Springtime in Paradise....

 The weather seems to be changing rather rapidly here in Paradise...although it is, of course, still a rainforest, with the requisite almost constant drip drip drip of early Spring...
We are now 'applying' as we have to do every year, for our little spot of  retail at the weekly Farmer's Market that  I attend, sometimes haphazardly (because of the weather)...
This year, have to decide if I want a permanent spot by paying seasonally, or if I want to drop-in...
Last year I had a permanent spot, but it proved to be a bit of a disaster...the powers that be decided to emphasize another section of the Market, naturally, the one I wasn't in, and it cost us much of our foot traffic...
It's a very difficult thing to find the spot that works for you in a large Market, but very frustrating to  be inadvertently sidelined, while paying the same amount as everyone else..this cost me last year, so trying to prevent a recurrence this time around by requesting a different location, although, technically, we are not allowed to do that.  *Sigh* not sure what will  happen, but stay tuned...
I have switched from  selling only hats and scarves to fewer of those, while still emphasizing baby hats, and added jewelry, which I'll sell alongside my crocheted items until Fall is upon us...
Surprisingly, at least to me,  still sell quite a few hats even in the  hot hot heat of summer..I assume, to tourists, who know that when they need them, they won't be here...
I also have applied, as usual,  for a  weekly Wednesday Market in a nearby town famous for its murals,  busloads of tourists there...
You  need to figure out where  (and when) your most successful  Market is - what works for you.
Social media (can you say "Etsy") has never worked for me...I leave a few things there, mostly to have a 'website' to refer to when applying at one-time fairs and holiday craft markets, etc. but really, I rarely sell anything there..I tried ArtFire (don't ask) and Zibbet, too, which I like for the wonderful people who run it, but never had a single sale from there, so just letting my 'shop' lapse, and I'll stick with a much-reduced 'studio' on Etsy for practicality's sake...
Many of the other Bloggers I follow seem to do quite well online, don't know their secret, but for me, it's strictly face-to-face that works...so, since I actually enjoy retail (I hear the screams out there!) guess I will continue until I am too decrepit to put up a canopy or haul boxes, etc, in and out of my truck....

See Ya..

I am going to give up blogging for awhile, if not permanently, for several reasons..
The first is that I'm really busy with making stuff for my online shops and my weekly market..don't know why I bother with the online, they sure don't sell there, whereas I sell hats every weekend here on my little Island..weird, that..
The second reason is that I feel as though I'm wasting my time..In two years the same three or four people have done what little commenting has been done on my site, and not much, at that. Don't get me wrong, I've "met" some nice folks and had some good emails back and forth with a few, but when you write and you get just a few readers and virtually no comments in many of my posts, it seems rather unfulfilling to continue.
The only time I ever have more than one or two comments (or none) is when I've had giveaways..to be expected I guess, but it is rather disappointing, all the same.
I'll miss certain folks (and you know who you are) but right now I just feel like I'm (proverbially) spittin' in the wind...

Ode to Aldergrove: Just Who Is Crossing the Line?

Since you are reading this blog, I can assume that you have noticed the two widgets just to the right; namely, the Ligit widget and the FlagCounter...I really enjoy them both, because they tell me, at the very least, who is reading or at least flashing through my blog, by country, hence the flags, or, if you click the recent reader's link on the green Ligit widget, you can see, further, which city, as well as country. I find this useful, since only two readers have commented at all since this blog began...guess I'm so devastatingly witty that there's nothing left to say, or no one actually READS it-so I can either stop blogging, or get my satisfaction where I can, and lately, that is discovering who comes along and from where, if not by name, then by city and country.
Which brings me to the theme of this particular tale: by far the place that shows up the most, every single day, and several times a day, is a smallish little 'area', Aldergrove-a community-within-a-community that is named Langley, a sprawling area in the Lower Mainland of British Coloumbia, bordering the Pacific Northwest of the US. Some here would argue that the whole damn thing is really just Surrey, but I prefer to stay quaint when the opportunity arises...
Don't really know much about Aldergrove itself, so looked it up through kindly old Professor Google-here goes-
The most well-known thing about Aldergrove, for me, was that there is a border crossing there, euphemistically referred to locally as the truck crossing, where, to avoid the huge lineups at the flashier Peace Arch crossing, most locals try first, when heading to the US to shop or whatever .
On the What to Do in Aldergrove site it was suggested that families might want to visit Dinotown, "fun-and educational too!" But what had me going was that Dinotown features a Petting Zoo-one shudders deliciously, imagining what sort of baby T-rex delights await there...
Oh and there's a Telephone Museum and Archives, which might tempt some thrill-seeker.

So, whoever my Aldergrove Follower is, I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate you on your exquisite taste, and most humbly apologize for not changing up the blog as often as you would so obviously desire, judging by the amount of times per day you link here..
And lastly, I do sincerely hope that my singling out my mystery admirer in Aldergrove does not discourage him or her from continuing to visit my site in the often-vain hope that I have written some new masterpiece of bloggery.
Aldergrovian, I salute you-and ask you to please, please comment, so that I know the click-on isn't machine-generated, or a vagrant fax signal gone terribly wrong...