offcntr | On all fronts (Reply)

It seems like I've been fielding this question a lot, lately. I'm setting up my booth, there's a big crowd across--and in--the street, Sonia is calling out numbers and names, and someone--in this case a couple--will ask, What's going on?

Visitors, of course, new to Eugene. So I explain that it's Saturday Market, the oldest weekly open-air craft market in the country. Some vendors, myself, for example, pay extra for a reserved booth space, the same one every weekend. This also means we can set up earlier, if we wish. (And I do wish. My set-up is complicated and time-consuming.)

Non-reserved vendors place their name in a lottery, from which they are drawn to choose their space for the day. Priority is given by points, accumulated through a combination of numbers of years of membership and number of days selling at Market. Or trying to sell. If we run out of spaces before your name is called, you still get a point for next week.

Order is randomized within each point level, so you could be at the bottom of the 10-point group one week, the top, or middle, or whatever in the 11's the next week. It's a surprisingly well-organized system, not surprising in an organization that's been going for 55 years at this point.

Meanwhile, I'm continuing to set out pots, and watching the weather. The prediction this morning was for 15% chance of showers in the morning, dropping to 7% by afternoon. It's partly cloudy as I start unpacking, so I don't add the walls to the canopy, though I do put in the rain pin, a cludge to the center post that keeps the roof taut in event of rain. The center spring won't do it, and I wind up getting rain accumulating on the roof otherwise.

As I continue set-up, more and more clouds blow over, and I decide to keep the empty boxes inside the booth rather than parking them under the trees behind the booth, a decision I'm grateful for at 9:30, when the first of a succession of rain showers starts up. I kept the booth sides bag when I parked the van, so I pinned up one of the panels across the back of the booth, so at least I don't have rain running down my neck. I loan another panel to my neighbor, Chere. When it's time to make my Instagram post, I have to focus on water world: whales, dolphins, and a smug-looking sea turtle.

First sale happens at 9:45, a young couple and their friend dash through the rain and into the booth. Couple have an incense dragon. Friend wants her own. I'm happy to oblige.

A couple of weeks ago, a young woman stopped in to buy an owl tall mug for her mother for Mom's Day. She also asked if I had a giraffe, and when I told her it was at home, she made me promise to bring it in on the 16th, when mom would be visiting. I'd been keeping it in the restock box, half convinced she wouldn't show, but just after noon, they did. Mom was delighted with the giraffe mug, and they also bought a panda mug for Dad.

Weather continued spastic, a new front blowing through every 20 minutes or so. Sun, rain, sun and rain. Classic Eugene. Also blowing through the booth, the echoes of the bullhorn evangelist haranguing the crowds down the block. I'd probably have been able to ignore it, but it was accompanied by all the folks trying to drown him out. Bells, sirens, shouting. Cacophony. It was bad enough on my side of the block; poor Robin got so flustered she blew a $50 sale, wrapped up the pots and forgot to process the payment. I hope they were honest and came back.

Denise sold a lot of paper: seven watercolor cards, and a pocket sketchbook, a new pattern we'd just stitched with little loops in the spine to hold a pen or pencil. I sold a lot of paired purchases: two stew mugs, two tall mugs, a pair of stews and dessert plates. I also sold a couple of bigger items, an otter medium cookie jar, a bunny large batter bowl. Sold another dragon, and the husband of a woman who'd strong-armed me into admitting I'd made a spoon rest (even though I swore I wouldn't) came to pick it up.

Around 2 pm, the last of the rain went away, but the wind picked up. Gusty, a little wild. Jesse had to take down some of her moth shadow boxes, to keep them from blowing off the grid panel, and the wind caught the back panel of Chere's booth while she was across the street smoking, and flipped the whole canopy onto it's back. Amazingly, it missed both tables of pottery, and the two sheet pans of fridge magnets were still hanging by a single hook, not a single piece lost.

But this is why we use booth weights, boys and girls.