Sunday, July 28, 2013

Fourth day of sales

Saturday was supposed to be our massive day of sales, but rather to my surprise it was good but not great. We sold 33 pieces, one more than Friday. Our overall total is still decent, so I have no complaints.

Driving toward the downtown to get to the festival site, I handed the camera to my friend Tim and asked him to take photos of the cityscape as we paralleled the river. The massive arches of the various bridge as they straddle the river, and all the highrises on the other side, is endlessly fascinating to a country girl like me.



Long before the event opened and while we were setting up for the day, we heard the sound of drums and saw a banner above the fence of the park. Pretty soon a group of about twenty people came walking through, carrying "Save the Earth"-type signs and chanting. Tim said it was a peace march and said it was pretty common around Portland.


All day long the booth was packed. Swamped. Thronged. My voice was tired by nightfall.


Because the booth was so packed all day long, I actually took a lot fewer photos than I would have liked. I saw lots of interesting people walking by, but I couldn't ask them to pose if I was with a customer -- so sorry about the shortage of illustrations from Saturday!

One wonderful surprise is my old friend Debra and her husband Lance dropped in! As Debra put it, I couldn't be in the same area code as her and not stop by. Debra and I go back many, many years -- she was one of my best friends when we lived in southern Oregon -- and so she and Lance decided to make a fun getaway trip to Portland on the same weekend I would be up. Thankfully she came at a rare lull in foot traffic and so we were able to fall into each others' arms, hugging and laughing, and spend a little time catching up. What a blessing to have such friends!


I saw some buy wandering around in a quasi-Roman toga, but unfortunately he was already past the booth by the time I'd grabbed the camera.


As always, I was captivated by the sheer quantity of tattoos in Portland... and interestingly, I just came across this article on "tattoo regret" and what it takes to get tattoos removed. To judge by some of the extensive body art I see each day I'm here, I'm going to guess these tattoos are NOT removable.


Here's a fellow who set up shop across the street from the festival site, playing on a set of homemade drums made of plastic buckets. He was actually quite good.


T-shirts du jour:




Late in the afternoon, my friend Wendy brought Younger Daughter to the festival. Armed with a vendor badge, she explored the site. The nice thing about this function is it's family-friendly and VERY well patrolled by security officers, so I didn't worry about her safety (as long as she stayed on-site).


I regret to say this is all the photos I took for Saturday. Busy busy day!

We're all glad that we have only one more day of sales. It's a pretty intense pace to keep up for five days, and I'm looking forward to my quiet life back on the farm.

Wish me luck on my last day!

4 comments:

  1. i would like to know where i can buy some of these mugs. dianneferay@gmail.com

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  2. Good luck! Small business peeps down here are reporting that sales are waaaaaay down. Glad that your sales, while not spectacular, were still good.

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  3. A belated "Good luck!"

    By the time you read this, you'll have torn down and gotten out of there... I hope it was a good Sunday!

    Man, that's a long show. Did you really get through all five days with NO RAIN? (Can you tell that I do shows, too?)

    Time to go home and get some sleep in your own bed.

    Just Me

    Just Me

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  4. It's so exciting (and encouraging) to see that people can find an income producing hobby that they actually enjoy doing. I look forward to seeing your tankards every year at the Arizona Ren Festival. The video I made showing your tankards in still one of my most viewed on youtube. Thanks for sharing!

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