Craft Fair Tales

Today is a cold and snowy day here in Denver, and although I don't like being house-bound by the snow, I'm relishing a little bit of quiet time in a crazy, hectic week.

The week started with a craft fair in downtown Denver, in the lobby of the Denver Newspaper Agency. I was contacted through Etsy about this show months ago, and I decided to go for it because the table fee was only $20. I don't do a lot of shows, but this one seemed easy enough.

I would only have two hours to set up on the day of the sale, so I thought I'd better take a couple of hours ahead of time to figure out how I was going to display everything. I borrowed a table from my friend Pirate Monkey, a bunch of tablecloths from my mom, and a whole jewelry display set up from a friend who used to sell Cookie Lee jewelry. First, I set up the table like this:

I thought my jewelry pieces looked really nice on the velvet-lined jewelry trays, but having all that black off to one side made the table look lopsided, and the pottery almost invisible. So I rearranged everything, and came up with this:

I thought this was better, but all that black in the middle just dominated the table, and the pottery still seemed hardly visible. So I decided to split up the trays, and move everything again:

Ah, third time's a charm! Splitting up the trays did the trick, and put the emphasis back on the pots in the middle.

Having figured out how to set up the table made me feel pretty prepared, so I was very surprised to find I couldn't sleep the night before the show! I wanted to sleep, I was very tired, but I just couldn't. My mind wasn't even racing with things I needed to do or remember, I was just wide awake. So I stayed like that most of the night, finally falling asleep sometime after 3 am and then waking up to my alarm at 5 am.

Despite feeling like a zombie all day, the show went pretty well. It was slow in the morning, which made me think no one would buy anything, but then sales picked up later in the day. My mom worked the table with me, which is so nice. If you've ever done a craft show, you know how nice it is to have a little help and company!

I think the best part of the day was getting to meet some other Etsy folks. My closest tablemates turned out to be two of the loveliest Etsyians you could ever meet. As soon as she had her table set up, Angie (spacemonkey on Etsy) walked up to my table and said, "Are you MSpottery?" My first real-life Etsy encounter! Angie turned out to be wonderfully funny and friendly, with an utterly fabulous collection of all-natural handmade bath and body products. I couldn't resist the gorgeous smells, and had to buy myself a Chai Tea lip balm and a White Jasmine bath bomb. I was going to use the bath bomb last night, but I couldn't bring myself to dissolve all that lovely scent just yet! It will have to wait a few more days...

Two tables down from me was the very sweet and adorable Susan (susanporteous on Etsy), with her beautiful handmade books and sock animals. I have to tell you, this woman has incredible craftsmanship. Her books and animals were so beautifully made, I wanted to buy everything. I had to restrain myself and walked away with only a little, colorful book and something else that I can't tell you about, because it's a Christmas gift for someone who's probably reading this right now!

All in all, the show went really well and I had a good time. Now, I'm going to take advantage of my quiet, snowy day and relax a little!

New Work

Happy Belated Thanksgiving! I hope you all had a wonderful day with friends and family. I had a great day, visiting my mother-in-law's house early in the day and then my sister's house in the evening. It was wonderful to be with so many friends and relatives, and to eat so much terrific food!

With Thanksgiving over, the holiday season is officially here! I've been busy with lots of orders from my Etsy store, and I've been adding tons of new pottery pieces. Here's a few for you to check out:

Set of Three Nesting Bowls in Aqua, $85

Chopstick Gift Sets are back! Set of Four in Magenta, $24

Small Dish in Sage Green, $12

There's plenty more in the shop, including new mugs and tea bowls. It's nice to have more pottery in the shop again. For a while, it seemed like I had nothing but jewelry pieces in there, which makes Michelle Swafford Pottery a bit of a misnomer!

2008 ornaments are here!

The shop is hopping! I've been busy adding lots of new jewelry and pottery items, including this year's holiday ornament!

Every year, I create a new design and produce just 50 ornaments. Each ornament in the run is signed and numbered on the back, just like a limited-edition print.

