Should I Stress or Should I Roll...

Oh dear, just looking at my holiday craft fair schedule...and worrying, just a tiny bit...on the one hand, if I do really well at all of them I'll be happy (having written off this year, generally speaking, as a not so great one financially, at least) but if I do too well too soon, what'll I do?
I feel as if I have to quickly create a bunch of new stuff on the off-chance that I may have little to offer by the end of November...on the other hand, if things go as they have the rest of the year, I'll have a bunch of stuff left over...*sigh*
Trying to guess what will happen is worse than the stock market, I don't quite know how to feel about any of it..besides killing myself trying to make things that take hours each to complete is sort of counter-productive...
Here's my schedule (not counting my weekly Farmer's Market, which will be all but ignored for the month of November, since these holiday (and indoor!) fairs happen, always, on weekends)
Duncan Christmas Chaos -November 8 thru 11
Earthly Delights Winter Market -Nov 17-18
Mill Bay Winter Holiday Fair- Nov 24
Shawnigan Lake Winter market - Dec 1st
Did I overdo it? Too late now..everything is prepaid (naturally) so couldn't afford to back out if I wanted to...
Silly, yes?  I know there are people everywhere who wish they had outlets to sell their work...but don't ..
Sometimes too much is simply too much..maybe I'll slow down when I'm 70....
In the meantime, here's the output (so far) for the week...

...Then April cried, and stepped aside...

New items for Spring and Summer..since hats aren't exactly in wild demand at this time of year, and scarves go begging for a new home, thought I'd share with you some of the pieces I'll be featuring in  my little 'shop' outdoors at my weekly Farmer's Market..jewelry is  my seasonal choice, since once people stop covering up for the harsher cold weather, they realize that-egad!-my neck, ears and arms are bare...horrors!
Thank goodness for that....

Because They Asked...

Online sellers who have never entered a Farmer's Market, Craft Fair or Holiday Market are often confused about where to start, so in an ongoing, when-I-feel-like-it blog about Craft Markets, my do's and don'ts, and dids, based on my own experience of several years of misfires, disasters, successes and near-misses, I'll be discussing this kind of off-line project, for the meek and discomfabulated.
We all start somewhere...I started my jewelry and crochet carreer pretty simply-like the rest of the hippies on the West Coast, I used to buy tubes of beads and make huge strands of them to be wrapped several times around the neck. My first "sale" came to a biker friend of mine, who wanted one with lots of green, to match his Norton Commando...and as far as I was concerned, of course, he could have any colour he wanted...this was Southern California, circa 1968 or thereabouts...
He really liked it, and so did several of his friends, who of course all wanted one, but didn't want to pay for them...finally, one of the biggest and meanest of them, (who I had patched up once, after a fight, with homemade butterfly bandages, before he went to the hospital) took out a ten dollar bill (a days' wages for many of us then) handed it to me, and sat there glaring til the others coughed up various amounts...

I decided that there might be a future in this beadery stuff-but of course, as was the hippy way, I usually either traded them or gave them away..
Quick forward to 2009 and here are pictures of my current "set-up" for selling at the Saturday Farmer's Market In the Square in Duncan...just got the banner (big props to Wilson Graphics, on Etsy!), and need to find a way to properly store and pack/unpack, but so far, it's working...
In future installments I'll talk about the more practical pros and cons of craft fairs, by jumping around in my own history with crafting...in the meantime, happy creating!

The same $20?

On the Canadian BuyNSell Promo thread on Etsy today, someone posted a chart from May that listed, in order of sales, the highest selling Canadian shops on Etsy. I laughed right out loud, because I keep reading in the Forum that supply sellers are the only ones making any money on Etsy-and lo and behold-it's true.

http://etsybynumbers.blogspot.com/2009/05/top-se.html

On some level, I'm really glad to have this list-I always try to buy as many supplies as I can from Canada, not just out of loyalty, but because they don't have to cross the border and so they get here faster-critical when I'm in production mode, especially for earrings-if I get frustrated about supplies, I have to stop, and who knows when that urge will return-and yes, I am not an automaton, I have to want to...
Guess the point I'm trying to make is that I wonder how many of us sellers (and buyers) on Etsy are the ones keeping these shops in funds...If the only action seems to be for supplies, soap, ad a few long-time jewelers (okay, most of it) then am I just wasting my time online?
My work seems to be popular at craft fairs, Farmers Markets, etc. but no online sales yet. Patience is a virtue I possess in only minimal amounts-usually in reserve for children, animals, and men (less and less for men as time goes on) but if it seems that all my efforts are in vain, well, why bother?
Does the same $20 bill move from hand to hand, from creator to supply seller to soap maker, then the crumbs (small change) down to whatever lucky seller makes the grade? Is there any wealth being created by creativity, or is it only lodged in the production of the means to be creative? Poor old Marx must be rolling in his grave...