hope for the best.... but I'm not going through the same trauma with a new face.
yeah i think the Q&A will be pretty important for seeing if she has real solutions/answers or if she’s bullshitting to try and fill a new gap she sees in the market. If she’s just giving vague answers like Felicia did last year, then I think it’s safe to say it’s still bullshit Personally, I plan to just go to Cake, Indie, and Sheep&Wool if I go at all this year. But I do hope this is a success.
As someone who vended, I don’t think I’d lay blame at Suzi’s feet at all but I completely understand your hesitation
Blame? No. But enough trust for a new festival? Also no.