A groundswell of support

Well, that was amazing.

Anacortes 2024 started, as usual, with a drive up to Seattle on Wednesday afternoon. We stayed overnight in a little motel on Aurora Avenue run by a Chinese family, and joined Denise's relatives, Kay and Al and their daughter Diana, for supper at Monkey Bridge, a Vietnamese restaurant a short walk from their condo. After supper, we adjourned to their house to catch up over rhubarb pie. Thursday, we took a slow morning, finally checking out around 11 and driving across town to Blessed Sacrament Priory to meet our former pastor, now retired, for lunch. Father Vincent was senior pastor at the Newman Center for a number of years, went away, and came back for an extended residence in retirement. About a year ago, he transferred up to Seattle to be nearer to his niece's family in Ballard. He was always a favorite of ours, and it was wonderful spending some time with him, comparing stories of our childhoods, and finding out new details--who knew he was a model railroad enthusiast? He's looking forward to moving from a single room in the priory to a suite, where he can convert the smaller sitting room into a bedroom, the bedroom into a train yard. He's also a rhubarb pie enthusiast, so we left the last half of the pie with him to share (or not) with his house-mates.

We then drove up to our motel in Mount Vernon and flopped on the bed for an hour, before driving into Anacortes for set-up around 5:30.

In the past, I've had issues with the wind coming up across the open lot opposite my booth--one year, they had to take my booth down overnight. This year I put my foot down, and made them move us a few spaces north, still in the same neighborhood, but better sheltered. We still had a little wind flapping the sides of the tent, but I took plates off the grid panel, and the top row of cookie jars and pitchers off the shelves overnight, and didn't have any problems. A nice side benefit was that we were also a little further from the music; for the most part, the jazz stage is pretty mellow, but there were a few big bands that are always over-amplified, making it hard to talk to customers. They had a new western swing ensemble on Friday that was a lot of fun, and Pearl Django's hot club stylings on Sunday are always a treat.

Friday is always busy for us--the mailing list regulars all come out in force to get first shot at new work. The show technically opens at 10 am, though we made our first sale at 9:20. We were right in front of the Calico Cupboard, a popular local breakfast spot, and that didn't hurt the foot traffic either. Saturday, if anything, was busier, smaller individual sales, but more of them. And Sunday was slow but steady, with our last sale coming only about fifteen minutes before closing.

Remembering the demand last year, I made extra crab and octopus ware--pie plates, bakers, pasta serving and dinner bowls. Dinner and dessert plates, and a large oval platters with octopus. (And another with whales.) I also went heavily into sea otters, and, somewhat, sea turtles. It's a town that feels its marine heritage.

Saw a lot of familiar faces, folks we've come to know over the years, but a few unexpected ones as well. Doug Hively was a potter for many years out of Dallas, Oregon, who later bought a lemonade business, selling out of a fiberglass lemon at county fairs. He was in town en route to visit friends on Orcas Island, and popped in to say hello on Friday. Saturday was more potters, Bob and Patt Causey, Clayfolk friends from Northern California, recently relocated to Camano Island in Washington. And least expected, our friend Vicki from the book arts group in Eugene, celebrating her anniversary with husband in Anacortes for the weekend and completely unaware of the Festival, much less our presence, till she stumbled across our booth.

One expected face finally arrived Sunday morning, our friend Arden, who's been visiting and buying pottery since she was 11 years old. She's just finished first year of college, and we took the opportunity to catch up and share hugs. She also brought along family, parents and aunt and uncle, so we had a lovely reunion.

Last year's sale was our highest ever, over $7000; this year, we were almost at that point after Saturday. Final sales were over $8500, and we ran totally out of pasta serving and dinner bowls, small batter bowls, butter dishes, and several patterns of stew and painted mugs. Sold so many dessert plates that we couldn't fill the display by the end. All the crab ware was gone except for a dinner plate; had a sea otter large serving bowl and a tumbler or two left, and an octopus medium cookie jar, teapot, and small covered crock that I only found in the bottom of the restock box at 4 pm. In all, we emptied six or seven totes, with several more nearly so. The show closed at 5, we were done taking down by 7:30, and stumbled into a Chinese restaurant for a quiet supper before driving back to Mount Vernon to crash. Left at 9:00 the next morning, and finally got home just before 6 pm.