All the things at once

I'm still juggling all the things, waiting for the crash. So far, it has failed to materialize.

Because Clay Fest uses bar code readers at checkout, I needed to relabel all the pots going to the show, both in the van, and in the extra boxes from the shed. According to the weather forecast, the only reliably sunny day in the past week was to be Sunday, so that was how we spent half the morning, the entire afternoon, and another couple of hours after supper, with the shop light on in the carport. Got a clean inventory in the process for work going down to the show. Since we don't do our own sales--centralized checkout--this is necessary so we can count again afterwards and keep our In Stock list straight.

We also decided to do a physical count of the pottery shed, which we got to later in the week. Despite my best efforts to keep everything straight, I knew some errors had crept in, so we opened up the boxes and recorded everything. In which process, I discovered an entire box of elephant and tyrannosaur banks that had somehow been missed at the end of 2024. Good to have them, but it means I'd wasted two production days making a dozen of each, last week. They're in the bisque already, but I think I might wait to glaze fire them until January. Right now, I need the kiln space for other things.

Afterwards, it was back to the studio. Dinner plates, soup bowls, serving bowls. An email from Great Harvest said they were down to nine mugs, so I threw, handled and stamped forty more. Loaded up a bisque kiln, mostly, still waiting for soup bowls to dry enough to top out the load. Maybe Saturday.

Meanwhile, I was doing last minute Clayfolk ads. Found out we had a new one on Wednesday, but was able to reconfigure and existing ad to fir the dimensions, but was still waiting on the last set of specs for the Rogue Valley Times. Last year, we'd bought a half-page ad, along with their digital package, which included no less than eight banners in different sizes and shapes. This year, thankfully, they'd cut it down to a quarter page and two digital, which I put together Thursday morning and mailed off fifteen minutes before I left for the fairgrounds to start setting up Clay Fest.

Before the onslaught

Clay Fest is gonna be huge this year.

We've spent the last 26 years in the Auditorium, a pretty wooden quonset hut on the Fairgrounds, while our waiting list has gotten bigger and bigger. This year, we took the plunge, moving next door into the much bigger Performance Hall. This is the space Holiday Market uses as "Holiday Hall," and it always seems a little sparse. Lots of extra space in front and back, oversized aisles.

We're filling the sucker up completely. Booths packed in, double our sales space on either side of the entry, Gallery front and center. Gone from 60-odd participants to over 100.

I got down to the site just after noon Thursday, parked behind our old location and loading in through the side doors. It was a bit of a challenge--the sidewalk took a long detour down to the back gate, but there were a couple of places you could cut across the lawn without too much difficulty. It rained on the drive in, but that had pretty much stopped by the time I arrived, so everything got indoors dry.

Was half-way through setting up shelves and table when I discovered I'd forgotten my table covers. They usually live in the bag of bags--brown paper sacks for bagging pots--which I left at home, because centralized checkout. Fortunately, Denise was able to drive them down, and I spent the time waiting hanging the light bar and installing the under-counter light strips.

We expand our display from Market with some extended shelves and grid panels, but I couldn't find the plate stands for the back panels. Normally, they stay in the van, tucked behind the passenger seat, but they weren't there, nor behind the driver's seat. I figured they were in the shed, possibly in the drapes box. (Clay Fest provides pipe and drape for all booths, so that box stayed home.) So I put everything else out, unboxed the pots, put up the booth signs. Checked in my gallery piece, a sculpture as old as the show--1999!--as I'd been too busy to build a new one this year. Dropped off some bowls for the Clay in Education booth. Had everything done around 4:30, so headed for home.

Where I discovered that the stands were in the van, in the middle, hidden by the bag of wooden blocks we use to shim up shelves on uneven ground. Oh well, the show doesn't open until 5 pm. Plenty of time to finish off the rest of the display before we open.