Slightly Off Center

• Saturday Market has added a useful feature to their website: a real-time map of who's participating at the Park Blocks on any given Saturday. It's under the Visit Us pull-down tab, in case you lose this link.
• Market has been wildly variable. I've had a couple of weeks where I didn't make grocery money, a couple that were startlingly good, and one that was the best single Saturday I'd had in 27 years at Market. (Holiday Market doesn't count. Holiday Market is its own thing.)
• Speaking of Holiday Market, preliminary news is that we won't be indoors at the Fairgrounds this year. There's no way to maintain distance, limit exposure, and make enough in booth fees to cover the expense of renting the venue and paying for publicity. The answer seems to be to stay at the Park Blocks, Saturdays only, with reduced hours, 10 am-3 pm. They're still working out booth layout and allotment. I'll update here and at my blog as I know more.
• I've updated the In Stock list to reflect work from my early August firing. A lot of the kiln was taken up by special orders (one a 40-piece set!), but there's still new work, and three new patterns!
• One item back in stock again, after a long hiatus: Dinner Salad Bowls. I always liked the form, use it a lot for everything from pho to pasta to yes, big summer salads. Never had a good place to display it in the booth, though, but since so much of my custom is coming online these days, I thought I'd bring them back. Currently available in bunnies, elephant, fox, hummingbird and otter patterns.
• Tsunami Books sold several of my tall mugs in quick succession, so I've brought them another dozen, along with some pie plates. Check the Find Us link for details.
• I've scheduled a shared glaze firing with another Club Mud potter for late September, so I'm taking custom orders again, through September 24. Email me your orders as soon as you can!
• Why the hell don't people cover up their nose!?

Reposted from offcenter.biz.

It seems like only yesterday.

We'd started the new year with me being laid off. I still had my very part-time teaching salary from the UO Craft Center, but the extra income I got throwing pots for another studio had dried up. The back room at Slippery Bank was full of bisque. Unless I could come out to Cheshire to throw plates, they'd call me in six months. Maybe.

Denise had picked up some money--along with a case of bronchitis--working the holiday rush answering phones for Harry and David, but though that might get us through spring, it wouldn't stretch much farther. So it was that I took a huge chance: I mailed off my membership to the Eugene Saturday Market, and started making pots to sell.

It was rough, at the start. We shared a booth with fellow potter Kathy Lee, who already had priority points from selling the previous year, so usually got a space. But we moved a lot, a different space every week. Eventually we collected enough points to start getting the same space consistently, but the sales were never consistent, nor predictable. There were weekends when both we and she got skunked.

But we were learning. What sold, what didn't. How to grow a customer base, manage a business. We went at it completely bass-ackward, no business plan, no marketing strategy, no nothing. Just made pots. Tried to sell pots. Made different pots. Gave out a zillion business cards.

Rinse, repeat.

Our first Holiday Market was a revelation; people were buying things. They'd been looking all summer, now they came back with their wallets open. I was playing catch-up making pots all that December. But Denise didn't have to risk life and lung working for Harry and David, and we were able to save enough money to last until April, when the Market opened again.

Eventually, I started applying to out-of-town shows. Started a website. Got some galleries, that promptly went out of business. Got some other galleries, some of which didn't. Even did a wedding registry, a couple of times. Took some interesting commissions.

This April marks our 25th anniversary selling pottery as Off Center Ceramics. (Pulp Romances got started a year or two later.) Twenty-five years of making pots, selling pots, meeting people and sharing their stories. We've been at this long enough to have produced family heirlooms. Been lost in the divorce (our pots, that is. Denise and I are looking at our 27th anniversary in June). Showed up in the Goodwill, more than once. It's been a heck of a ride.

And it's not ending anytime soon. I've already applied for this year's shows, started getting my notifications back. Fired the kiln already this year, and am working to fill it again. I just ordered another ton of clay.

Thanks to all of you for staying with us for all these years. We're looking forward to the next twenty-five...

But how will I get it there?

It's a common lament we hear this time of year. Someone's found the perfect present for Uncle Fred (or more often, Mom) in Minneapolis. But how to get it there?

Well, the answer seems obvious. Mail it. Ship it. Box it up and send it away. But that's the real question. How to box it so it arrives in as many (or few) pieces as it started in? Here are a few tips:

Space is your friend. The object of packing is to ensure that shock or impact from outside the package is absorbed before it reaches the object inside. To this end, 2-4 inches of non-compressible packing should surround your pot on all sides.

Sadly, the best non-compressible packing is still styrofoam peanuts. I get them recycled whenever I can. (Cornstarch peanuts work too, but keep them dry. They shrink when wet. Mice will also eat them—and pee in the bag—so don't store them in the garage.) Air pillows work all right, but you'll still need peanuts to fill in gaps—leave no empty spaces. I shipped with honest-to-goodness popped corn one year. It worked all right, but compresses and settles more, and I burned out the air-popper in the process. Crumpled newspaper or excelsior does not work. It compacts in shipping, leaving your pot free to bounce around the box and do itself an injury.

If you have more than one piece of pottery in the box, make sure they can't bump against each other. I usually make separators from scrap cardboard to keep each piece in its own little pen. Lids should be packed separate from their pots, or else wrapped in thin foam or bubble wrap and taped in place, so they can't bang against their base and break.

Two boxes are better than one. For all but the smallest of pots, I recommend double boxing for shipping. Pick a second box about four inches bigger in all dimensions than the first. Fill the space in between with more packing materials.

There's no need to wrap the box. My Grandma always wrapped her packages with brown kraft paper and twine. This isn't necessary, and can be a problem if the wrapper (with its mailing label) tears during shipping. If there's no blank spot to write the address, secure an address label with box tape right onto the box.

If you're like me, you'll use recycled boxes scrounged from somewhere. Just make sure to obliterate any previous addresses, logos, etc. If you're shipping with UPS or FedEx, you'll also want to black out any barcodes, even manufacturer's codes. And if you're re-using a USPS Priority Mail box, the Post Office will charge you priority rates for it. (Note: The Post Office also won't let you use boxes that formerly held hazardous stuff that they won't normally accept.) (This would be the exception to the "no need to wrap" rule.)

Actually, I'll let you in on my secret box recycle trick: If you have a hot glue gun, flatten the box and carefully peel up the flap on the glued edge. Turn the box inside out and reglue the flap, then fold and tape the box. Presto! A pretty new box with all the logos, barcodes or hazardous
stickers on the inside.

To "Fragile" or not to "Fragile." While I have no evidence to support the rumor that shippers see "Fragile" stickers as a challenge, or worse, a bulls-eye, I suspect that they don't do much good, either. A potter friend who used to work holiday rush for UPS once told me, "When you've got 20 minutes to unload a 30-foot truck, you treat all the boxes the same. You can't slow down and carefully unload the box with the 'fragile' stickers."

Where to ship? Your call. Parcel Post is cheaper, but UPS includes the first $100 insured in the price. I generally trust my packing and go with my friends at the River Road Post Office.

If all else fails, let a pro do it. Your local mail center or UPS store will pack and ship it for you. Heck, we might even do it ourselves if you talk nice to us. Or bring cookies.
 

So timing is everything right now. It's just time that's lacking.