These went up in my shop last week, and I'm already running low. There are just 16 of these ornaments left, so if you have your eye on one, don't wait! You can also save a bit on ornaments this year by buying three or more!

Starting over. Again.

Years ago, when I was a junior in college, I lost all of the contents of my beloved Apple G4 computer when the hard drive crashed. I was majoring in multimedia and graphic design, and the crash wiped out my entire portfolio. I had to start completely over.


When bad things happen, I tend to cope by trying to find the lessons that can be learned from the situation. The lesson I learned from that crash years ago was to always back up important data. And I did. For a while.

For quite some time, my aging 2002 Mac has been making weird noises and if you tried to shut it down, it would restart instead. I kept thinking I needed to take the computer in and have it looked at, but I never got around to it. I kept thinking I needed to buy an external hard drive and back everything up, but I never did. It was too expensive, I'd do it later, on and on. Besides, I had some data backed up here and there on CDs and thumb drives. I wasn't worried. Surely the old girl would carry on!

Then one day last week, the computer began behaving strangely. Applications wouldn't open up and everything was running really slowly. I printed off my packing slips and shipping labels for the day's Etsy orders, and then restarted the computer to try to get it working right again. It never came back.

I took the poor dear into the Apple store and they managed to get it up and running again through their Genius Bar voodoo magic, but they weren't able to retrieve any of my data thanks to a little thing called FileVault, which comes standard with the operating system. If you have a Mac, and you use FileVault, turn it off this instant! I mean it, stop reading this, open up your System Preferences and turn it off right now.

The guy at the Apple store described FileVault as a "Department of Defense level of data encryption." It comes with the following handy warning:
"WARNING: Your files will be encrypted using your login password. If you forget your login password and you don't know the master password, your data will be lost."

This didn't exactly make me shake in my boots when I first turned on FileVault. I thought securing my data against all sorts of computer threats was a good idea. Was I ever wrong! The warning should really go something like this:
"WARNING: Use at your own risk. If your hard drive fails, and you don't have your data backed up, you will lose everything. Don't think the guys at the Apple store will be able to help you in the event of a crash, because they won't. They will only roll their eyes at you and make you feel like an idiot by saying, "You have FileVault turned on?!" like you're supposed to know that this is an obviously stupid and dangerous thing, which of course you would expect from something that comes standard with the operating system. Seriously, don't turn on FileVault unless you've got all your data backed up on an external hard drive, or preferably two, with one drive located on site and the other stored in a safety deposit box, fireproof vault, or possibly the Vatican."

So, now I'm starting totally over, trying to retrieve what data I can from my little collection of CDs and other disks. I'm reinstalling all of my software. I have lost all of my images of my pottery and jewelry, save for the ones that have been uploaded to Etsy. I am relearning all the lessons I learned from that first computer crash years ago, which stings a lot more than learning them the first time.

I've purchased a new little Apple Mini to replace my dead G4, but more importantly, I bought a shiny new 500 GB external hard drive that backs up my computer every hour. I'm not doing this a third time...

An instant uplift

My dear friend Pirate Monkey just introduced me to possibly the best thing to ever hit the Internet:

Live Streaming by Ustream.TV

Puppies on demand! I could honestly sit here and watch this live, streaming video all day.

I'm a huge animal lover and my husband and I used to do foster care for a local animal shelter. I miss having all those puppies and kittens around, but foster care is how I wound up with three cats when I never meant to get one. Go figure!

New Items

I've in the process of adding some new jewelry items to my Etsy store. For the first time, both the round and oval earrings will be available in my midnight blue and magenta colors! I create these colors using either a black or red underglaze and my pearly white glaze (which you can see on other items). The result is a beautiful, saturated color with a kind of shiny, starry depth. I love it.

I've also got new solid round pendants to post. These are the same size as my open round pendants, but with a smaller opening. I love how well the large surface shows off the glaze patterns my reactive glazes.

Vote!

Just in case you've been living under a rock or something, today is Election Day! Get out there and exercise your right to vote! It's a real privilege and something that those of us in the free world should never take for granted.