Monday, June 14, 2010

A Fair of the Arts in June

An early thunderstorm made sure that Saturday's craft fair won't go down in history as one of the all-time greatest craft fairs EVAH, but it still beat the hell out of the May fair, when it was inexplicably FREEZING.

And thus, a good-ish time was had by all:

Earlier in the day, this disaffected teen homeschool kid that I've chatted with at craft fairs for years slouched over with her disaffected teen homeschool buddies and bought up all my 1" comic book pinbacks that speak to the disaffected teen--"NO!" and "I hate you," and "You are nothing in my eyes," etc. So LATER in the day, this other bookish little teen homeschool kid that I have occasional bookish conversations with at the craft fair comes by and asks me if I can help her find any comic book pinbacks that have comebacks on them.

"Well," I say, "your buddies were by earlier and bought up just about anything that might help reflect their negative worldview."

"I know!" she said. "They were buying them about me!"

So I said, "Don't worry, kiddo. I always have a plan." The kiddo paid for five buttons, and then I gave her some Strathmore paper, a pen, and the one-inch hole punch, and instructed her to write her own comebacks and we'd make them into buttons for her.

While we were working, this other woman came up to get the 411 about being in the craft fair, on account of her group sells calendars. I told her that it's a juried fair, and apps for the season go out the previous winter, and the emphasis is on handicraft, prob not Kinko's calendars. So then, and this is a TOTAL pet peeve  since it happens all the time, most recently with a woman who wanted to rent half my booth from me to sell bellydancing swag, she goes ahead and gives me her entire spiel about why her group should totally be able to sell its calendars in the fair, like next month, and it's totally a handicraft. Fine by me, only I'm not, you know, actually in charge of anything, and when people get that frenzied look in their eyes while they're trying to make their case, it really creeps me out. Thank gawd Matt was there and smoothly segued a convo hand-off to himself, so I could devote all my attention to my VIP client there.

My kiddo made herself some AWESOME comeback buttons. Among the comebacks were "You went to LIE school," "I don't care," and "The feeling is mutual." She told me that she was especially proud of that latter button because when you say it, people don't know what it means and so they don't know if you're complimenting them or insulting them. So true, right?

So, low sales but high drama:

Good day, overall.

4 comments:

Chris I. said...

I so want some Spider-Man, Batman and Joker buttons. I am not even joking. I know I've read the issue where Spidey said "I wasn't this nervous the first time I fought the Hulk" from the enlarged button (I want to say it was between issues 20-30).

i admit it, I'm a geek. but you know you love me anyway lol.

kirs said...

that is awesome.

kirsten said...

okay, that last one was from me, my finger slipped!

julie said...

Oh, I love the geeks most of all.

Last night I was reading this old 80s comic from the 25-cent bin at Vintage Phoenix. I thought it was going to be a Camelot retelling, but instead it was a comic in which Merlin needed to find some replacements for King Arthur and the Round Table so he pulled the closest thing from out of time--Arthur King and the rest of his Knights semi-pro football team. Yep, geeky.

And high drama is always appreciated.