offcntr | Holiday, holiday, holiday Market! (Reply)

After the fluster of Clayfolk, it feels nice to just settle in somewhere for a while. Holiday Market lets us leave our booth in place for the entire season, packing out this year over two days after boxing day. The pots still have to come home Sunday night, but we can load them in or out in just about an hour. And it's good to see our neighbors again--pretty much everyone around us is a booth-holder of record, so familiar faces all.

There's a group of vintage Marketeers who like to start each weekend with a parade through the site, singing/chanting, playing drums and rattles. I wouldn't mind it, though it's not my thing, except that the damn chant is the worst kind of catchy earworm. If I'm lucky, they'll be out of earshot in Holiday Hall. If I'm not, it'll be going through my head all day.

We were busy from the very start, lots of returning customers looking for us Thanksgiving weekend. In fact, so busy, that... mistakes were made.

She was about our age, somewhere in the high sixties, at a guess, came into our booth saying, I've decided. I'm going to get myself the frog bowl. And asked if we could break a hundred. I said of course--I keep a fifty in my change pouch just for that circumstance--and wrapped and bagged the bowl while Denise recorded the purchase in our sale pad and on Square (We've taken to running even cash/check sales through Square, it makes it easier to reconcile the books at the end of the day). I gave her the bag, and her change, and only a minute later realized she'd never given me her hundred.

I'm a little faceblind under the best of circumstances; at a busy fair, I'm hopeless. I dashed out of the booth, but didn't see which way she'd gone, couldn't pick her out of the crowd. I told the office staff, and they eventually made an announcement from the stage, but she may well have been gone by then. I don't think she was intentionally scamming us? Just lost track of who'd done what, and came home with more money than she'd expected. I keep hoping she'll come back, but three weeks later, I'm not optimistic.

The Market Bears continue to be popular with littles, gathering smiles and occasionally hugs. I noticed several kids this last weekend who must have seen them before, as they'd wave as they walked by, before the bear did. And there was the adolescent boy with family, proclaiming with every bit of his body language how much he didn't want to be there, to be seen with them, to be--you get the picture--still caught my bear waving out of the corner of his eye, and down low where nobody else could see it, waved back.

Had a nice chat opening weekend with a charming Englishwoman, Martha, about my handmade brushes. She teaches art at a local school, was curious how they worked. I promised I'd bring in the ones I'd made for demo at Clayfolk the following weekend, and she came back to try them out, actually bought a couple, for herself and a colleague.

Already running low on some forms, only one dinner pasta bowl left after two online orders, and I don't have any elephant painted mugs either. I'm down to three incense dragons, but I'm going to try firing a batch in my electric kiln at home, as the blue and green glazes aren't reduction sensitive.

Only two weekends to go.