Count-I-Con Report

Um.  Oops. Count-I-Con was two weeks ago and here I am only finally checking in. My excuse is that on Tuesday after Count-I-Con I got sick. Not horribly, mostly stuffy and tired. And then last Monday I chipped a tooth which led to two crowns and that was a distraction, and snakes are distractions, and here we are. More about all of that on my personal blog. 

Count-I-Con: Not a raging success. I think gross sales about covered what we paid for two booths (10' x 20'). We sold *no* belts, and only *one* belt pouch. *No* skirt hikes, which after the spring rush and continued favoriting of them on Etsy I thought they would go well - enough so that I grabbed the Etsy stash of them from home. The things that didn't sell makes my head all hurty. Also sold a doll kosode (put the doll clothes out since I'd packed them into the Thing at ACen), and a set of chainmail owl earrings and pendant. 

What we did sell, which was not actually surprising, were tails and bottles. I'm thinking that next year we just get a single booth space (10' x 10'), and bring tails, bottles, jewelry (lives in the house), and maybe the Etsy inventory. That's a small enough assortment it could all fit in the new truck (see below), and leave the trailer at home.

At least half the vendors were comic book dealers, which is not surprising, as it was advertising itself as a comic-con. This was the first comic-con type thing we've done, so we weren't sure how we'd do. A lot of attendees were one-day, stroll-through, not like SF/anime cons where most people are there for the weekend. There was a stage, and 1 or maybe 2 panel rooms, but the main thing was the vendor hall/artist's alley.

The new cut-down gridwall for backdrops worked well. Robin made us some more wooden front-stops on Friday (setup-only Friday afternoon, open Saturday and Sunday noon-six), because I'd forgotten about them until we were setting up. The new ones are 1x6, instead of 1x3, because we had that lumber in the house. Still need to be painted.

Also forgot about making something to support shield pouches, which flop around because of balancing on their bottom points. Got lumber for that project last weekend, along with black spray paint for those and the new front-stops.

And last week we got a new truck. A Chevy Silverado pickup, crew-cab, 4-wheel drive (the Explorer is not, because we screwed up, and that was a problem over the winter), automatic transmission. The Silverado is a "Work Truck" model, which means vinyl seats, no carpet, blah blah blah. But it does have cruise control, a stereo, and A/C, so we're good. We went to Madison in it after my crowns on Thursday, and its very comfy. It also gets better gas mileage than the smaller Explorer. Ron's still getting used to maneuvering it (mostly in regard to parking), I haven't driven it yet.

We traded in the Durango, which we were somewhat surprised to have lasted this long, and felt $250 was a fair trade-in price for. I'm driving the Explorer, and Robin gets the Kia, including taking over payments and the difference in insurance between it and the Durango. Win all around.