The Police are not helpful

Improbably, the fair I did yesterday was not a disaster. I sold reasonably well, especially considering it was mostly vintage goods. I even sold a hoodie that I didn't have a chance to photograph, so it's like it never even existed. But trust me, it was awesome. 'Stop. Just wait one minute,' I hear you ask, 'You were doing a fair. Where's the drama? The apocalyptic weather? Where's the angst?' Here:


This is how I do not like my stand to look. That's me on the right, behind my rail, with a pygmy table at my knees. Why? Because when I arrived at the fair yesterday I was surprised to see that I had no space whatsoever. To my left, a wall. To my right, a woman with a behemoth of a display encompassing table, rails, bins, boxes and stand. With both of her parents in tow. I couldn't fit my rail and my table, so I had to choose just one. After much hand-wringing and teeth-gnashing I chose the rail, meaning all my t-shirts stayed in the suitcase. The lowly rail stood alone, and looked pathetic. I stood behind it, and also looked pathetic. 'What am I going to do?' I thought, 'This is wrong.' I contacted the police:


Well, technically I texted Friend Sarah, who happens to be a policewoman. But she wouldn't help me because it was her day off or there would have been too many forms to fill out or something. With Blue Suicide ruled out, I asked the organiser if they had any smaller tables and we found a toddler craft table no more than two feet off the floor. The only place to put it was inside and underneath my rail, which is just plain silly. Even sillier was that I had to stand behind my rail, and being short meant that no one could see me. And I had to rather dramatically pull the clothes aside and talk to people through the rail. I think it made me seem mysterious. Or perhaps just mental.

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Funk Fair

With less than a week to go I thought it was time to publicise my one and only pre-Christmas fair for the considerable number of people who land here after searching for 'Kitschy Coo craft fair'...

Funk Fair

I missed out on last year's market but I've been told that it's a very modern and cool selection of handmade designers and vintage sellers. It's at the Christ Church Hall, Holy Cross next Saturday (5th Dec) from 10am to 5pm. So if you're in Edinburgh and looking for an alternative Christmas shopping scene, please stop in and buy every single thing I brought say hello.

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What's wrong with this picture?

Every one loves a puzzle, so what's wrong with this picture?


a) I'm at a fair and it's not raining
b) Even if you look closely you can see no evidence that I'm wearing suncream
c) There's a mania in my eyes that suggests that I'm struggling not to itch more than 100 bug bites
d) The humidity has made my fringe only one inch long

The answer? It's all of the above!

I had a stand at the town's farmers market yesterday on the first truly hot day. Incidently, this is how the kids feel about hot weather:

I had wanted to dress them in my wares as mini billboards so they could walk about being cute. Instead they stomped about being misery-guts and complained that they wanted to go back and 'sit in the house'.

So what did I get out of the fair?

1. I sold almost nothing, but two of my peasant tops were bought as a baby shower gift for one of the editors of Vogue. That's very cool.
   
2. At the table next to me was a thirteen year old girl selling her handmade jewellery, and I got to pretend to be a responsible adult who knows what she's doing.
3. Buttercream laden cupcakes. Unfortunately not to be eaten until my head cold goes away and I can taste things again :(
4. Silly Sunburn Syndrome: I'm really happy. You know that necklace I wear all the time? I don't even have to wear it anymore, its design has been immortalised in sunburn on my chest.

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Treefest: Day two debrief

Today was off to a good start, because I had Friend Sarah in tow to keep me from committing harakiri company. Until we got to the field. Tent, tent, tent, tent, no tent. 'Hey Sarah,' I said, 'look, no tent!' I left my tent overnight, as did everyone else. But whose tent wasn't standing in the morning? That's right, mine. It was dissembled on the ground. 'Hmm, guess we'll have to put it back up,' I puzzled. As we started to collect the poles, one of the event staff came over. 'Good luck with that,' he smirked. 'Did you take the tents down overnight?' I asked. Because it was stormy during the night with some seriously heavy rain. 'Nup, I tore it down this morning.' I didn't think tore sounded like a very good verb. 'See, when I came in this morning, your tent was upside down on top of that tent.' Me and Sarah looked at where he was pointing. 'My tent was upside down? On that tent?' We looked again. 'Yep, it's legs were sticking up in the air.' I had a mental image:


'So I had to take it apart, and most of the poles are broken. You'll not get it back together again,' he said. 'Whatever, Humpty Dumpty. This tent is going back together again. I am not buying a new tent every single outdoor fair I do.' So Sarah and I set to task, with a lot of tape and some cardboard to reinforce the breaks. We were nothing if not ingenious. Well, nothing if not ingenious and delusional. 'What am I going to do?' I asked Sarah, 'We have to have a tent!' Because the sky looked like this:


'Well, we can't borrow his one,' I thought, looking across the way:


Another vendor suggested we ask the organisers if we could have one of their tents for the day. You know, the ones they put up so the public could cower underneath them and not get wet. And luckily they agreed.

