Arduinna

Haven't had time for much of anything but pottery of late, so it was nice to be able to attend our monthly book arts meeting. The demonstration topic was tunnel books. I'd made one before, but this one had an innovation I quite liked. Instead of gluing in the inner pages, you cut a slit halfway down the accordion fold, and a corresponding one on each side of the page, so they slotted together. No muss, no fuss, only glue on the very front and back.

Didn't really have an idea for subject matter, but I took along last year's Inktober sketchbook, paged through it until I found inspiration, and drew this scene. Cut out with Xacto, color with pencils, and voila! It's Fat Bear season.

And this one, I'm not giving away.

What a relief to actually be stocked again! No shifting mugs to hide empty spaces, no hiding bowl stands behind the bench. A place for everything, everything in its place. And lots of pretty new pots filling the shelves.

The first of which sold just after nine o'clock. A couple of men and their adorable dog stopped next door to talk to Chere--well, to let her fawn on Winston the doggo--then came in to admire my pots. Said they might be back later, and were: five minutes later. Bought an octopie plate that's going home to Brisbane, Australia.

Sold several other pie plates, a bunch of tall mugs, a couple of bigger ticket items: large sea turtle serving bowl, large covered casserole, a brontosaur bank. Got into a discussion with a couple who couldn't believe how reasonable my prices were for hand-painted bakeware. Stuff like this would sell for $400 online; your prices are too low! Yeah, but hardly anybody can afford that $400 bakeware, and those who can are never gonna use it. Too spendy, too big a risk.

I keep explaining to people: I know how fast I throw. I know how fast I paint. And I feel that if my work is so expensive that people are afraid to use it, I'm doing something wrong.

I will note that they didn't actually buy anything, though they might yet special order a baker with their dog's picture on it. Not holding my breath.

Had a strange thing happen in the afternoon. I was checking my sales book against the Square report and found a discrepancy. There were two charges for a soup bowl, two minutes apart, 1:17 and 1:19 pm, on the same card. Huh?

I was sure I'd only sold two soup bowls all day, a raccoon, earlier in the report, and a fox bowl. The lady who'd bought the fox came in a few weeks ago, wanted a fox with its eyes closed, wasn't entirely happy with the one bowl I had left on the shelf. Today, I showed her a new one from the firing and she immediately wanted it. So I wrapped it, was about to bag it when she said she had her own bag. So I left it on my chair while we talked about some new patterns--she asked if I had six of the turkey dinner plates, I said I'd only one, but she could order a set of six. Then she asked if I made salad plates, I showed her the dessert plates, she said they'd do, but today she'd just take the fox bowl. So I finally put it in her bag and sent her on her way. And somehow, she got charged twice.

I'm still not entirely sure what happened, whether Square glitched and ran the charge twice, or whether we ran her card at the start, got distracted talking about plates, and ran it again. In any event, I requested a refund on the second transaction, which brought my total sales for the day just under $600.