Ths week's little porker is a tiny flying pig I bought at a holiday craft fair last year.
It's ceramic, has gold wings, all handpainted, and I'm particularly fond of it's tail, which you can just get a glimpse of in the picture..it's abut 2 inches by 2 inches...a cutie, yes?
Haven't had any "Piggie Tuesday" joiners yet, but I live in hope..pictures, statues, recipes (wicked, I know, but so scrumptious!)
Please, don't be shy!
Showing posts with label holiday fairs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label holiday fairs. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Monday, November 23, 2009
Gift of The Small Town
I've read several times in the Etsy Forums about the joys and sorrows of Craft Markets or Fairs, both outdoor and now in...and I have a doozey-I just went through possibly the worst craft fair experience of my 30 years of craft-fairing, and I have had a few...and yet, heartwarming, in an ironic sort of way...
To begin with, I hate being upstairs in halls, schools, etc. because your foot traffic is automatically cut in half..but I had no choice yesterday, since it was a four day fair, and I was only doing the Sunday, which is normally the best day...but there was nothing "normal" about this fair...
I was told to pull behind the building, because there was a ramp that led directly to the top floor to make it easier to load and unload my stuff...well, unbeknownst to me, there was a right side and a wrong side..guess which one I took...
A muddy morass awaited me, after our heavy rains, and a large abandoned set of steps that led nowhere, right in the middle of the "lane", so I tried to back out down the lane, but of course all my stuff was piled in the back of my truck so I couldn't see, so I started to turn around...got stuck in some very deep mud, where the drainpipe emptied from the gutters.
Eventually after several people tried to push me out, we called a tow truck.
I decided to set up and wait, why stand around outside..so I did that, and when he came, went out to "help".
When it came time to pay him, I was shocked to learn that he didn't take plastic...having only a cash float of $20 and out in the middle of nowhere, I didn't know what to do..
Luckily, he was a nice guy in a small town, and asked me to pay another seller at the fair who he was familiar with, and he took off...
Breathing a sigh of relief (only temporary, I assure you) I sat back and waited for the hordes of Christmas shoppers to descend richly upon us...
Apparently, they had somewhere else to go...in 6 hours I doubt if thirty people passed through our little upstairs room, and none of them were buying, at least not from me...
Had this been a large town, I would have been in trouble, the equivalent of not paying for a restaurant meal after the food has been consumed..but this is a place where everyone knows everyone (except me)-and since I live here, am somehow to be trusted... of course, in a large town, not only would the bill have been much larger, but they would of course have taken plastic-and I've never had a bigtown fair where I've sold nothing...
Still kinda nice that I will be paying the driver the balance when he's "in the neighborhood", and I was automatically assumed to be an honest and upright person.
Naive? You bet...but perhaps I'm assuming they can't judge properly, since they're small town folks...maybe I'm selling them a bit short-because after all, I am an honest person...maybe I'm the one with the problem.
This is a bad season for craft fairs generally-economics, The N1H1 scare, and the sheer drawing power of the malls screaming *SALES!!!!* for months in advance..but I learned an expensive lesson yesterday...that, despite the wrong choice of back lanes. I had made the right choice, moving to a small town on a wonderful Island, after all....
To begin with, I hate being upstairs in halls, schools, etc. because your foot traffic is automatically cut in half..but I had no choice yesterday, since it was a four day fair, and I was only doing the Sunday, which is normally the best day...but there was nothing "normal" about this fair...
I was told to pull behind the building, because there was a ramp that led directly to the top floor to make it easier to load and unload my stuff...well, unbeknownst to me, there was a right side and a wrong side..guess which one I took...
A muddy morass awaited me, after our heavy rains, and a large abandoned set of steps that led nowhere, right in the middle of the "lane", so I tried to back out down the lane, but of course all my stuff was piled in the back of my truck so I couldn't see, so I started to turn around...got stuck in some very deep mud, where the drainpipe emptied from the gutters.
Eventually after several people tried to push me out, we called a tow truck.
I decided to set up and wait, why stand around outside..so I did that, and when he came, went out to "help".
When it came time to pay him, I was shocked to learn that he didn't take plastic...having only a cash float of $20 and out in the middle of nowhere, I didn't know what to do..
Luckily, he was a nice guy in a small town, and asked me to pay another seller at the fair who he was familiar with, and he took off...
Breathing a sigh of relief (only temporary, I assure you) I sat back and waited for the hordes of Christmas shoppers to descend richly upon us...
Apparently, they had somewhere else to go...in 6 hours I doubt if thirty people passed through our little upstairs room, and none of them were buying, at least not from me...
Had this been a large town, I would have been in trouble, the equivalent of not paying for a restaurant meal after the food has been consumed..but this is a place where everyone knows everyone (except me)-and since I live here, am somehow to be trusted... of course, in a large town, not only would the bill have been much larger, but they would of course have taken plastic-and I've never had a bigtown fair where I've sold nothing...
Still kinda nice that I will be paying the driver the balance when he's "in the neighborhood", and I was automatically assumed to be an honest and upright person.
Naive? You bet...but perhaps I'm assuming they can't judge properly, since they're small town folks...maybe I'm selling them a bit short-because after all, I am an honest person...maybe I'm the one with the problem.
This is a bad season for craft fairs generally-economics, The N1H1 scare, and the sheer drawing power of the malls screaming *SALES!!!!* for months in advance..but I learned an expensive lesson yesterday...that, despite the wrong choice of back lanes. I had made the right choice, moving to a small town on a wonderful Island, after all....
