View from the studio

Been a busy couple of weeks, both in the studio and at the computer. I've currently thrown through all but the last two bags of recycled clay--see below. I've also designed, ordered, and taken delivery on the posters, flyers and postcards for Clay Fest. Designed the Facebook and Instagram panels, and submitted designs for three digital billboards. (Two weeks early, so they're giving us some extra exposure at no charge.)

Hence my absence here.

Still hope to post about the last couple of weeks of Saturday Market yet today, but right now I have to bike down to Walgreen's for my flu and COVID shots.

ETA: Well, one out of two. Apparently, they're releasing a revised COVID booster this fall, so are no longer distributing the previous iteration.

Last Saturdays

Okay, I admit, we really could use the rain here. But did it have to have come on Saturday?

Actually, most of it fell overnight Friday. It was still misting a little when I left for Market around 7 am, which turned into full-blown showers while I was unloading the van. But by then, the canopy was up, walls down, and everything snug inside. It was a little challenge unpacking boxes--a process I've compared in the past to getting dressed in a sleeping bag--but I had a plastic drop cloth, so was able to leave the boxes covered just outside, and pull them in to empty one at a time. Of course, I had to stack the empties in a corner of the booth, which made the rest of the space very crowded, but on the whole, it worked out.

Clouds continued all morning--we finally had a sun break around 1:50 pm--but they returned on and off the rest of the day. No more rain, though, so everything was dry when I packed up. And the temperature was an improvement over the high 90s of the previous Saturday.

My regular neighbor was away, sort of--she was doing her monthly doggie rescue bus trip to California--but multiple check-engine lights came on around Weed, so they canceled the trip. Her space was still taken by a young woman selling "Cannabis Art": paintings and prints depicting close-ups of various pot flower clusters, identified by cultivar. KInda pretty, in a semi-abstract way, but not really my thing. If she had paintings of cacao pods, on the other hand, I might have been interested...

First sale of the day was to a couple from Northern California who first stopped in because they saw my cardinal pots. Turns out, like me, they miss them from their days in the Midwest, in this case, Wausau, Wisconsin and Winona, Minnesota, within a stone's throw from where I grew up and went to college, respectively.

Not a lot of other memorable visitors, unlike last week, when I saw someone in a tie-dyed axolotl onesie, correctly identified the piranha skeleton tattoo on a customer's arm, and had a conversation about one of my favorite podcasts, Lingthusiasm, with a man in a linguistics conference t-shirt.

Still, I did get a visit from long-time friends and former customers Wilson and Renate, and a surprise visit from former Market manager Bill Goldsmith and wife Pearl Wolfe, along with a handsome young woman who turned out to be their daughter, Rachel, who I'd last seen as a 5-year-old. She was adding to her mug collection, bought one from me, Wayne Lambert, Alex Lanham and Jon King. Former potter and recently retired Corvallis Art Center director Cynthia Spencer also stopped in. Asked if she planned to go back to potting, now that her administrative days are done? Maybe just for fun, she said, she does not miss selling or shows.

Stock is mostly holding out, even as low as it's been since Anacortes. Haven't run out of any patterns of painted mugs, soup bowls or stew mugs. I am, however, critically low on tall mugs, only three left in the restock box, all duplicate patterns, and I only have three pie plates left, period. I'm filling the shelf space with dinner pasta bowls, and debating taking a weekend off or trying to push my September 7 firing up a week.

Both days felt kind of slow, but I still made over $700 in sales both weekends.

All in a day's work

60 tall mugs!

Tomorrow, I gotta make 60 handles...