Beech Tree News Network

It’s Sunday morning, and I feel like I’ve been beat with a baseball bat.  I hurt in places I’ve never hurt before—my eyelashes are sore—and I’m wondering how my friend Sandra, who is eleven years older than I am, does it.  The “it” of which I speak is the setting up and breaking down at craft shows, weekend after weekend.
    Sandra is the person who taught me how to flatten and slump glass bottles in a kiln, turning them into items like spoon rests and cheese trays.  That part has become easy for me.  I got a taste of the hard part this weekend.  Sandra has expanded her business to the point that she can no longer physically be in all the places she’s invited to set up, so she offered to set me up in some of the nearby festivals, with the agreement that I would sell my things as well as items she makes that I don’t make.  We agreed to split the set-up fee.
    I finished a two-day event at Horse Cave last night, and let me tell you, I have a new respect for that little sixty-nine-year-old woman.  She met me at our booth space on Friday afternoon to help me set up everything, and I had to run her off about six pm, because I knew she had to drive back to Caneyville, where she lives, to finish packing her van, and then get up at 4 a.m. in order to set up at another craft fair in Franklin.  She said she felt bad about leaving me alone, but I assured her I had handled more stressful events by myself, so she reluctantly left.
    Because of the rain threat, the crowd was a bit sparse Friday evening, and most vendors began securing their wares against the impending storm around eight o’clock.  I rolled down the tent sides and began moving the lamps and bricks she makes from the periphery of the tent to the center, just in case high winds accompanied the rain.  I put cardboard boxes on top of plastic totes then covered everything with a huge drop cloth.  The wind began to pick up and I was thankful that I’d had the foresight to bring some large weights to secure the four corners of the tent.  I finished up about nine then headed home—it’s a seventy mile trip.
    The next morning, I arrived on the site to find, like expected, there had been a downpour the night before.  Our tent had moved six inches down the street, a fact for which I was grateful after learning a few other vendors had tents that were tossed into the middle of the street.  Despite covering everything, the wind had uncovered many items, so I spent the first thirty minutes of set up time emptying water out of spoon rests. The upside to working with glass is that water and dirt don’t do permanent damage.  The downside is wind does.  We lost only one item to breakage, so I counted us lucky. 
    I rolled up the tent sides, cleaned up the broken glass, uncovered the tables and shelves and wiped everything off before the crowd that had been forming became a throng of customers.  That’s the part I love.  I really enjoy meeting people and explaining the whole slumping procedure.  It makes me happy to hear comments like, “Oh, you have one with a cat on it, my sister loves cats” or “Mom, don’t let Dad near this tent, I’m getting him that deer lamp for Christmas, and if he sees it, he’ll want to buy it.” 
    My daughter, Natalie drove up around five-thirty to be there when the breaking-down process began.  Vendors were required to stay until eight pm, but about that time another surge of festival-goers showed up, so we just kept selling until the crowd slowed to a trickle then we began to box up everything.  That was the hardest part.  Nothing ever goes back into a box or a trunk the way it comes out, and when you’re working with glass, it’s doubly hard because each item has to be carefully wrapped.  The whole process took us right at an hour, and we left Horse Cave at ten.  I fell into bed at eleven-thirty only to wake several times during the night with leg cramps and general all-over body aches and pains.  How does Sandra do it?
    She has me set up in three more shows this fall, which means I’ll be in a body cast by Thanksgiving.  On the upside, I’ll have a nice hospital bed in which to recover, and I won’t have to do any more craft shows until after Christmas.