Monday, November 16, 2009
Holiday Craft Fairs
Since I moved to the Island, I've tried to stay on top of the vast and varied craft fair scene here, considering the amount of time (lots) and money(very little) I had to work with.
To begin with, I had never sold out of a tent before...always in the past, if outside, I would simply utilize whatever nature provided...paerhaps a tree, or some rocks, any sort of protuberance or leaning device I could muster always seemed to work for me, and, if nothing else, the good ol' blanket on the grass, sidewalk or ground was good enough...
Most of my fairs, at least the seasonal ones, were all inside, and since everyone on this side of the pond (across the Salish Sea from Vancouver, to Vancouver Island) seemed to have access to these ten- foot- square pop-up tents, I realized that in the summer I would get heatstroke, my jewelry would become too hot to handle, and hats? forget it..if I didn't conform... and get a pop up canopy or cabana as they are called here, with four posts and a cloth roof, some also with removable side partitions or "walls" made of canvas or other material...
I also needed a table of some sort, since people here seemed averse to bending deeply from the waist and looking down...and I could hardly blame them...no I would have to have a table, or two...
Am I the only person in North America who remembers folding card tables? Try and buy one on an Island that has almost nothing necessary to the crafter for survival...
I haunted thrift stores, hoping for a chance discovery, but those kindly lady volunteers all shook their heads, smiling with a touch of pity at me, and telling me that they disappeared as quickly as they came, which was almost never...aha!!!
So, they were "around", but I would have to be patient...however, the season was rolling along and I had to do something, so, when they went on sale, I bought myself a tent canopy (not a pop-up) and a folding table, supposed to be inexpensive, lightweight and resilient resin, which cost a fortune, weighed a ton and cracked the first time it slipped from my grasp...it only fell a few inches, thank goodness-I had visions of it shattering in a million pieces...and the tent, called easy-up, was of course anything but,,,
Looked with increasing panic at the maze of differently-sized white tubing I was supposed to put together to form the top and legs of the tent, which of course came with no instructions,( the hardy Islanders presumed born with the knowledge of occult camping setups from day one...) luckily, a woman at my first tented fair, in a tiny place called Crofton (buyers? not often) took pity on me and showed me how to put it together..it was supposed to come with directions and every pole was to be numbered, but neither of those things were true, which was probably why I got such a good "deal" on it...
It took a half-hour just to put up the tent and of course it wouldn't fit into the bag it came in after once removing it, so I ended up with armloads of slippery PVC tubing to carry back and forth each time...I soon went into debt for the actual pop-up type, although of course not the best of the breed (a mortgage payment of a tent!) but it was sufficient unto my needs...
I now possess a sort-of pop-up canopy, two cracked but servicable resin tables, a used bar-type stool that took forever to find, and now, of course, that I am semi-properly geared up, the outdoor season has ended...and once again, vast debt firmly in place, I am doing the indoor fairs...
To begin with, I had never sold out of a tent before...always in the past, if outside, I would simply utilize whatever nature provided...paerhaps a tree, or some rocks, any sort of protuberance or leaning device I could muster always seemed to work for me, and, if nothing else, the good ol' blanket on the grass, sidewalk or ground was good enough...
Most of my fairs, at least the seasonal ones, were all inside, and since everyone on this side of the pond (across the Salish Sea from Vancouver, to Vancouver Island) seemed to have access to these ten- foot- square pop-up tents, I realized that in the summer I would get heatstroke, my jewelry would become too hot to handle, and hats? forget it..if I didn't conform... and get a pop up canopy or cabana as they are called here, with four posts and a cloth roof, some also with removable side partitions or "walls" made of canvas or other material...
I also needed a table of some sort, since people here seemed averse to bending deeply from the waist and looking down...and I could hardly blame them...no I would have to have a table, or two...
Am I the only person in North America who remembers folding card tables? Try and buy one on an Island that has almost nothing necessary to the crafter for survival...
I haunted thrift stores, hoping for a chance discovery, but those kindly lady volunteers all shook their heads, smiling with a touch of pity at me, and telling me that they disappeared as quickly as they came, which was almost never...aha!!!
So, they were "around", but I would have to be patient...however, the season was rolling along and I had to do something, so, when they went on sale, I bought myself a tent canopy (not a pop-up) and a folding table, supposed to be inexpensive, lightweight and resilient resin, which cost a fortune, weighed a ton and cracked the first time it slipped from my grasp...it only fell a few inches, thank goodness-I had visions of it shattering in a million pieces...and the tent, called easy-up, was of course anything but,,,
Looked with increasing panic at the maze of differently-sized white tubing I was supposed to put together to form the top and legs of the tent, which of course came with no instructions,( the hardy Islanders presumed born with the knowledge of occult camping setups from day one...) luckily, a woman at my first tented fair, in a tiny place called Crofton (buyers? not often) took pity on me and showed me how to put it together..it was supposed to come with directions and every pole was to be numbered, but neither of those things were true, which was probably why I got such a good "deal" on it...
It took a half-hour just to put up the tent and of course it wouldn't fit into the bag it came in after once removing it, so I ended up with armloads of slippery PVC tubing to carry back and forth each time...I soon went into debt for the actual pop-up type, although of course not the best of the breed (a mortgage payment of a tent!) but it was sufficient unto my needs...
I now possess a sort-of pop-up canopy, two cracked but servicable resin tables, a used bar-type stool that took forever to find, and now, of course, that I am semi-properly geared up, the outdoor season has ended...and once again, vast debt firmly in place, I am doing the indoor fairs...
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