It was the best of sales

Really. By about twice our previous high.

We set up for our Club Mud Studio Sale Saturday afternoon, after the handbuilding class left. Moved the wheels off to one side, scraped up clay scrap and mopped, moved the power leads up above head height. Uprights and shelves come down from the attic above my space, table covers out of Shelly's, cement block from the kiln room to improvise levels to the studio tables. Once everything is set, we pull out boxes and move in pots. There's no particular order, everybody's work is scrambled together. In a little over and hour, everything was set, which is of course when Brian showed up with three more boxes. Moved things around, tightened up the spacing, and we were basically ready by 2:30.

Wake up Sunday morning to snow. Not much, though still coming down when I leave for church at 8 am. Sale opens at 10, so the roads, already mostly clear, should be fine. Laura comes over at 9:30 to put out signs and finds a line in the courtyard already, waiting in the snow to get in. So she unlocks the doors and lets them in. Some friends of Beth's come by at quarter to ten, so she opens the doors again. When I arrive at 10 til, people are already waiting to check out. Fortunately, I set my phone to Club Mud's Square account Saturday night, so I just had to hang up my coat and punch the button on the card reader, and I was ready to go.

The first hour is always the busiest, and since we couldn't convince Laura's phone to work, I processed all the sales. At some point, we figured that if she read me names and prices, I could run tickets faster and we wouldn't have to move pots back and forth from the wrapping table. We're running both cash and credit/debit through the system, so it will do a breakdown itemized by potter. We also do handwritten tickets, but it's good to have independent systems in place to cross-check.

Sometime around noon it slows down a bit, and I check Square Reports to see how we're doing. It's obviously messed up somehow, it says we've sold over $2500 in an hour. Before I can go digging for the error, another customer wants to check out, with eight of Don's green soup bowls, so it's back to work.

I'm running on peanut butter cookies and bits of Market of Choice sweet roll that Beth brought in, and finally hand off the Square to Brian and take my salad into the back room around 1. Coming back, I scroll through the transactions, it's really true. We're over $2700 at that point, and the shelves are looking a little thin.

We start shifting pots around to the front of the table, and Donna puts out a few more things that got missed on Saturday. Customers keep coming in, some students from the neighborhood, others who are on our e-mailing list. When the last sale happens at 4:04, we're over $3400 for the day. My total, before Club Mud's percentage, is nearly $700.

Everybody pitches in for take-down, and in half an hour the studio is back to normal.

Some weeks are just like that

I have a meeting or appointment every day this week. Studio Sale on Sunday. Choir practice Monday. Two things today, meeting with my photographer in the morning for new pottery shots and a Clay Fest meeting after supper. Tomorrow I have an appointment with the physical therapist, and Thursday's our Book Arts group. I thought I'd have Friday off, as I'm not doing Ceramic Showcase anymore, so don't have to drive to Portland for the Booth Pick meeting, but my photographer has a gallery opening Springfield, so we're going to try to get to that. And on Saturday, the students at church are having a spaghetti feed to fund their spring break mission trip--working with Habitat for Humanity up in Tacoma--I gotta support that, don't I?

Sometimes I'm. Just. So. Tired.