Goods and Bads of the Craft Fair Circuit

The last few weeks I've been stressing about my first official craft show which was today. I've been pushing stuff through the kiln, hoping I had enough to actually make a display. Pulling my hair out when the glaze results were disappointing and getting really frustrated when many of my large bowls developed cracks.
No matter how unprepared I was though, the show came anyway, and today we went. That is not the royal We, Peter went too.

It was a small show in a local school that was a fund raiser for the football team. There were a number of crafters there, two gymnasiums full. (is that meant to be gymnasia? yes I think so but the spell checker doesn't agree) I was the only potter, which was good and bad. Good because anyone who was desperate for pottery had to come to me, and good because there was no real potter's pottery that people could look at and then realize that mine is pretty rudimentary. Bad because apparently not that many people were desperate for pottery today. Bad because I was hoping to snoop other booths before the show to decide out what sort of prices would be reasonable. There was nothing comparable, except a glass slumping artist who used recycled liquor bottles to make trays and I didn't see her until after lunch. Bad because much of the craft was someone's Granny who has nothing else to do and so sells extremely elaborate and time consuming items for less than what it would take to buy the materials. Bad also because what with buying Blackberry Jam, Chicken Bones* and coffees and lunches at the school cafeteria I think we took in $2 less than we spent.

This purple butter dish was much admired and handled, but no one bought it.

More Bads than Goods.
It was a very slow day, everyone said so. And this was a Good. We got to chat to a lot of the regulars that do the craft fair circuit, and they are all very friendly and welcoming and supportive of each other and us. If we hadn't talked to anyone, I think I would have come home completely demoralized and just packed it all in right then and there. But it was apparent that no one was selling much at all. Even the stuff that was cheaper than dirt wasn't moving.

This new Spiderweb bowl was much admired and handled, but no one bought it.

On second thought, as pottery is comprised mainly of dirt I think I will retire that expression, because my dirt wasn't that cheap. After agonizing over pricing, I don't think that I would have sold any more pots if my prices were lower, but I do know I would have been much less satisfied to sell more pots at lower prices. At the end of the day, I think the people who come out to support a Football Club fundraiser in a rural high school are simply not the people who want a One-of-a Kind, handcrafted butter dish. I realized this when one woman asked if I had a margarine holder instead, something she could slot a Becel tub directly into. My first thought was, "Why would anyone want to eat Becel?"

I have heard other potters say that everyone wants blue, and it is true,
many people admired this mug with the blue rim, but no one bought it.

The next fair is in two weeks. Hopefully it will be better. I am no longer stressed about having enough stuff for a display, at this rate I could do 10 more Fairs without stepping into the studio. But I will keep at it instead, because pottery must be like gardening; you only do it if deep down you are an optimist.

*Chicken Bones are a candy, often seen around Christmas, that are long pink hard candies with chocolate stripes up the centre.

Happy Thanksgiving

We went to the folks for turkey day this weekend. Managed to steal extra turkey to bring home for a leftovers meal tonight. Yum.
The weatherman is calling for frost tonight so I harvested the last of the tomatoes and the cukes in the garden this afternoon. The cukes were numerous, huge and probably a bit tough. I am getting a little tired of Greek salad for lunch so I put them out at the end of the driveway with a sign that said Free. Hopefully someone making pickles will rescue them. I just don't have the time or the inclination. The tomatoes were washed and sorted into three piles. The ripe and ready had the bad bits cut off and went directly into the freezer. The green ones went into a box and got covered with newspaper. The in-betweens got put on top of the box and will be eaten or frozen as they ripen. By the time I'm through those, the green ones should be ripe too.
I dried a bunch of herbs a few weeks ago, but not many. I tried to get back out tonight before it go dark to grab some more to dry but it didn't happen. So I went out with the flashlight and grabbed the basil at least. While this sounds funny, the farmer growing cow corn in the field next door is out there in his harvester as we speak. So if I'm not in good company, I'm in professional company. The rest of the herbs are perennial, but it is such a shame to waste basil, especially when it dries so well. Now the house smells so much like fresh cut basil that it is giving me a headache.
No pictures with this post because the battery in the camera is dead. Maybe tomorrow.

