Co-op life

[offcntr]

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.