Herbfest

Well, like all events do, it's come and it's gone. I had a pleasant day sitting in my tent on a fairly cool sunny day, but I can't say it was a great success as far as selling my pots goes. I did make some sales, but wouldn't you know it, really only mugs and flat dishes. All my cute 'herbish' things got ignored.

A couple of things I learned (or re-learned).

First, my booth layout stinks. A 10' x 10' tent is not the same thing as a 10' x 10' space inside a building. By the time you subtract the edges which suffer from passers-by bumping into them and adjust for the big low spot in that corner.... hard to fit in two tables, a chair, a small wrapping table, an easel with tiles and make it look good. Next year I plan to have narrow tables that can act a bit as walls and block off clumsy pedestrians, small children and yappy dogs. I also intend to be firm with my booth neighbours - this time one of them insisted there had to be a walkway between us and I didn't realize until too late that he wanted this so he could set his booth up so people could look at his stuff from the side as well as the front, and I had his customers in my booth most of the day.

Second, the idea of hanging the herb tiles on a cloth-covered styrofoam board on an easel was a failure. Turns out people don't lift tiles down, they just yank. Several times the whole board came down. Broke three tiles. Got tired of saying 'Oh, don't worry, not your fault' with slightly gritted teeth and finally just stood the board on the ground. Didn't sell many tiles anyway, but I don't think it was because of the display. On the whole, people didn't look inside the booth at all, they just looked at the one table at the front. They glanced at the other stuff but didn't check it out. With the sun so bright outside, the interior of the tent was far too dark. Not sure what I can do about that but I'm day-dreaming about battery-powered lights, solar panel-powered lights, huge silver reflectors, maybe even transparent (translucent?) canopy material.

And, third, BIG third, next time I'm bringing a picnic cooler with lunch, snacks and cold drinks. I don't like greasy sausages or b-b-q'ed exotic meats. And they ran out of drinks other than pink lemonade with no sugar in it around one o'clock. I had a turnover which was supposed to have chicken inside, turned out to be tofu curry. Hmmm. Edible, but not lunch. I was starving again about 10 minutes later. And being alone, I couldn't go roaming around foraging so just toughed it out. The guy next to me, the one whose customers kept stepping back into my wrapping table, kept eating ice cream. He must have spent a fortune on it! His little grandson spent the whole day, as near as I can figure, alternating playing some game on his computer thingie and fetching gelato.

Never mind. Lots of good stock left for the Market booth and Crabapple Gallery. And like I said, it was a pleasant day. Lots of people I know came and stopped to chat, I did make some money, and I learned how to be better prepared next year.