Here's Sarah in a rare non-t-shirt-chasing moment:


Yes, she does have a scarf on in July. And here's me and my depressingly over-stocked table:


And here's the sky by the time I got home:


And here's God laughing:

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Treefest: Day One debrief

Weather fail:


Attendence fail:


Rail fail:

I orderd two extra rails on Wednesday, with overnight shipping. They're not getting delivered until Monday. My rail is c-r-o-w-d-e-d.

Table fail:


Laundry line fail:

The arrows indicate how they took turns getting blown up onto the tent roof and then sticking on the wet canvas

Competition fail


Child labour law fail


It's a shame that Failblog has already been registered or I'd be snapping that shit right up.

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Sweat shop update

It's Treefest this weekend so I've been working assembly line trying to round out my stock. The kids were at the childminder's today so I finally finished up my two massive ongoing projects....

Thirty tunics. Here's a selection:


The only upside to making thirty tunics all at once is that I got to use my new fabrics:


This is my favourite:


Fifteen peasant tops (I already had more than 15 in my stock):


You might have seen various places that I've made most of these before, but you probably haven't seen these:


I did make both of these last summer but I gave them to my niece Isla.

As you can probably tell, I'm not feeling too effervescent. Assembly line sewing kills me.

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The Coolest Coat in the World *TM

As much as it shocks me to write this, it did not rain snakes and toads yesterday. Or blood, or fire. It rained actual droplets of moisture, but only at 3:05 and the market finished at 3:00. I did not wear six layers of clothes, I only wore two. My hands were not non-functional purple lobster claws, they were actual usable hands with movable fingers. No bloody noses under my table, no crying behind trees. Result!

I haven't posted anything sewn this week, but that doesn't mean I haven't been stitching like a dervish. It's a slightly longer story (which I'll tell you tomorrow), but I wanted to share The Coolest Coat in the World *TM:

What do you think?

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Just to warn you...

I've booked another last minute fair for tomorrow. Outside. As my bloggy friend Rhubarb Crumble pointed out:

That's right, everyone should go out and buy supplies. Because "Me Doing a Fair = Terrible Weather". I've had monsoon, I've had tornado. I think that leaves blizzard, hurricane, flood, earthquake, volcano, and tsunami. And those are just the natural disasters. If you want to open it up to signs of the impending Apocalypse, there's lots of other things that could happen. From medieval sources (because I'm dorky like that), I should also prepare for fire to rain down from heaven. Or stones. Or blood. Or maybe some hailstones the size of eggs. Possibly with 'eyes, faces and tails'. Yikes. Poison gas that turns men to stone. I can cope with all of that, I rented a proper market stall. But what I am really frightened of is: raining snakes and toads. Toads? Cool. Snakes? My own personal hell. *shiver*

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The very short, the short and the long

I'm sure everyone has been waiting with bated breath for tales of my fair. Well, lucky readers, I'm offering not one, not two, but three roundups: The very short, the short, and the long. Like if 'Choose your own adventure' did tragi-comedy.

The Very Short: A picture tells a thousand words.


The Short: A Twitter conversation limited my debrief to 140 characters.

The Long: Another outdoor fair courtesy of Apocalypse Events.

Anyone been to a craft fair in a tornado? It's pretty challenging. Although the rain was light and intermittent, the wind was relentless. I knew I was in for some drama when I put my table up and it blew over. And then put my first stack of t shirts onto the table and they promptly blew off on to the ground. I was forced to put the side walls on my tent to try to deflect the wind around my table, but the wind actually ripped my sidewalls. It split the sidewall zipper from top to bottom. While trying to repair the damage, roughly 50% of my t-shirts blew across the field. As I chased my t-shirts, my hanging rail blew over, scattering dresses far and wide. The wind was putting so much pressure on my tent supports that they buckled and broke. And cut the top of my head.

What's a girl to do? Cry behind a tree of course. Kindly stallholders helped me out, offering more stakes and ropes and cable ties. And advice: 'Customers don't buy from people who are freaking out'. Which is true. I did sell a lot more when I wasn't crying.

At the end of the day we had to bin my tent (only the second time I've used it) and head over to B&Q to buy another one. This one had rigid poles instead of multi-jointed ones and it fared much better on day two of the Apocalypse. It helped that I staked it down every six inches and tied it to two trees. And used almost 100 cable ties securing everything that might move to anything that shouldn't.

By the end of the weekend, I probably burnt enough calories chasing and collecting my clothes that the consoling pieces of carrot cake didn't count. My money belt was adequate but not overflowing. It helps that the pitch was incredibly reasonable. But I'm in a quandary now. I haven't paid for Treefest yet, it's very expensive and outdoors. And based on the weather I've had for my outdoor fairs so far this summer, perhaps too much of a gamble.

