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Saturday (and Sunday) in the Park
Sep. 27th, 2021 10:17 amUp to Corvallis last weekend for Corvallis Fall Festival. We're set up on the grass in Central Park, in three loops defined by the sidewalks--which we drive in circles on to get (hopefully) close to our booth space for set-up. Set-up starts at noon: the first hour is reserved for booths in the middle of each loop, then those of us on the perimeter can come in. Corvallis is close enough for me to commute--about 40 minutes from our north Eugene home--so I had lunch and drove up, arriving about 2 pm, to find most of my neighbors set up, and an easy drive in to space 121 from Madison street. I had everything out of the van and about half the shelving set up before the vehicles ahead of me cleared and I could park on the street and continue loading in. Was set up and closed in a little after 4 pm, and after a brief delay on highway 99--following two cars behind what turned out to be a Model A convertible doing 40 mph all the way from Corvallis to Monroe--I made it home in time to pick up two orders of fish and chips from the drive-through fundraiser at the Legion Hall.
Because we can commute, we're a little more casual about getting everything sorted out before we leave for the show, which is why we discovered on Saturday morning, half an hour before leaving, that one of my teddy bear masks was missing. We have two, you see, so that Denise and I can each have a bear to distract crying children (or ourselves, on slow days), and to be a good example during global f**king pandemic, they've been wearing masks. No mask meant a bear would have to stay home, unless I was willing to sew a new one. Was I?
Of course I was. It only took five minutes, and Dora looked particularly fetching in Hawaiian print.
The drive up 99 is quite lovely, wandering through small towns and farmland. We watched a lot of hawks on the utility poles, in some stretches on every other one, and kestrels sitting on the wires between. Sunday morning, on River Road bound for Junction City, I saw what I thought was a hawk on a telephone pole, but it was very black. Vulture, maybe? Nope. It was a raven in the classic calling pose--wings back, head forward, feathered beard prominent. I've never seen one north of Medford before; what it was doing less than five miles from Eugene I have no idea.
The show was really busy--pent-up demand again, plus the students were just back at Oregon State. In honor of the OSU Beavers, I brought some beaver pots: dinner, dessert plates, and a tall mug. Both plates were gone before 11:00, and we'd already turned the page in our sales book. By 6 pm closing, we'd made more in sales than the entire weekend of 2019, and I was glad I could get another couple of boxes of stock out of the shed for Sunday morning. Unfortunately, I didn't get more wrapping paper--we were almost out, but I didn't write it down, so forgot. Lucky for us, Sandy Brown had extra, which she was willing to trade for another potato-chip cookie.
Some highlights: the three-year old girl whose mom was helping her adjust her mask back up over her nose, with the help of my teddy bear demonstrating. The young woman in goth/death metal attire, skull mask, leather strap collar with chain-link leash being held by her partner in matching collar, chattering delightedly about my bunny pots--she has two bunnies of her own. Showing a blind woman and former potter my animal banks by touch, and explaining why the stegosaur bank had a different texture than the cats. (Matte glaze versus gloss.) In fact, talking pottery techniques with a lot of folks, student potters and retirees coming back to pottery. Directed them to this blog, in fact.
And then there were the two young women, first year students, trying to decide between the shark and beaver tall mugs. I should get the beaver, because I'm at OSU, one said, But I really like the shark. I pointed out that in the middle ages, the Catholic Church defined beaver as a fish so that it could be eaten during Lenten fast days. Therefore, by holy writ, the shark is a beaver!
She bought the shark.
I sold a lot of things I didn't expect. Both covered casseroles on Saturday. The possum small pitcher I've been bringing out for years. A platypus large squared baker. Two cookie jars. I also sold the skunk pie, but I knew somebody was gonna want that one.
Fall Festival is notorious for dodgy weather--in 2019, we packed out in pouring rain--and though Saturday was forecast nice, the chance of rain on Sunday started looking worrisome late afternoon into evening. We thought we'd dodged the bullet, but around 2:30 pm the wind started picking up, though clouds didn't start massing until after 4. I brought my empty boxes over from the van at 4:30 so I could start packing promptly at 5:00 closing. By the time the pots were packed and the shelves taken down, my neighbors on that stretch were gone, so I was once again able to drive right up to my booth to load up, and we were out dry.
