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show and sale roundup
Nov. 18th, 2024 08:16 amI helped with the guild's show and sale this weekend, I also entered some items, so anyone who enters items in the sale has to help at least three shifts with the sale. I asked about tasks and a big one was being in the rooms and helping customers with items and make sure no one takes anything small. bleh. I don't want to give people advice on what scarf they might like.
So I signed up for setup and teardown shifts. Thursday morning, I headed over to the venue and met some folks there who were unloading stuff they brought. I helped them unload and then we headed over to the storage unit. It was a little 5x10 unit and we unloaded everything into our vehicles. Plenty of space for everything and I took over all the bins so they went in the bed of my truck and under the cover.
Then went back to the venue, unloaded all our vehicles, helped all the people bringing other stuff unload their stuff and started setup. This mostly involved carrying things up the stairs, zip tying things and getting things into their place. I had told folks that I was able to carry heavy things and I was called frequently to do that. I would say I didn't carry anything over 30lbs but most of the people in the guild are elderly women and some elderly men. I'm the youngest by probably 10 years although one or two new folks are around my age and definitely of the folks doing setup.
There was definitely some amount of: setup a display at the direction of someone, walk away to do something else, come back to help again where they half change the display, move it around, and then finally give it the final okay to be strapped down. But it was fine. Towards the end of the night, I helped with setting up one particularly difficult display rack that needed to be assembled and the lighting. We needed more lighting but they finished it up friday morning and made a note to do some purchasing of more lights for next year.
Each area was set up by type of item, so scarves had their own section, gifts, rugs, clothing, accessories, etc.
Thursday 4-5 was the first official dropoff time, so I set my little batch of items out in the proper places and headed home. I had mostly key fobs that I made out of tablet woven bands, eight skeins of handspun yarn and a shawl. There apparently were 900 towels in the sale. I was the only one with handspun yarn.
I didn't work the sale friday or saturday but we got day by day updates on sales, so I knew some of my items were selling each day. Woo!
Sunday, I was signed up for a spinning demo and breakdown and I brought my big CPW which was very good fun. Some folks came and chatted and I also had a nice time talking to other guild members. I think part of the issue I was having with the guild was a lack of recognition on the part of the other guild members, I came to the meetings but didn't really chat that much and no one could remember who I was. But, with the demo I did back in October, plus this, I finally managed to have some nice chats with people and they now remember who I am.
Definitely good bonding experience. I also got to look at someone's very fancy Louet Megado dobby loom, which was extremely cool and uses pegs to do the pattern shaft lifting. Extremely cool.
Breakdown went extremely quickly, end of show was 4pm, weavers had to pick up their stuff by 5 although we were breaking down around people, we loaded everything up into vehicles and I was very glad I had my truck because otherwise we would have had to do two trips to the storage unit and we were wrapped up, the storage unit was loaded by 6:30pm and I was home by 7. I was impressed.
In the end, people mostly bought my handspun yarn, the keyfobs were hard to display with the size tags we had on them, so they didn't sell that well. The shawl didn't sell but that's okay. The guild overall had an excellent sale, with a 25% increase over last year and nearly 100k in sales for the whole weekend. I had a lot of fun and I'm scheming about ideas for next year. Even if I'm back at the farm, I can still sell in the sale as long as I am a guild member and I come up to work for the weekend. Someone who lives in Virginia did that!
The warp I've got the on the loom right now is slated for things to sell, my mom asked for a purse for Christmas so I'm getting a practice bag in to sewing more bags out of handwoven. And I'm going to try and pick up some fiber in the guild bucket sale next month for spinning up, even if the fiber isn't my color. I sold all the ones that I didn't enjoy the colors.
it was fun!
So I signed up for setup and teardown shifts. Thursday morning, I headed over to the venue and met some folks there who were unloading stuff they brought. I helped them unload and then we headed over to the storage unit. It was a little 5x10 unit and we unloaded everything into our vehicles. Plenty of space for everything and I took over all the bins so they went in the bed of my truck and under the cover.
Then went back to the venue, unloaded all our vehicles, helped all the people bringing other stuff unload their stuff and started setup. This mostly involved carrying things up the stairs, zip tying things and getting things into their place. I had told folks that I was able to carry heavy things and I was called frequently to do that. I would say I didn't carry anything over 30lbs but most of the people in the guild are elderly women and some elderly men. I'm the youngest by probably 10 years although one or two new folks are around my age and definitely of the folks doing setup.
There was definitely some amount of: setup a display at the direction of someone, walk away to do something else, come back to help again where they half change the display, move it around, and then finally give it the final okay to be strapped down. But it was fine. Towards the end of the night, I helped with setting up one particularly difficult display rack that needed to be assembled and the lighting. We needed more lighting but they finished it up friday morning and made a note to do some purchasing of more lights for next year.
Each area was set up by type of item, so scarves had their own section, gifts, rugs, clothing, accessories, etc.
Thursday 4-5 was the first official dropoff time, so I set my little batch of items out in the proper places and headed home. I had mostly key fobs that I made out of tablet woven bands, eight skeins of handspun yarn and a shawl. There apparently were 900 towels in the sale. I was the only one with handspun yarn.
I didn't work the sale friday or saturday but we got day by day updates on sales, so I knew some of my items were selling each day. Woo!
Sunday, I was signed up for a spinning demo and breakdown and I brought my big CPW which was very good fun. Some folks came and chatted and I also had a nice time talking to other guild members. I think part of the issue I was having with the guild was a lack of recognition on the part of the other guild members, I came to the meetings but didn't really chat that much and no one could remember who I was. But, with the demo I did back in October, plus this, I finally managed to have some nice chats with people and they now remember who I am.
Definitely good bonding experience. I also got to look at someone's very fancy Louet Megado dobby loom, which was extremely cool and uses pegs to do the pattern shaft lifting. Extremely cool.
Breakdown went extremely quickly, end of show was 4pm, weavers had to pick up their stuff by 5 although we were breaking down around people, we loaded everything up into vehicles and I was very glad I had my truck because otherwise we would have had to do two trips to the storage unit and we were wrapped up, the storage unit was loaded by 6:30pm and I was home by 7. I was impressed.
In the end, people mostly bought my handspun yarn, the keyfobs were hard to display with the size tags we had on them, so they didn't sell that well. The shawl didn't sell but that's okay. The guild overall had an excellent sale, with a 25% increase over last year and nearly 100k in sales for the whole weekend. I had a lot of fun and I'm scheming about ideas for next year. Even if I'm back at the farm, I can still sell in the sale as long as I am a guild member and I come up to work for the weekend. Someone who lives in Virginia did that!
The warp I've got the on the loom right now is slated for things to sell, my mom asked for a purse for Christmas so I'm getting a practice bag in to sewing more bags out of handwoven. And I'm going to try and pick up some fiber in the guild bucket sale next month for spinning up, even if the fiber isn't my color. I sold all the ones that I didn't enjoy the colors.
it was fun!
