Saturday, March 18, 2006

Honey, Pass Me the Stick...

So I can poke out my freeakin' eyes...

So last night Obbie and I sallied forth to the first crap show of the year. I was forewarned by the craft show coordinator that my spot was 'small'. "Okay. We can do small", I thought.

Small means a cubbyhole about 8 feet long and 6 feet wide. No light. Like an alcove where one would store things.


Nice.

Obviously, I was a tad annoyed. What with standing there with a 6 foot table and a 4 foot table.

Don't forget the two chairs.

So Obbie and I (both having not so nice days anyway) stood there and reconfigured the table situation in our heads. In the gloom. With a brightly lit ROOM in front of us, with three LARGE tables of vendors watching us.

Sigh


The idea to just leave and write off the booth fee as a donation to the church was discussed.

But we're bullheaded, like a challenge, and quite possibly would do anything within reason for a buck.

So we set up the stand.

The church lady in charge was rather distressed that I was obviously unhappy. (Heh. Obviously) and scurried off to find a lamp for our gloomy little nook.

We did the best we could, arranging stuff a little more cramped than we like. All the while, being watched by the other vendors in the brightly lit room. One of the vendors being a jewelry maker as well. More on that in a bit.

We have to slide the table sideways to get out from behind it. We are sitting behind the earring display, and the necklace displays and peering out at the customers. (Looky loos are more like it)


To our 'credit' we did manage to sell one woven seed bead necklace (way under what it should have been priced, but we have to adjust for the crowd/venue, etc.) and a pendant that I've been carting around for years. Therefore we made our stand fee back. And had some yummy cake from the church ladies. From what I could tell, not many people were selling last night. Lots of standing around and gabbing. I'm thinking that this church has a great many crafty people (as in they make crafts) for the two large, open areas were chock full of vendors, most of whom were happily chatting with the organizers, kitchen staff and assorted churchly helpers.

Our nook, and our room, apparently aren't church folk. The woman across from me, selling jewelry, who spent the better part of the night glaring in my general direction, has STACKS of necklaces and earrings and bracelets. Later, I was tired of her staring at me, and decided to take a gander at her stuff and chat. We got to talking, and she launched into this huge dissertation about keeping a proper inventory so you know how to price your items. She then loudly informed me that when she buys beads that she breaks everything down and labels each bag with a stock number and location and files them in her office. She went on and on about spreadsheets and some program for bead inventory. When does she have time to bead?? That whole process would take all the fun out of it for me.


I'm not rushing out to buy a bead inventory program (I think you could crank one out in Excel, really) nor am I going to get ten thousand sticky labels and print out inventory codes on every single one, for every single item. I'm far too, um, organic for that. My stuff flows. I barely even make sketches of my jewelry before it's made. It comes out of my head to my hands and turns into something. Sometimes nice, sometimes sucko (in my opinion) but thats how the process works for me.

Anyway, so this is the morning dilemma...Should be stick out the day, or should we go up early and pack it in? The thing runs from 9-3 today. Last night it was 4-9. Now that I'm up and out of bed and drinking coffee, I'm thinking, why the hell not? We're already there and set up, so why not? The worst that could happen is that we sell nothing and get some good food from the church ladies. The only other thing on the agenda today would be house cleaning. Guess what wins?

I still think theres got to be a better way to go about this.

  • Blogroll Me!
  • My Photo
    Name:
    Location: Pennsylvania, Fiji
    My Amazon.com Wish List

    Image hosting by Photobucket

    Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

    I Took The Handmade Pledge! BuyHandmade.org

    Powered by Blogger

    Blogwise - blog directory

    Weblog Commenting and Trackback by HaloScan.com