Monday, July 6, 2009

Springville Art City Days Craft Fair

In my attempt to catch up on my blog and be a bit more consistent I thought I would document just how big a disaster the Springville Art City days craft fair was this year...maybe if I document it I will remember not to do anymore outside shows. I don't have any pics...so it's all in the words-which I'm sure just won't paint the same picture as what is in my head.

We set up on Wednesday night and it was dollar days that night. So the goal was to be set up by 5pm so that we could take advantage of a busy night at the park...yeah- how about set up at 9pm and closing at 10pm...so no sales this day. The next day it rained most of the day so nobody was really out and about, pretty much another loss. Friday rolls around and it looks to be a really nice day. It hits about 3pm and we finally made our booth fee...yeah! Now we had the rest of the day and all day Saturday to make a profit.

Then we saw the dark clouds moving in. The temperature started to drop really quickly so we pulled our tables in so that they were all the way under the easy up tent that we use for ourdoor fairs. We had two sides up all the time and started putting up the two other sides in preperation for the rain we thought we would be getting. All of a sudden a BIG ol' clap of thunder and lightening happend and at the same time the wind gushed in. It was blowing so hard that it was pushing over our tent since it was staked too securely to blow it away. All of a sudden our roof was tore off by the wind and we got DRENCHED in the pooring rain. My mom threw a tarp over the machine and we put the laptop under a table and we just had to continue to hold on to the tent so it didn't get bent by being blown over. It was raining really hard and just kept on blowing. We had fathers day hats blowing all over the park and ALL of our merchandise was wet at this point. It only lasted about 15 minutes but it was a complete loss. We called my dad and brother and they came to help us pack up and go home to dry out. People kept coming by and asking why we were closing down early...uh...I don't know...could be because everything we own, including ourselves are dripping wet! It took the rest of the evening to lay everything out to dry and then the entire next day cleaning up the mess, but atleast we only lost paperwork and business cards. All of our merchandise dried out great and our machine wasn't hurt. And yes, that will be the last of the outdoor fairs for me and Stitcheroos. Oh...I do have to say that other crafters were AWESOME. During the rain several of them came out in the rain to try and help us hold down our tent, meaning that they got drenched too...thank you all you nice people out there!

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