Canning in Canning

How can it be October already?
Not so much blogging going on right now because autumn is one of those insanely busy times. Who knew?
After Earl blew through, our summer evaporated into fall overnight, and my activities were based around figuring out what to do with all the food in the garden and at the farmers markets. I attempted to make crab apple jelly, from some free crab apples I picked off a tree at work. It didn't gel. I have never done jelly before because it is so much bother to drip it through a cheese cloth and who has a cheese cloth anyway? I used an old pillowcase. After I bottled it up and realized it wasn't going to set, I read the directions more closely and figured it must be because I did everything wrong. Boiled it too slowly, made a double (actually triple) batch, didn't stir much, used too large bottles. Now I have bottles of crab apple syrup in the pantry. Will it gel if I try again and add commercial pectin?
On to the next adventure: Salsa.
This is something I do every year because I like salsa but I hate the stuff you buy in the grocery store. To me it tastes like they add liquid smoke to it. For years I would run out in April and have to make due or swear off Mexican food until August. Now I have it down to a science, and I know if I can make a bottle for every month we will probably be ok. As usual, I attempted to grow everything I needed in the garden this year, and as usual, I didn't succeed. The garlic was great, the onions are still too small, the tomatoes suffered from the cooler weather and many split on the vine, I got two hot peppers off my hot pepper plants (all four of them) and they weren't hot, the green peppers I gave up on after the squirrels ate my seedlings in May. So once again I bought everything at a local farmers market (except the cilantro, which farmers in Nova Scotia apparently don't grow because I went to 4 farm markets looking for it and ended up at the Stuperstore for some grown in Mexico, no doubt.
Study Boy re-emerged the last few months, and he travelled to Newfoundland to present his research proposal for approval in September. He got approval, with some added suggestions from the peanut gallery which he is madly working into it so it can go to ethics approval and he can start some research. He's also teaching this term, so suddenly life chores like groceries get a little more difficult.
While he was away, I had some house guests. A very good school friend of mine (like I'm talking Elementary school here) and her family came for a short visit because they had a wedding to attend. It was unfortunately cold and wet that weekend, so we just hung out and it was really nice to have them here. They are all great friends and it is nice to see how much they love each other. The girls tried their hands at making pots one afternoon.
Kaleigh's is the taller slightly wonky one, she is 11. Kennedy who is 15, made the short fat one. She pointed out it was just like one of the family. They are both excellent attempts for first bowls, and my other local potter friend have all been impressed. I promised to have them glazed for Thanksgiving weekend when I went home to Parrsboro. They picked the colours and they are in the kiln now as I type. I hope they like the results.
Fall is also the time to stack winter wood, and ours was delivered and stacked one weekend. It felt so good to have that chore all done. We only ordered two cords, because we have most of two cords left from our last order and we think that will be all we burn this year. At this rate we will always be burning two year old wood.
Then the weather changed again last week and all of a sudden it was summer again. Yay from me, but everyone seems grumpy about this. It was even warm at night, I think we were getting the tropical winds blowing up from the south. The rain storms that caused flooding in the States seemed to be pushing their air up here. I convinced the pool boy to get the heater running again, and by Thursday our pool water was up to 22 degrees again. On Friday Oct 1 the water was 24 degrees. Yesterday started out warm, but we had a rain storm and that cleared the air and the temps started dropping, we went for a swim anyway. The water was still 24 with the help of the furnace, it was actually warmer than the air temperature so it felt really nice. This picture was our second attempt, the first had Peter trying to race the camera timer down the ladder, so for this one he did a barrel roll over the side and popped up wet into view just as the camera went click. Today it was cooler, and as the over night temps were only 6 degrees, we knew it was our last hurrah. You can see the arctic smoke on the water this morning and the trees changing colour lit up by the morning sun. After the swim we drained the pool and hopefully this week of cool sun will dry it enough to roll up and put in the barn for winter.
I still hope for days warm and dry enough to ride the new bike to work. I've decided to name him Bahn, Otto Bahn.
Fall is also the time of craft fair madness, and I signed up for three this year. The first is Oct 23 so I've been trying to get some new pieces finished for that. I don't expect sales to be stellar, but I'm going to each of these fairs hoping to learn what best sells and what prices people will pay. I've been making bowls and mugs and butter dishes, and have come to the conclusion that mugs are terribly finicky and my best bet is probably larger bowls and casseroles and pitchers. I'm getting ever so business like and have ordered shopping bags and asked an artist friend to design me a logo. I won't have any fancy display, but it will build as I go along I think.