Slightly Off Center

Next weekend!

Five days to Anacortes!

(Reblogged from offcenter.biz)

Well, the coast, at least.

We leave on Wednesday, August 2, for the northern Washington coast, for the Anacortes Arts Festival. We've been going for years, now, it's a great opportunity to get away from the Oregon summer heat and smoke. (Usually. Last year we headed right into the Washington and British Columbia smoke.) It's a lovely show that takes over the entire downtown, stretching from the port all the way to 10th Street along Commercial Avenue. They run booths up both curbs, and another row of booths up the center of the street. For about a decade now, we've been in space 905E, on the east side right at the start of the craft booths, overlooking the jazz stage.

It's a lovely spot, though I've had to offer to check bags for customers who've just arrived, and don't want to carry their pottery around all day. As long as I can get a name and cell phone number on the bag, it works out fine.

The only problem with my space is the wind. I'm just above mid-block, but facing an open parking lot, and if the wind comes up of an evening (or even in the daytime), the roof of my booth catches it, and wants to walk up the street. It doesn't help that the space next to me is empty. This year, I bought an extra set of booth weights. We'll see if fifty pounds of sand per corner will stabilize things any.

Because Anacortes is such an ocean-centric location, I always have to stock up on sea life. Octopus and crab are perennial favorites, with sea otter close behind. This year, I'll also have some extra orcas, humpback whales, and possibly a sea turtle or two.

Clayfolk is this weekend! We've added hours on Friday to try to lessen the mad crunch--opening at 10 am instead of 4 pm. I'll be in booth 11, and will be doing a demonstration at 2:30 pm Friday.

Restocking the van after a successful show is a multi-step process, and the hardest part isn't moving pottery boxes around. It's paperwork.

You see, I try to keep as accurate an inventory of the van and home stock as possible, so if someone asks, Do you have [whatever?], I can know without digging through all the boxes. A couple of times a year, this involves opening everything up and physically counting; the rest of the time, I'm moving marks from one piece of paper to another.

The first step is taking the sales book, which records every item and pattern sold, and transcribing it to a note pad, with all the bowls in one line, mugs in another, and so on. I also try to arrange the lines to correspond approximately to the columns on my inventory tally. That way the next step is easier: going through with a red pen and marking off everything that sold from the van tally sheet. On the pad, I'll also note which items I don't have more of in the shed--usually tall mugs or one-of-a-kinds, but in this case I sold out entirely on chickadee stew mugs. This makes it easy to open up my laptop and update the In Stock list I maintain offcenter.biz. I'll correct and date it and try to post it no later than a day or two after the show.

After that, I take the pad into the shed with some empty boxes and start assembling what I need to fill the gaps: mugs, bowls, banks, dragons (I sold all six that went to Roseburg; fortunately, I had a dozen more at home). After a good Saturday Market I'll maybe have two boxes pulled; this time, I had four. I'll note on the pad which items are being replaced exactly (usually mugs, bowls and stews) and which are getting different patterns.

I back the van out of the carport and set up a couple of sawhorse tables, then start hand-trucking stacks of boxes from van to workspace. I set up the van so load-in boxes are in the center, restock boxes closest to the doors. Since I move things from restock to shelves during the show, load-in usually doesn't need much attention unless I sold particularly well. In this case, I had to bring out three boxes: banks, stew mugs, and square bakers/pasta bowls, since I'd sold through all my restock on several of these. In addition to almost all of my restock boxes.

Once I've transferred pots from the shed to the appropriate boxes, I need to pull any surplus stock. I took an extra box each of soup bowls and plates with me that I don't have room for at Market, so I consolidated them down to one box each, noted the patterns of the leftovers on an extra tally sheet, then moved them back into the shed.

Last, I mark pots in red on the shed tally that have moved to the van, and add them in pencil to the van tally. Similarly, pots going back to the van are red-lined on the van tally and penciled back into the shed's.

The final step is to get signage and product boxes for Denise's paper and books out from the studio. We don't take them on the road because shows would require us to jury in separately and pay an extra booth fee.

1. I ran two loads of laundry yesterday. The washing machine remains fixed.

2. The replacement Great Harvest stamp arrived in yesterday's mail. Too tired to work on them last night, but the mugs were still nicely pliable this morning, so I smoothed and stamped and pulled handles, which I will attach sometime after lunch.

3. I finally got my booth assignment for this weekend's art fair in Roseburg. They gave me the booth I wanted, but renumbered the map! So this morning I spent an hour or two updating and re-sending my e-card and the Find Us link on my website. Nothing I can do about the physical postcards. Even if I wanted to hand-update and resend, there's no way they'd arrive in time.

I'm gonna have words on the after-show evaluation form, I tell ya.

I know I've decided to severely limit the number of road shows I'm doing this year, but it's hard. Just got an email from a show I've been doing for decades, reminding me that the application deadline is coming up soon. Feel like I'm ghosting them, but what do I say?

It's not you, it's me...

Clayfolk 2021 has been cancelled.

The show had a rocky road from the start. At first, it wasn't certain we'd have enough applications to pay for the hall, but enough came in at the deadline to pass our 70-booth minimum, with a comfortable cushion. We'd contacted our person at the Armory to reserve the weekend before Thanksgiving, our usual date, back in spring when it looked like with vaccinations we might actually be getting a handle on this pandemic.

Then everything fell apart.

First, there was the Delta variant, and the new surge in cases. Then we learned that our contact at the Armory had moved on to a new job, and hadn't passed on our reservation to their successor. Once again, they'd booked our date to someone else. They offered a half-price rental for Thanksgiving weekend or the first weekend of December.

The board sent out a survey to the general membership, asking for feedback about those dates for an indoor show, or interest in an outdoor event held at the Expo center earlier in the fall--late September or early October. The Survey results were released yesterday, in a letter that concluded:

The Board met yesterday (via Zoom) and decided not to pursue a Show this year (yes, it's official). We based this decision on the information provided in the survey and the uncertain future of the evolving pandemic, specifically for a venue in southern Oregon. Though we love our big Show, the health risk to our artists and customers is currently too great. Our treasurers will be coordinating the refund process for all applicants.

I think they made the right call. Vaccination rates are finally climbing in Southern Oregon, but they're still not great, and I suspect mask policing would be a real problem. I've gotta say, I'm feeling relieved.