Whew! Loooong Weekend
Nov. 4th, 2012 11:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lillian13Well, another Austin Celtic Festival has come and gone. I was able to get my usual spot next to my amazing neighbors, an older couple who sell Celtic merchandise and travel around to shows in their RV. They remembered that I bought a hedgehog plushie from them last year for my friend L, who is nuts about them (and owns a live one), so they presented me with a box with TWO Gund hedgehogs!! They were samples that they couldn't sell--but how nice was that?
Weather threatened rain briefly on Saturday but aside from terminal humidity after dark it held fine all weekend, especially on Sunday. A bit warm, but there was a nice light breeze and plenty of shade to sit in. And plenty of lemonade/tea/Guinness/whatever from the various food vendors. I was able to score a couple of cans of haggis for The Nephew, since he had it a couple of years ago and absolutely loved the nasty stuff. I am still coughing quite a bit from all the dust. Very annoying.
Nice Things What Happened: A random customer insisted on buying me a tasty lemonade! Someone I had given a gift box to on Saturday returned Sunday with a very tasty Butterscotch Cake! R. gifted me with a cool LED headlamp, great for loading and unloading in the dark! I took a nice commission at the show (and she paid in advance!). A Really Hot Guy in a Kilt asked me for a cord for his necklace (some men are meant to wear kilts. He was one of them.) Two random photographers asked to take my picture while I did some wire work in front of my tent!
I rearranged my tent layout and I really like it. I'm now at the front where I can interact with everyone who comes by and I can help the kidlets with their Very Difficult Necklace Decisions. (I keep a t-bar of inexpensive Peruvian ceramic bead necklaces up front to distract the smaller kids away from my more expensive work.) I also got rid of the cash box in favor of a great little change apron I had made out of some fabric with fossils on it.
Sales were very solid; not amazing, but well on track for both last year and the year before. Sunday was very slow until later in the day, when I had a nice flurry of high-priced purchases. I always worry that Sunday will suck, and I'm usually pleasantly surprised late in the day. Folks just do their shopping (with me at least) later in the day on Sunday.
The wagon is still mostly loaded. I will hit the storage unit tomorrow and offload all the fair-specific stuff like the tent and such. I'm setting up Wednesday for a small indoor show that I don't have to be at, so I'm leaving most of everything else in the car until then.
Weather threatened rain briefly on Saturday but aside from terminal humidity after dark it held fine all weekend, especially on Sunday. A bit warm, but there was a nice light breeze and plenty of shade to sit in. And plenty of lemonade/tea/Guinness/whatever from the various food vendors. I was able to score a couple of cans of haggis for The Nephew, since he had it a couple of years ago and absolutely loved the nasty stuff. I am still coughing quite a bit from all the dust. Very annoying.
Nice Things What Happened: A random customer insisted on buying me a tasty lemonade! Someone I had given a gift box to on Saturday returned Sunday with a very tasty Butterscotch Cake! R. gifted me with a cool LED headlamp, great for loading and unloading in the dark! I took a nice commission at the show (and she paid in advance!). A Really Hot Guy in a Kilt asked me for a cord for his necklace (some men are meant to wear kilts. He was one of them.) Two random photographers asked to take my picture while I did some wire work in front of my tent!
I rearranged my tent layout and I really like it. I'm now at the front where I can interact with everyone who comes by and I can help the kidlets with their Very Difficult Necklace Decisions. (I keep a t-bar of inexpensive Peruvian ceramic bead necklaces up front to distract the smaller kids away from my more expensive work.) I also got rid of the cash box in favor of a great little change apron I had made out of some fabric with fossils on it.
Sales were very solid; not amazing, but well on track for both last year and the year before. Sunday was very slow until later in the day, when I had a nice flurry of high-priced purchases. I always worry that Sunday will suck, and I'm usually pleasantly surprised late in the day. Folks just do their shopping (with me at least) later in the day on Sunday.
The wagon is still mostly loaded. I will hit the storage unit tomorrow and offload all the fair-specific stuff like the tent and such. I'm setting up Wednesday for a small indoor show that I don't have to be at, so I'm leaving most of everything else in the car until then.