We wanted to celebrate a successful sale--our best Fall Festival ever--so went over to Evergreen Indian Restaurant, only to find they weren't doing dine-in, only takeout. Too tired and hungry to search for anything better, we stopped at Papa's Pizza on the way out of town and had an adequate sausage-mushroom pizza for which we paid forty bucks.
Because we can commute, we're a little more casual about getting everything sorted out before we leave for the show, which is why we discovered on Saturday morning, half an hour before leaving, that one of my teddy bear masks was missing. We have two, you see, so that Denise and I can each have a bear to distract crying children (or ourselves, on slow days), and to be a good example during global f**king pandemic, they've been wearing masks. No mask meant a bear would have to stay home, unless I was willing to sew a new one. Was I?
Of course I was. It only took five minutes, and Dora looked particularly fetching in Hawaiian print.
The drive up 99 is quite lovely, wandering through small towns and farmland. We watched a lot of hawks on the utility poles, in some stretches on every other one, and kestrels sitting on the wires between. Sunday morning, on River Road bound for Junction City, I saw what I thought was a hawk on a telephone pole, but it was very black. Vulture, maybe? Nope. It was a raven in the classic calling pose--wings back, head forward, feathered beard prominent. I've never seen one north of Medford before; what it was doing less than five miles from Eugene I have no idea.
The show was really busy--pent-up demand again, plus the students were just back at Oregon State. In honor of the OSU Beavers, I brought some beaver pots: dinner, dessert plates, and a tall mug. Both plates were gone before 11:00, and we'd already turned the page in our sales book. By 6 pm closing, we'd made more in sales than the entire weekend of 2019, and I was glad I could get another couple of boxes of stock out of the shed for Sunday morning. Unfortunately, I didn't get more wrapping paper--we were almost out, but I didn't write it down, so forgot. Lucky for us, Sandy Brown had extra, which she was willing to trade for another potato-chip cookie.
Some highlights: the three-year old girl whose mom was helping her adjust her mask back up over her nose, with the help of my teddy bear demonstrating. The young woman in goth/death metal attire, skull mask, leather strap collar with chain-link leash being held by her partner in matching collar, chattering delightedly about my bunny pots--she has two bunnies of her own. Showing a blind woman and former potter my animal banks by touch, and explaining why the stegosaur bank had a different texture than the cats. (Matte glaze versus gloss.) In fact, talking pottery techniques with a lot of folks, student potters and retirees coming back to pottery. Directed them to this blog, in fact.
And then there were the two young women, first year students, trying to decide between the shark and beaver tall mugs. I should get the beaver, because I'm at OSU, one said, But I really like the shark. I pointed out that in the middle ages, the Catholic Church defined beaver as a fish so that it could be eaten during Lenten fast days. Therefore, by holy writ, the shark is a beaver!
She bought the shark.
I sold a lot of things I didn't expect. Both covered casseroles on Saturday. The possum small pitcher I've been bringing out for years. A platypus large squared baker. Two cookie jars. I also sold the skunk pie, but I knew somebody was gonna want that one.
Fall Festival is notorious for dodgy weather--in 2019, we packed out in pouring rain--and though Saturday was forecast nice, the chance of rain on Sunday started looking worrisome late afternoon into evening. We thought we'd dodged the bullet, but around 2:30 pm the wind started picking up, though clouds didn't start massing until after 4. I brought my empty boxes over from the van at 4:30 so I could start packing promptly at 5:00 closing. By the time the pots were packed and the shelves taken down, my neighbors on that stretch were gone, so I was once again able to drive right up to my booth to load up, and we were out dry.
We wanted to celebrate a successful sale--our best Fall Festival ever--so went over to Evergreen Indian Restaurant, only to find they weren't doing dine-in, only takeout. Too tired and hungry to search for anything better, we stopped at Papa's Pizza on the way out of town and had an adequate sausage-mushroom pizza for which we paid forty bucks.