Craft Show Outtage

My first real craft show was Saturday! I spent every evening last week frantically getting things ready, then arrived to find that the situation was not what I'd expected. I'd signed up for a small show in the back room of the local cooperative cafe where you got one small table, but the cafe had been closed for renovations that day, so they'd tacked the craft show into an outdoor musical festival two weeks later.

I'd been thinking that we'd get the same amount of space outside that we'd had inside, but it turned out to be a free-for-all. We were told that we could set up anywhere within a giant amount of space on one side of a plaza. I arrived at 10am to find the area already hot and in full sun, and the fellow jewelry maker I'd met at the previous small, unadvertised back-room show urged me to go get my Tent. I waffled a bit, having received the Tent in the mail only a few weeks before and not even taken it out of the box as I didn't expect it to use it until May 4th. "How long will you last in the sun?" she asked. "I'm ready to pack up and go home now," I replied, having only gotten my table out of the car.

This was deemed an untenable situation, so I scurried home for the Tent. It's an EZ-UP, which -- if you have one and recall your first interaction with it -- is a misnomer. The directions are not altogether helpful, but with much hemming and hawing and the assistance of a bystander, it was erected. This was a great boon, as the day proceeded to be Wretchedly Hot.

There were more Exciting Incidents involving all of my earring racks and then a big bulletin board on an easel loaded with fused glass pendants going over in the wind. I may have uttered certain bad words went the easel went over, but none of the pendants broke when they hit the concrete. Littering the ground around my booth with broken glass would have been a catastrophe! Much masking tape was applied, and plans are afoot for easel outriggers and a windbreak for the earring racks.

I learned a lot. Much of it was regarding wind (are those my business cards blowing away AGAIN?!). I filled a couple of pages in a notebook with notes on what to do differently next time. Fun! I'll have a photo of the booth when the photographer finds his camera.