Another Saturday double booked. The second Holiday market set up at 8 a.m., to take down at 2 p.m., at least that was the schedule. The vendors all set up in the rain this morning, but we got unloaded, tents up and organized mostly by opening at 9 a.m. It was surprisingly busy considering the rain. Knowing that it was to be wet, and since I have wool and soap, we bought me 4 clear shower curtain liners to hang on the back and sides to protect my wares. They worked well and are now spread all over the garage to dry. The sun finally came out off and on around noon and with it, wind gusts. I have 100 pounds of weight, 25 per leg to hold down my tent, so it really wasn’t a problem, except when a big gust came, I grabbed for the tent, a mistake, as one of my tables, the one in the center of the photo with heavy box, soap display, signage, and all my salves, lotions bars, beard oils and soaps blew over backwards, into the wet. And to make it more of a mess, it took my chair over too that had a travel mug of coffee in the holder and it poured over all my business cards. By the time my vendor friends and I got it all picked up and I got it sorted back out, it was about 1:30 and I gave up, loaded my car and came home.
I was fortunate, only the elongated sign frame broke and only a few labels and my business cards were lost. The photo is from last weekend, I didn’t manage to take any today, much less of the mess.
After a quick trip home to unload the tables, wet tent, wet liners, wet red table cloth, and a quick change into Colonial costume, I headed over to Wilderness Road Regional Museum for the 3rd of 4 nights of Noel Nights and Christmas Bazaar and set up again. The circuit breaker that wasn’t working last weekend was repaired, so we had several space heaters running in the German Barn and it was much more comfortable in there tonight. Instead of spinning, I gave a spinning lesson to a friend who was there with her husband, our local blacksmith, while he was also vending.
The craft shows are over for me for this year. I still have a couple dozen holiday shape and scent soaps, very few knits or woven garments left. Tomorrow it will all be sorted out, make sure it is all dry, and stowed away properly instead of just randomly unloaded in the garage and hallway.
I learned a lesson this morning however. In the future, the wooden table will not have a rack with signage and heavy items on it, it will be used for the yarn and lighter items. The study plastic table will hold the heavier items, and the signage will have to be displayed a different way. I was lucky. Several vendors had breakage as the wind blew down displays. Others had to take down parts of their displays to prevent them blowing down. And everyone, needs to make sure to bring weights for their tents, we didn’t have any tents take off today, like last year, but many were not weighted down which contributed to displays being knocked down and damaged.
