Handling the Wind at the Weekend Craft Fair

Now, before I go complaining about a little wind, I want to preface this with some love and sympathy for all those who are affected by this destructive hurricane season. I wish you all strength and positive energy as you cope with crisis. Best of luck and love to those in the path of Hurricane Irma.

So, in order to keep up that positive energy to send to the Caribbean today, I'm going to switch things up to a lighter note.

This weekend I took my jewelry to a craft fair/peddlers market in a lovely mountain town in

California called Descanso. It was such an old-fashioned county town. It reminded me of when I lived in North Carolina (American Southeast), except Descanso is a deserty Western version. The parts of the area that I saw had a quaint community spirit, with small local businesses in old-fashion buildings. The walls of the adorable Descanso Junction restaurant were adorned with pictures of cowboys, and the locals were friendly mountain people greeting travelers as they passed through on their holiday excursions. It was lovely.

The first day was the Peddler's Market. It was a small market with only about seven vendors set up outside of Descanso Mercantile (quaint storefront shown below). There weren't many customers compared to other markets I have done, but the percentage of people that actually bought from me was significantly higher than normal.

So, the day was definitely a success!

The one downside was the wind

My only problem was that the wind was gradually picking up throughout the day. It was knocking over my displays, blowing my description cards around, and eventually lifting up my tent. I spent a lot of time standing at the edge of my tent, facing the wind, and holding onto it during the gusts so that it didn't blow away. Luckily, the wonderful vendor next to me selling quilts and pillows was very kind. She helped me take down my tent, which had started to bend at the joints, and then I helped her take hers down. Sometimes, the best thing to do is take the tents down before the wind breaks them and you find yourself out a tent.

So the wind was challenging but we made it through the day, and the owner of Descanso Mercantile invited me to come back the next day to set up again for free!

Then next day my wonderful husband (that's him below saying hi) came with me and we set up again. It was sunny and warm and the air was calm, so set-up went very smoothly with his help. We were ready for a nice relaxing day.

But within an hour the wind came again. It started blowing everything around and trashing my table again. I was so disappointed, and I hate to say I was very frustrated. But, with my loving husband there I was quickly able to remember how silly it is to get worked up over such trivial issues.

So I simply changed my table set up. I got rid of all tall displays, laid all my necklace display boards flat, and put all the description cards inside the boxes.

It is unfortunate that I could not have my description cards showing since I put a lot of work into them, and the table does not look nearly as nice without and vertical displays, but we successfully made everything a bit more wind resistant.

It turned out to be enough so that we did not spend the day chasing around displays and boxes as they blew away in the wind. We had some time to relax, eat some delicious food from the Descanso Junction, and chat with people about their days, jewelry, and crystals. We had fun, and it turned out to be another successful day. I was also invited to come back and set up again for free later this month. I am looking forward to it!

As always, thanks for reading. It has been a pleasure to write to you :)

If you are interested, my jewelry can be found on my Etsy store at Etsy.com/shops/ARInfiniteCreations.

I hope you have a wonderful day!