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Come and marvel at me in person

I was checking out my Google Analytics last night and there seems to be an awful lot of people searching for 'Kitschy Coo craft fairs'. Or maybe one very keen person searching lots! I've been very remiss with updating my main website lately, so before I tackle that big challenge, I'll quickly post where I'm going to be this summer. Starting this very weekend, here:

• June 6th and 7th: The Meadows Festival, Edinburgh
• June 14th: Stockbridge Market, Edinburgh
  
• June 21st: Stockbridge Market, Edinburgh
• July 18th and 19th: Treefest, Edinburgh
  

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Hey ho...

Do you like my commerorative t-shirt? Sitting around in the sub-artic, gale-force, typhoon conditions wreaked havoc with my body and I am now very poorly as well as depressed. And for the record, getting a bloody nose and hiding under your table until it stops will create a buzz about your space, but won't increase sales.

So it's back to business as usual for me... For the uninitiated, this means tracing patterns on the floor til 2AM. I have finished my 230m roll of paper and have ordered another. *Sigh*

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Good news, Bad news

Day two of my own personal hell the fair. Notice anything odd about this picture I took on my sojourn to get lunch? Last year, when it wasn't raining and / or freezing, this picture would have had tens of thousands of people in it. This picture has one person in it, and they are wearing a shirt indicating that they are one of the fair's workers.

As I remembered my camera, I thought I'd share some pictures of my space.

The full monty

My rail

My t-shirts

Me and Friend Sarah

Although a fiscal disaster, today wasn't all bad:

• I got to hang out with Friend Sarah all day.
• I overheard a lady saying 'Oh, it's Kitschy Coo' to her friend, like you would say 'Oh, it's Marks and Spencer'.
• I saw not one, but two little girls wearing dresses that I made and sold last year.
• I met a someone who reads my blog. It blew my mind.
• I met a kindred spirit in one of the other sellers. She's also a North-American expat and has lived in Edinburgh for ten years. She's crafty. She likes cutting things out. She's shy. She stays up very late at night making things. She sent her Mom a picture of her hugging her guillotine to show her how much she loves it. Yay!

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Space: the final frontier

This is a picture of the big fair I did last summer. Because there was 30,000 visitors expected, I purchased my own marquee pitch, which was 4m x 4m. I had three tables and my hanging rail, and plenty of space to spread out. And now, with less than a week until another big fair, with the same number of visitors, I'm bricking it. Because I only have a corner booth in a shared sales tent. With 2.5m x2m. And more stuff.

It is very important when selling at fairs to display vertically, it catches peoples attention even from far away and hopefully lures them in for a closer look. So I've been wracking my brains trying to figure out how I can maximise my tiny pitch and create a vertical feature. My first thought was to build a Japanese style screen to have behind me, on which I could hang things. Like this one:

Clearly, mine would not be as classy, because I was going to fashion mine out of garden trellises and hinges. In my defense, I was planning to cover them in fabric.

Armed with my vision and the ever-supportive Friend Sarah, I trundled down to B&Q last week in search of the components to bring my dream to life. We looked at the trellises, which turned out to be too flimsy to attach hinges to. Thwarted, I said, 'What about two independant expandable trellises? I could hang things directly on them!' God bless Friend Sarah for not saying, 'Yeah, you could, but it'd look shite'. Upon appraising said expandable trellises, it became clear that they would be too short to actually be seen behind my towering 5'4" frame. 'Well, will have to hoist them up on poles,' I said matter-of-factly. Off we went to look at poles. '£7 quid for a bloody dowel, that's £28 on poles alone! Let's go look for other things that are pole-like but cheap...' Bingo! Plumbing tubes, they're cheap! You will know this is because they are made out of plastic. It struck me that the tubes would have to have bases, and what better than some planting pots filled with sand? Just to recap, I was now proposing that I string (yes string, because hinges wouldn't work on flimsy wood) two expandable trellises onto plumbing tubes, sitting in plant pots filled with sand. This was to be my 'vertical display' that would draw people from far and wide to come and marvel. Yeah... at the crazy lady. Finally, I did have the clarity of mind to realise that this plan was a no-go.

But, by jove, I wanted a vertical display and would not leave until I had one! 'Look, Sarah!' I exclaimed, as I spied the mother lode. To non-demented people, the mother lode = bath panels. 'Look, they are on sale at £5 each!' She helped me line up four panels on their ends side by side. I We marvelled at their potential, and hinge-worthiness. But balked at the fact my vertical display would weigh more than Friend Sarah and I'd have to bore a series of two inch holes in order to hang things. Crestfallen, I headed home with only a new hammer as consolation.

But there is a happy ending to this tale. Sometimes the simplest things are the best, so I've decided to hang up a humble washing line between proper (non-plumbing) poles and I bought these fantastic clothes pegs on Folksy to complete the shabby chic look.

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