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!

Third day of sales

As expected, Friday's sales were up a bit. We sold 32 pieces. And boy were we tired by the time the event closed!

Here are some photos from the day.

Since I was driving, my friend Tim (who is helping me run the booth) was able to take photos of some of Portland's gorgeous downtown. These are taken from the Morrison Street Bridge as it flings us over the Willamette River.

I had the pleasure of meeting two delightful blog readers (mother and daughter) who stopped by to say hello. I was tickled pink to learn they were now living on five acres and raising Dexter cattle and chickens! Whoo-hoo!

Funny T-shirts du jour:

Portland, I've learned, is a most astoundingly tattooed city. I'm going to guess that 75% of the people passing by had tattoos ranging from discrete to elaborate.

Here was a VERY tall Fraulein who posed with a tankard. With her admittedly high heels, she probably topped 6'2".

These two adorable children were happy to show off their face painting.

This little girl had very long and pretty hair. So did her mother, though I couldn't snatch a photo.

I noticed a couple of fashion trends that were pretty distinctive. One was florescent footwear...

...and the other (for women) were long filmy skirts over shorter underskirts. (The photos are sometimes out of focus, sorry.)

God knows I've seen worse fashion trends, so I didn't mind these at all.

Things got rowdier as the evening progressed and Tim and I spent a lot of time guarding the stock on the shelves, so I didn't get a lot of photos. We were both exhausted by the time we packed up the booth at the end of the evening and departed. However I'm happy that sales, while not spectacular, are steady and solid. Yeah!

Second day of sales

I'm finished with the second day of sales, which started out slow and got busier toward the evening. I sold 24 pieces in all, a nice respectable amount. It's hard not to make contrasts with the insanely good sales of last year, but 24 pieces is nothing to sneeze at!

The last two sales of the evening -- made after the event was actually officially over -- were made to a Mexican gentleman with excellent English who came by. He was in Portland on business and was heading back to Mexico today, and wanted to bring his wife a present, so he purchased two tankards (one for himself, one for his wife). He was cultured and funny and charming, and I thought it was a nice end to a long day.

Here are some photographic highlights of Thursday. Before the day started, I took pix of this display board asking where people came from.

Understand all these pins were after only ONE day of attendance -- visitors literally from all over the world...

...though I think we can comfortably assume this one was a joke. Coastal Greenland, maybe. But in the middle of the central glacier? Not likely.

However there was a visitor from Iceland, which I thought was great.

Southeast Asia was heavily represented...

...and even a few folks from Australia and New Zealand.

The Inland Northwest also had a respectable representation.

I think there were visitors from literally every state.

The riverfront park offers some classic urban scenery.

At noon when the first visitors were arriving, I noticed this woman carrying a bundle of Hula-Hoops, which she left near the stage.

Throughout the day, anyone could take a Hula-Hoop if they felt like dancing with one, which I thought was kind of a neat touch.

This was a cheery couple dressed like a monkey in a space suit (well why not?) and the Statue of Liberty.

We saw this woman walk by with electric-blue hair. Was it a wig, or was it dyed? We couldn't tell. If it was a wig, it fit very well. If it was dyed... well, then they've made greater advances in hair dyes in the last few years than I thought.

T-shirt du jour. There have been disappointingly few really funny T-shirts this time.

I heard a noise like wooden wind chimes, and when I looked up I saw a woman in a skirt lined with... beer bottle caps. It was surprisingly attractive, and let me say you always knew where she was.

Two of Portland's Finest pose in the booth (for professional reasons, they couldn't pose with tankards). We spent a bit of time chatting about a police offer's life in a large city. I always find it fascinating to hear about law enforcement from the inside.

The last band of the evening was a rhythm & blues/reggae-style band. Or so I thought. The crowd in front of the stage was unusually packed, and when I went to see what the attraction was, I saw one man. As in, a one-man band. He was playing, for lack of better description, a homemade electric harp-like instrument. The supports had sound holes, there was a percussion arrangement at the base, and everything strapped to his body made sounds just like an entire band -- base guitar, drums, strings, guitar... He was phenomenal.

The musician's name is Mike Silverman, and he's known as That1Guy. I was so enthralled by his skills that I looked him up online. There are a couple of links here and here.

Late in the evening these two gentlemen wandered by in matching leiderhosen. Couldn't resist asking them for a photo. Unfortunately since it was dark out, they were only illuminated by the single overhead bulb, so it's not the best lighting.

Tim and I were pretty darned exhausted by the time we packed down the booth for the evening. Three more days to go!