![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Hard to believe that Clay Fest is 17 years old this year. You'd think it would be a smoothly running machine, and in some ways, it is. In others… well, there's always someone new, someone learning a job, or making a mistake. The chair is rectifying problems in the set-up list, resulting in pipe and drape in the wrong places. I find out the map is missing a couple of people whose names weren't on the roster I received. We grumble a bit and move on.
For our 10th anniversary, we decided to expand our Saturday-Sunday show by adding a Friday night opening, strictly temporary. Of course, it became permanent almost immediately. To compensate for the lost set-up time, we added another day, so booth set-up begins Thursday afternoon, after the Building committee and pipe-and-drape crew finish.
I'm solo again, as Denise has an assignment for Lane Community College. The plan is to get the booth structure up and bring in boxes of pots, but load the shelves Friday morning.
As it happens, the booth comes together much faster than I expect, and I figure out a few shortcuts that compensate for the lack of an extra pair of hands. I even manage the lights by myself.
Every year, I consider getting a light bar, something I can hang all in one piece, and every year I admit I'm not going to change. The compact fluorescents in my clamp lamps are over seven years old and still shining, and I figured out a way to use spring clips instead of zip ties to stabilize the lamps that's much faster, and less wasteful. It takes me just about ten minutes to do the entire light set-up, including hanging the anchor bar--a ten foot length of conduit with T fittings on each end--down the middle of the booth.
With all the extra time, I start unpacking pots, and find that, since the last show I did was also in a 10x10' booth, everything I need is in the load-in boxes. By the time Denise arrives from Lane, I'm well along, and we end up setting up everything except the back grid wall before 6 pm.
I come back after supper with another anchor bar to loan to my neighbor, and stay long enough to help the neighbor on the other side hang her lights.
And so to bed.
For our 10th anniversary, we decided to expand our Saturday-Sunday show by adding a Friday night opening, strictly temporary. Of course, it became permanent almost immediately. To compensate for the lost set-up time, we added another day, so booth set-up begins Thursday afternoon, after the Building committee and pipe-and-drape crew finish.
I'm solo again, as Denise has an assignment for Lane Community College. The plan is to get the booth structure up and bring in boxes of pots, but load the shelves Friday morning.
As it happens, the booth comes together much faster than I expect, and I figure out a few shortcuts that compensate for the lack of an extra pair of hands. I even manage the lights by myself.
Every year, I consider getting a light bar, something I can hang all in one piece, and every year I admit I'm not going to change. The compact fluorescents in my clamp lamps are over seven years old and still shining, and I figured out a way to use spring clips instead of zip ties to stabilize the lamps that's much faster, and less wasteful. It takes me just about ten minutes to do the entire light set-up, including hanging the anchor bar--a ten foot length of conduit with T fittings on each end--down the middle of the booth.
With all the extra time, I start unpacking pots, and find that, since the last show I did was also in a 10x10' booth, everything I need is in the load-in boxes. By the time Denise arrives from Lane, I'm well along, and we end up setting up everything except the back grid wall before 6 pm.
I come back after supper with another anchor bar to loan to my neighbor, and stay long enough to help the neighbor on the other side hang her lights.
And so to bed.