Fully octopied

[offcntr]

Just closed the books on the Anacortes Arts Festival for 2018, and I gotta say, I'm impressed. I knew we'd done well--five empty pottery boxes in the van coming home is a pretty strong indicator--but had no idea how well. We're up over $1400 from last year, making this officially my second best show ever. (After 2014 Clayfolk.)

Why so well? I have a few ideas, but no firm conclusions.

For one thing, the weather was perfect. Sunny, breezy, temps in the low 70s. No blistering heat and smoke, like last year, or rain, or (I still shudder to remember) gale-force winds. So the customers were out in force. As were my collectors--Friday was by far my best day of the weekend, largely due to repeat customers coming early for the best selection. Though we still had good business right up to the end, with two sales happening as we were packing up at 5 pm Sunday.

Probably the biggest reason, and the only one I could really control, was what I brought.

Octopuses and crabs.

Some sea otters, too, and that nifty new pelican pattern, but I really went hard on octos and crabs. Soup bowls, stew mugs, tumblers and tall mugs, plates and pie and dessert plates. Serving bowls in medium and small sizes, covered crocks, short and tall. A pitcher, a pasta (should have been two, but someone bought the crab in Eugene the previous week), baking dish and big oval platter. And almost all of it sold. I think I brought home two plates, a couple of tall mugs and a tumbler, and the octopus teapot.

Case in point: my first sale Friday morning--half an hour early, while we were still setting up--was a crab small squared baker and medium serving bowl. My third sale, to a young woman who's been working toward a full table setting--and themed dinner party, she promised pictures--was an octopus platter, dinner plate, soup bowl and two dessert plates.

Also big this year: banks. Sold both pigs, both elephants, both chickens, all four cat banks, a T Rex and both brontosaurs. (The second for a little boy who asked, Why's he look so derpy? His dad came back later, said he couldn't stop talking about the derpysaurus. Think that's what I'm calling them from now on.)

I'd think that means it's time to raise my prices on banks, but they still don't sell anywhere else, so for now, we'll stand pat.

Although I didn't see Arden--my youthful collector from Edmonds--this year, I had an Arden-like experience, a little girl, maybe 10 years old, dragging her grandma into the booth, saying Look! Cat! And fox! And... So I played my second favorite game (first favorite is getting little kids to put their finger in the elephant bank's trunk so I can make trumpeting noises at them) and asked her what her favorite animal was.

Well, I like foxes... but I think my favorite are horses. So I show her my horse-patterned soup bowl, with the Appaloosa, bay and pinto horses and she makes this big gasp and goes up on her toes and just goes speechless and and points at it and vibrates.

When she finally remembers to breathe again, she says, in one continuous exhale, that she brought a bowl home from the fair but her grandma had broken it but she promised to replace it for her. Grandma asks, Is this the one? and she nods like a bobblehead and after Grandma has paid and I wrap it up, she insists on carrying it herself and walks off hugging the bag. Saying This is my new favorite booth.

God, I love my job somedays.