A very cold Craft Fair

I'm very behind with posting about this as it was a few weekends ago when we had all that ice and snow. Now of course we have more ice and snow and I can't actually remember it getting much better in between, it seems to have been fairly seamlessly bitter and cold, at least it's pretty.

Anyway, my craft fair was in this beautiful building which is Leicester Guildhall - I was so busy I didn't get photos of all the rooms but here is where I was, the Lord Mayor's Parlour.
Behind me was very old stained glass - in some panels people had scratched their name and the date, so it was a fascinating place to be:

Last year I'd had a look round as a customer and it was supposed to be one of the best local fairs to sell at, this year someone had taken the decision to charge people a pound to come in - not a lot but that charge featured on all the publicity and I wonder if it put people off coming, that and the weather. So it wasn't as busy as previous years, but a couple of my things went to very good homes. When you've spent a couple of hours or more making a unique piece you do feel a part of yourself has gone into it, so it does make a real difference to sell to someone who actually says how much they like it.

Unfortunately there's no getting away from the fact that it was FREEZING! We had to have the door to outside completely open so people knew to come and see us, so we really were shivering - on the Sunday I brought two hot water bottles with me - one to keep and one to give to someone else. I managed to stuff mine up under my dress and put a belt and my money belt over it to hold it to my tummy - all was going well until about lunchtime when I was in the middle of talking to a customer and it slipped out and fell onto the floor with a big sloppy thud!

Craft fairs are so varied - I've really enjoyed the ones where people want to ask me about how I make felt as I like describing the procedure, but this was one of those ones where most people seemed to walk straight past me, sometimes I think it's a question of perhaps not having quite the right products for the exact customers that come through the doors - the photographer next to me was constantly busy and his pictures had such a wide-ranging appeal that he did really well. I said that I blamed him for my lack of success because as soon as people got half way along the room, level with me, I could hear them exclaiming 'What fantastic photos!' and speeeding past me to get to him! He was lovely, kept getting me cups of tea, and of course knew I was joking! His photos were indeed stunning and he deserved to be really successful.

I was initially disappointed with sales, because let's face it, it is a lot of effort to do a two-day fair - not only your time standing, but all the packing up and transport too, and you do always hope to do well. But what I remember most was what a lovely group of people there were in our room, and indeed in the other rooms, and a good friend gave up a large part of his Saturday to come and sit with me and help out, so I say it was a complete victory for Community Spirit!

Catching up

It's been a busy time recently, as I'm sure it is for a lot of us with gardens to tend, although it's been such lovely weather it's been a joy to have a garden as well as a slight chore! Here is our bench which I've newly sanded and oiled for the first time in years, I must remember to take the time to actually sit on it now! I even have a few ripening strawberries in a hanging basket. The small white globes are IKEA solar powered lights which have been great, I ended up leaving them out all year and they even glowed gently in the winter!

And here is the best view of the vegetable patch:

from this angle it actually looks like I'm growing vegetables, because the runner beans are in the foreground, although a lot of it is just flowers. Of course flowers are very nice in a vegetable patch too and attract bees, it's just I didn't quite manage the amount of veg that I'd hoped for.
I'm trying to contend with the pigeons.

So far the score is me 2, pigeons 8 - that's how many purple sprouting brocolli plants they've stripped of leaves so far. In fact you may have to look hard to see the stripped stems on the left. I didn't realise how difficult pigeons were and am hoping to try and save the remaining plants with some netting.
Archie likes the vegetable patch too:

No prizes for guessing what he's up to here. As long as he's not doing it in the neighbours' garden I'm quite happy.

Archie has only just discovered catnip - he's literally turned his little nose up at it before but something must have clicked in his brain because yesterday he was rolling around and hugging it and squashing the little plants to pieces.

I re-planted three inside an upside-down hanging basket to protect the roots - we'll see who wins that one!

Lots to be thankful for, and yet I have to confess to struggling recently with keeping up with life in general. I have been functioning slowly but have been very, very anxious about everything and pretty low, in fact very low. There are particular reasons, but the reasons don't justify my reaction - I am one of those people who has spells of being unable to find a proper perspective on reality, cycling through anxiety and worst-case scenarios of things that probably will never happen - this is just the way some of us are I guess. I'm feeling a little better this week and am trying to take steps to keep calm, including herbal tablets which I think may be helping a bit. But a lot of us get these periods where everything is hard, I guess we must all find our way through in our own way and wise friends have advised me to use whatever 'tools' are necessary to help, even if that means seeking out a doctor's advice and possibly medication. I've fought against this a lot, as many of us do, but the sensible thing is to consider all options, you don't get a medal for struggling on, and life's too short to waste days if there's help out there. So I'll take it steady and see how it goes.

