Swimmingly

Somewhere in the middle of an exceptionally busy week--meeting Tuesday (abruptly cancelled), sale set-up Friday, sale on Saturday, studio open house Sunday--we managed to eke out a day off for both of us, and drove down to Newport for a holiday.

Drove up to Corvallis and across on 36, hit town just in time for an early lunch at Nana's Irish Pub. Good Scotch Eggs, and Denise enjoyed her oyster roll; my cod and chips really needed salt. I'm always hopefully ordering it on the coast, and always disappointed. You'd think I'd learn...

Afterwards, we went over to the Oregon Coast Aquarium for the afternoon. We hadn't been in several years so it was good to be back. Denise knees have been giving her grief, so we borrowed a rolling walker, with seat, from our former choir director, a brilliant decision, as it turned out. Having a place to sit down whenever necessary, and even roll forward a little without standing, made the day much more manageable for her.

It was lovely sunny, though still pretty chilly outdoors, but we still caught both the otters and pinnipeds at feeding time, and I dropped in on the aviary. Puffins were in winter plumage, so no dramatic white cheek patches, though they'd gotten in some horned puffins since the last time I was there.

Spent a lot of time poking around the tidepool exhibit, gazing at the brightly colored fish in the coral reef tank, watched a three-foot long spotted moray circling its enclosure, blissed out with the jellyfish, and even managed a pretty nice watercolor of the copper rockfish.

The big walk-through tank originally built for Keiko the orca has been divided into three habitats, shallows, mid- and deep water pelagic. Five-foot sturgeons and gliding bat rays fascinated, but nothing compares to having a shark swim right over your head. Didn't see the octopus, sadly. Really wanted to try an paint one from life.

Decided to take the long way home, down the coast highway to Florence, watching the waves roll in from China. And then home for supper. All in all, a lovely day.

Co-op life

I spent a good bit of my life down at Club Mud this weekend: Friday afternoon, moving wheels and helping build shelves and set out pots for the studio sale. Saturday doing both first and last sales shift at the sale, then packing pots and restoring the studio to a working space. Sunday, we were scheduled for a tour by Local Clay, our Eugene area pottery club, and I'd volunteered to host.

The sale started out busy, a line at the door when we opened at 9, three of us busy writing up sales, running the Square and wrapping the pots. We settled into a nice system, where Kat wrote up the tickets, saying names and prices aloud so I could enter the sales into the Square. Tori wrapped the pots, while Kat took cash and checks and I ran card sales. Went so smoothly that we cleared the first flurry by quarter to ten. Had a brief lull, and then another crowd swept in. (We later figured out that one of the signs had last year's hours on it, when we opened at 10 instead of 9. Hey, if it spreads out the rush, I'm okay with it. Although I'd brought down stick-on signs with the correct hours when I came in Saturday.)

The second rush ended just before shift change at 11, so I had lunch in the courtyard and took the bus down to Farmers Market to poke around and get some winter squash and flavored vinegar. Came back for my afternoon shift to find things had slowed way down. We'd been around $1800 when I left, had made maybe $2-300 more in the meantime.

By 3 pm, we were getting worried, wondering whether the beautiful weather had sabotaged us. Who'd want to be indoors when they could be hiking or gardening or? Thought we should maybe close at 3 rather than staying open until 4. But then another bunch of customers came in and kept us busy almost till 4. Took the total sales to over $3200, still down from last year's record, but a solid turnout.

Not so grand tour

Three people showed up for the Local Clay studio tour. I mean, they were engaged, had lots of questions, both about the co-op and about my work in particular. But only three.

And I'd baked so many cookies.