I was playing Dwarf Fortress last night when I did something I'm a little ashamed to admit.
In the fall, I had a dwarf get a fey mood, and didn't take up any of my current workshops. Looking through his skills, I noticed he was a Competent clothier, and guessing that that might be it, built one, where he immediately took it and demanded silk. Luck would have it, the dwarven caravan was there at the time, and I didn't anything terribly, so I bought a bin of Cave Spider silk. He made a fairly valuable silk cape, and taking the fact that I had managed to procure it so easily as a good sign, I decided to keep the clothier shop, even though I didn't have any other faric. (I'm still having trouble believing that I actually asked the dwarf liasion to bring microcline.)
Winter blows through, then spring. The elves arrive, arriving on my depot and start unloading. And, as we all know, the elves bring nothing of real value, right? Some caged exotic animals (with an awful lot of injuries), some stupid wood crafts, some useless wood weapons, and about 20 bins of cloth.
It hit me. The elves had nearly 10 bins of Rope reed Cloth. For the first time, I had a legendary clothier (I hadn't bothered with textiles up until now). I experimentally bought a bin of cloth, paid for with some +obsidian tables+ for around 400 DB. I gave it to my clothier, told him to make some shoes and sew images onto them. I was pretty pleased when he managed to turn two pieces of Rope reed Cloth into a ≡<<≡Rope reed Shoe≡>>≡ worth easily 300 DB. I happly bought as much cloth from the elves as I could, paying them with the throwaway obsidian tables my mason was making (I was trying to get a dining room chock full of ≡Obsidian Table≡ and ☼Obsidian Throne☼, which I managed) and some regular obsidian rocks, until they were overburdened with the weight. They left later on, very happy with the trade. My clothier turned the six bins of cloth, worth roughly 400 DB each, into almost 20,000 DB worth of clothing and bags and stuff. I then made note to myself to remember to have plenty of stuff ready to trade to them next year.
And this morning I woke up and realized that I was looking forward to honestly trading with elves.