Frustratingly hard to create when you're low though - I've done bits and pieces of familiar designs but nothing new. But there will be time for that later.

Yesterday though I did do a craft fair - my first one outside - it was a good location in a local village square and they had live music and entertainment on all day so there was a very good atmosphere and thankfully lots of people. I was a bit stressed setting up because of course being in the open people just came early as there were no doors to open at a specific time!! But once I'd settled and contended with the wind lifting light felt things off my display, I did enjoy the day. This is the view I had - they even had the Town Crier ringing his bell and announcing things.


I don't know whether you can see the strange monsters opposite - you may be able to if you enlarge it -the man was selling his fantasy book and these must have been his creations, there were quite a few of them, rather odd to see a row of 6-foot aliens at a craft fair but all good fun.
Here is my stall:

lovely stripy cover and larger than I've been used to which was great. It's really nice to meet people and chat to them about felt - I was surprised that two of the most enthusiastic customers were men- one bought a felt bowl and the other was looking at things actually trying to persuade his wife she might like something (she didn't in the end but he did apologise to me and say he tried hard, which was lovely of him!)
And now onwards into another week. Hope you all have a good one.

A very long day

Today was my first Craft Fair of this year, and it's taken me an age to get ready for it. All the making of new things to go with what I already had, and then all the details like pricing labels and then packing everything up too - this was quite a challenge as Archie just loved trying to break into the boxes to extract things. I don't know why he's so obsessed with stealing felt - I guess it is light and he can easily get his teeth and/or claws into it to run off with it!

Here is our stall in the corner of the marquee:

I was sharing with my good friend Confessions of an Artist, who today was also being her other self The Silver Moon


with her beautiful silver and sea-glass jewellery displayed on driftwood very effectively.

It ended up a lovely sunny morning as we were setting up, much better than the rain we had yesterday, and there were lots of people coming past. A lot stopped to look and some asked me questions about the process of making felt, and it was good to meet a few of the other stallholders too. The craft fair was part of the whole Countryside Open Day at the local Common so there was lots going on all around us - a Birds of Prey display outside, Llamas and Bee-keeping demos too, I didn't manage to get any photos of them but it was a good atmosphere.

I expected to sell more than I did especially of my smaller things, which is always a bit discouraging, but I did get lots of positive comments and met some very nice people.
The upside of not selling much is that I can have a proper rest for a while and everything is nicely packed up all ready for the next stall in a couple of weeks. Now I'm going to have a cup of tea and a slightly earlier night!

Christmas Fair and What's In My Oven?

It's been a frantically busy week getting ready for a stall at my own church yesterday. It was very quiet in the town so we didn't have many people but due to the support of a few loyal friends who bought most of their Christmas presents from me I did well.

I'm still relatively new to craft stalls, and am still investigating how best to display things on what is always a smaller table than I think it will be in my mind! At the last one I went to I learned that displaying things properly makes all the difference - people need to be able to see your range of things clearly and also to be able to pick things up and have a look without being scared that everything else will fall over! I'd just spread everything out as best as I could last time but had run out of room and was unhappy that things were squashed and propped up against each other - if I'd been a customer I'd have been put off browsing. Perhaps in this case it would have been better to put out less, except you always want to show everything you have.

So this time I'd been up in our loft searching for an old towel rail I remembered having about 20 years ago - it ended up being perfect for displaying some of the bags, I tied some on with raffia and propped others up on the rails - it gave some height at the back of the table and yet I could still see through it and easily talk to people. All I need now is another one exactly the same (may take some searching around as they're now described as 'vintage' as they're not a modern style, and are therefore very expensive!) You can only see just the leg of it in the photo as I was in such a rush I only just snapped one picture.

Also in the photo you can see some pincushions -

I made them on Tuesday but after wet felting them they came out so dense I thought they were never going to dry in time - so I resorted to putting them on a baking tray with the door slightly open,

luckily we have an exceedingly gentle oven and I just left them for a few hours - it still took ages to get them thoroughly dry!