First day of sales

The first day of my sales event here in Portland was yesterday, and I'm pleased to report sales were awesome!!

This eternally surprises me. In this economy, I always question how or why someone would spend money on something like a wooden tankard... but God bless 'em, they do. We sold 25 pieces yesterday, which was terrific!

When the gates opened at 11:30 am, we ("we" means my friend Wendy's husband Tim, who is helping me at this event) saw these people with hammer heads. Well why not? This is Portland, after all, whose informal city motto is "Keep Portland Weird." Don't thank them, they're just doing their job.

Here's my booth, with Tim sitting in the only real shady spot. The shade is much better in the afternoon, when we truly need it. But this weekend's weather is infinitely better (low 80's) than last year, when we had 105F heat.

I can display about 130 pieces at a time on our shelving units.

I will try to photograph interesting people as I see them. Last year I was fascinated by the plethora of tattoos sported by Portlanders. Here was a very attractive young woman who had one entire leg entirely tattooed.

But this year I'm going to concentrate on T-shirts. This event seems to bring out peoples' most hilarious T-shirts, so I'll chronicle them as I see them.

The crowds yesterday were wonderful. That's one thing I really enjoy about Portland -- it is such a durned friendly city.

Just after posting this from the internet cafe, I'm off to buy a bag of ice (to keep our drinks cold) then pick up Tim and get ready for the day's work. I'll try to take some more interesting photos today -- stand by!