A Pleasant Sunday

Do you remember the Monkees? Think 1960's and you'll do fine. "Another Pleasant Valley Sunday ..." Ahem.

Today's market was pretty good. I had okay sales, but one of those sales was to someone associated with the city, and he bought my last pack of City Cards and ordered two more packs for next time I am there. And depending on what his co-horts think about them, there may be more orders in my future. LOVE IT!!!

I spent most of the day spending the money I took in. It all started with an iced coffee. Then another iced coffee. Then the pleasant food smells coming from the omlette guy's tent had me ordering one of those. The cool thing is they deliver. ;-) Then I finally got to experience the pulled pork from the BBQ guy, and man, oh man, was it good! The pork is smoked, and with the BBQ sauce it was just heaven on a bun. THEN I had a limeade from the omlette guy (same operation) to wash that all down. And happily, the ice cream guys - the ones that ran off last week with my ice cream - were back, so I finally did get my goods.

I closed out the market by sitting on the asphalt with my pocket knife, digging beads out of the cracks. The poor woman behind me, who helps out with the market in addition to running her own booth, managed to pick up a box of beads that was not totally closed, and beads went everywhere. I was all packed up, so I helped her pack her van, then helped try to recover the beads. We must have been a sight - two women sitting on broken asphalt, both with pocket knives, digging in the cracks. She has a Girl Knife, but I have a Manly Knife (grunt, grunt), so between the two knives and some needle-nose pliers - and the farmer who offered to pour water on a troublesome spot to see if the bead would float (she did, it did not) - we got most of them. And yes, people were staring. Thus ended another weekend of markets.

On the way home, I decided why I like doing these markets, and why I will probably never be a cut-throat salesperson. I like markets because I like the types of people that sell there and the types of people that come to shop. I think we are a different breed, and that works for me. People rush to help each other set up and break down (I only have to take my tent out of its case and there are at least two people there helping me set it up); customers expect to pay cash (they are buying tomatoes from farmers who mostly take cash)...I do not think I have ever lost a sale because I do not take credit cards; customers appreciate hand-made items and will tell you that ("wow, that's a better card than I could ever get at Hallmark"); you interact with really nice people (today a woman told me I had inspired her to break out her own stuff and make a card for someone - that's TWO people I made happy); customers love to chat with the 'artists', and yes, we are artists; I could go on, but I do not think I need to ... you get the point. Oh, and the "I'll never be a cut-throat salesperson" part? I can talk someone out of buying anything! Once I start chatting with a customer and trying to help them find what they are looking for, if I realize I do not have it, I tell them it's okay. They mostly laugh with me, not at me, and I am really okay with the whole thing. I think I just love the whole experience!!

And just so you know that I have not been a total slug since I returned home this afternoon, here is a little something I am working on:

I put these charts together each year for my customers so they can see how the new In Colors from Stampin' Up! fit in with other colors we all know and love. This year I cheated and found that someone else had already done a chart, so I started with what she had and made it my own. No matter what people talk about, like how one color is "almost like" another one, as soon as I put one color next to the new one, I think it looks "just like" something else, so I add it to the mix. I have been known to run off the page before I stop myself. You can see I had to write in Taken With Teal, since I did not even think of it until I stuck the first set onto the page.

So anyway, this is what I came up with this year. I'll finish assembling these tonight and tomorrow. Yep, another Monday off to recover from my market weekend and catch up on things like laundry, cleaning, and stampin'! I found that the new Kiwi matches a scrap of paper in my scrap pile, so I might just have to use that tomorrow. ;-)