Booth #27

It's been such a good week I've almmost been too overwhelmed to talk about it. The big news being that I did finally get off my tuckus, finish the contract, and deliver it to City Hall. I was expecting about a week of processing and approvals and signatures before I could show up to the Farmer's Market, so imagine my surprise when I got the call saying, "yeah, we've got all the signatures, will you be here this week or next week?"

It is imperative that I give public praise to my husband, whose birthday gift to me was the actual booth fee for the summer. I'd been saving up my tips from over at the Pharm, and wasn't really expecting much assistance from outside of that... so I was pretty floored when he handed the cash to me midmorning on Saturday.

Yes, I said birthday. I'm 36. I'm trying to decide between a fold-up walker with the little seat on it, the spiffy little electric scooter, or something more dignified like a cane (concealed sword optional).

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Setup was interesting; if it hadn't been for Melanie, the very nice lady in the booth next to mine, I would never have gotten my sunshade up, but other than that things went really smoothly. Gotta hand it to the folks who staff the fair and keep everything organized; I was really impressed with the overal efficiency of the whole "pre-show backstage" side of things.

There's not even very much that I want to change about the actual booth setup this week - I'll probably adjust the banner placement and that's about it. Oh, and remember sunscreen - a reflection sunburn off of asphalt is pretty much guaranteed any day it's not soggy.

At long last, I remembered to bring my camera, and (of course) forgot to use it most of the time. Still, I do have a couple of images around here somewhere...






Nothing was nicer than finishing my day with husband and adorable kid showing up just in time to help with tear-down. I didn't make much money this first day, but you know, I didn't make much my first day at the Pharm, either. Things will get established... I will develop the flippin' price list so that I can quit working for tips... and the income should increase a bit.

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Speaking of income. Friday was the usual gig at the Pharm, aka Nature's Pharm over on the east side of town, and I brought in a personal best in the tip jar. I've increased my takings every single week that I've been out there - I can't expect the trend to continue much longer, but MAN it's nice to have some lunch money in the purse. I turned the prior week's earnings around and bought a batch of seriously premium henna, and now I'm twitching and blinking funny while I wait for it to get here in the mail.

As the link above explains, henna is a crop, and just like any other crop, you can have good, bad, mediocre, or "Sweet mother of pearl!!" harvests. This batch will hopefully last me at least into next summer, and if it doesn't, I'll turn right around and buy twice as much as I did this time. I don't want to ever run out of such high-quality henna.

Oh, wait, I was discussing Friday, where I not only remembered to bring the camera, I also remembered to use it:



The theme for the day seemed to be ankles; which was funny, because my first ankle ever was on Wednesday at the market, and I was thinking to myself that I could use more practice. I love synchronicity.







This bird is similar to the one I did for another client at the market - in fact I started with the same pattern and just extended it slightly to cover more arm space.

Good times, good times.