Thanks

We never have Thanksgiving with family.

To begin with, no kids. Denise is an only child, and all of my siblings are back in the midwest, Wisconsin and Minnesota. The closest relatives, geographically, are her second cousin in Seattle and my nephew in Salt Lake City.

Throw in the fact that this is usually harvest season for us--holiday sales like Clayfolk the previous weekend, Holiday Market ongoing--and Thanksgiving is a stolen day off from a high pressure part of the year.

We still manage a nice meal--turkey, dressing, sweet potatoes and mashed potatoes and gravy and cranberry sauce. Apple/cabbage slaw as well this year. Sparkling apple cider.  But it's as much to have enough leftovers that I don't have to cook for the next week as for any other celebration.

This year is actually quieter. Because Holiday Market is scaled back, and outdoors, we don't spend all of Wednesday setting up our fairgrounds booth, loading in pottery. And Friday isn't a sale day at all, so I can relax a little with Denise. The van is already prepped; all I have to do is make cookies.

Oh my

Lions and tigers and bears!

Second week of Holiday Market and some extreme contrasts.

At one end of the spectrum, there's the family that walks through late during set-up, around 9:30. Father and mother in late 20s, I'd guess, with a 7 or 8-year-old daughter. None of them wearing masks.

They don't actually come into the booth, though dad makes a point of stopping to ask if I make this stuff. I give him a minimum version of my stock answer--he's wearing a "Legalize Freedom" ball-cap, so I have no intention of engaging. As soon as they walk on, I cross the street to report them to the Info Booth. As Security isn't patrolling yet, AJ goes out to explain to them that they either need to mask up or leave the area. This pleases me greatly, as AJ is a very large black man who takes shit from no one.

On the other extreme, there's the woman who sprays my hand sanitizer on her Discover card before handing it to me to swipe. She's no doubt correct, credit cards and phones are notoriously dirtier than toilet seats in tests I've seen. I suggest that I should spritz my fingers before taking it, but she points out that, as it's still wet, she's probably safe.

And it swiped just fine.

And then there was the family... Chinese, I think, with Anglo-American father. One of the boys wanted a stegosaur bank. They said they'd think about it, moved on. A little while after, one of the tween-age siblings came back--sister, I think, although I couldn't tell for sure between mask and hoodie--to ask if I could come down on the price.

Here's the thing. My animal banks are a huge amount of labor, stegosaurs most of all. I have to throw both body and head on the wheel. Extrude coils and form the legs. Hand form eyebrows and plug and shape nostrils and make 15 or 20 back plates in a gradation of sizes. Plus the porcelain eyes and colored porcelain irises. And then put them all together, cut coin slot and cork hole.

It's a huge amount of work; realistically, I should be charging eighty bucks for them, but who'd pay that for a kid's bank? I was going to raise the price from $40 to $50 at the start of this year, but then the pandemic hit, and I just couldn't.

So no, I'm not gonna come down on the price.

Ten minutes later, she's back, with $35 cash; would I sell it to her for that? Sorry, the answer is still no.

Fifteen minutes more, and she has the two $20s, and brother gets his stegosaur.

I'm so mean sometimes.

Second week

It's the second week of Holiday Market al fresco, and I've learned a few things from week one.

1. I need better shoes. I normally wear Birkenstocks and socks--yes, I'm that guy--or, in colder, wetter weather, Coleman hikers. Last week, even with the hikers, wool socks and a rubber floor mat in the back of the booth, my feet got cold. This week was also predicted freezing at set-up, so I knew I had to do something different.

As it happens, Bi-Mart's Black Friday (Starting Now!) flyer came out last week, and included winter boots for just $19.98. So I snaffled a pair of forty-two-dollar boots for less than half price.

My toes were very thankful.

2. I need another mask. Last week was cold and foggy all day. I normally take a mask for load-in, and a change of masks for the sale day, as between breath condensing and sweat, cloth masks get saturated and clammy by the time I'm set up. A dry mask, like a dry sweat-shirt or sweater, is a necessity to keep from getting chilled. Last week, however, it never warmed up, so selling mask was saturated by take-down, and if you've never tried to suck air through a wet mask, it ain't easy. So this week, I brought three.

As it happened, the sun came out this weekend, so though set-up was still cold and clammy, the sales mask stayed reasonably dry and aerate-able through the end. And I even managed to get the set-up mask almost dry, by clipping it to the sunniest part of my booth frame.

Still bringing all three next week.

3. My ten-foot booth canopy is not made for one person to use. The best way to open a so-called EZUp is to have two people on opposite corners, tugging away from each other. I've figured out that I can open it up by myself, not easily, by getting underneath and pushing up the center pole, basically bouncing the legs outward, and then getting outside to snap each of the corners into place. Lengthening the legs is easier two at a time, too, but still possible one by one.

The one thing that's hardest, though, is putting it back in its sleeve. The manufacturer wants us to take the canvas cover off between uses. None of us do, but the slip-cover is designed for the much skinnier, canvas-less frame. It has clips and zippers on both sides, but it's still almost impossible to get it on and zipped, even with two people. My 8x8' booth has a much simpler slip cover.

So I went to JoAnn Fabrics, bought two yards of rip-stop nylon--$7.99 a yard, less a 40% off coupon--and made my own slip cover. It's a little long, but it keeps everything safe when I slide it into the van at the end of the day.

This is how

This is how my neighbor, Rachel, keeps warm in her booth at the outdoor Holiday Market.

Yes, that's a baby-blue fleece yeti onesie.

I will never be that cool.