Sun day

Overheard yesterday at Saturday Market: You know what vendors I like? The ones that are in the shade.

Amen, sister.

It started out kind of a poopy day. Literally. Something had taken a sh*t in the cotoneaster bushes behind my booth. I cleaned off what I could with a produce bag, but it was coating the branch, so I went over to the Info Booth to ask after paper towels and cleaning product. This was a little beyond their remit, so they called one of the site crew to help me out.

Sierra promptly arrived with a poop rake and scoop, but we saw they were not the best tools for the job. Better would probably be to cut out the branch entirely. She wasn't able to find pruning shears, but she came back with bolt cutters, and we made that work. Wiped off a couple of nearby twigs with a rag, and she wound up using the rake and scoop anyway to collect what had fallen through to the bark mulch underneath. Pretty much solved the problem, although there were disappointed blue-bottle flies buzzing the site for a bit of the morning.

I also had a pet yellow jacket following me around. Don't know why, didn't have any food out, but it buzzed my face at nose level and followed me in and out of the booth several times. Didn't really want to swat at it; it wasn't being aggressive or anything. Finally seemed to lose interest and wandered off.

And then, late in the afternoon, a butterfly floated in. Perched on a shelf, flew in back, landed on Yevgeny's nose. Couldn't make out the type--kept its wings closed--but it was tiny, about the size of my thumbnail.

Sold a fox and bear painted mug that are going to Italy. The buyers are going there next month, and their host has been so helpful with sorting the details that they decided to bring a guest gift of treasures from Saturday Market.

Had a young couple stop in, looking at the banks, then the watercolor cards; I noticed her tattoos. She had quite a nice fox on one shin, rabbit on the other, peeking over the tops of her cowboy boots. So of course, I showed them the fox and rabbit soup bowls, together on the shelves. Didn't take them long to decide they needed cereal bowls, so I sold them the set.

Interestingly enough, a woman later asked me if I ever designed tattoos? Haven't been asked yet; she says if she ever gets one, she wants me to do the design. Not holding my breath--she was about my age, I figure if she ever planned to get a tattoo, it would have already happened.

Someone else asked if I ever considered illustrating children's books? Told them I'd actually illustrated the songbooks from my two children's albums, told children's stories on the radio, but never succeeded getting any of them published. I gave her my music partner's website, where you can still order our albums, and sang a couple of choruses of "My Brother Eats Bugs."

Cian and Dora stopped in--they were the folks with the raccoon and red panda custom sweaters. I'd been saving a red panda tall mug for them, but someone bought it last week, so I promised to make another. They'd actually come looking for me the weekend we were in Anacortes; Dora's mother was in town, and they wanted her to see my work. Wound up buying an elephant tall mug for her anyway.

What with the heat, it was a slower day over all. We were at $400 around lunchtime when things slowed down, but a few more sales in the afternoon brought us just over $500.