Further CodCon, with Less Flailing

In that last post, there is a whopping great error in the recounting of Friday - we were set up by 6:00, which while still relatively fast at about an hour, is not the impossibly fast 5-15 minutes I implied.  :) I was surprised we set up that fast, it felt like we were really flailing around.

Business Saturday was good, although the afternoon/evening got long and boring. Ron and Robin got to CoD somewere around lunchtime, which helped on the boredom front.

Sunday wasn't bad either. Roughly half our sales were on Saturday, the rest being split between Friday and Sunday, weighted slightly toward Friday.

We were set up next to Bast's Garden (plush critters with wings, dragons, wings, polymer clay critters, art, etc.), which was good, because they're fun, and good neighbors. Good for them, bad for us, because we kept buying things from them.

On our other side was a guy giving psychic readings. Okay, sure, whatever. There were also three vendors with gaming stuff, one with jewelry, and a guy with some older collectible card games and lots of other odds and ends. The last table in the room was for the convention CyPhan. They were only there Saturday.

We were in a corner, and managed to get everything set up except knitting patterns and alpaca fiber (didn't even bring them). Forgot to get pictures.

Almost all our sales were pouches. Lots of pouches (which includes drawstring bags). The CoD Cosplay club was part of the convention, and there was a LARP group, both of which I think helped our sales.

Packing up, tearing down, and packing the trailer was accomplished in an hour or a little less. Teh Fast, I haz it. One thing doing one-day SCA events has taught me is how to set up and tear down quickly. And for amusement value, at least one of the other vendors was confused when we first wheeled in the two big tool bins.

The trailer and tool bins/road cases are great. Loading and unloading the trailer are much faster than when we had umpty dozen smaller bins. The new hand truck is nice. Bungee-ing the gridwall to it is one of those "DUH!" things.

We got an order for an extra-large flat-bottomed black drawstring bag, so yesterday morning I went to the Leather Factory store in Elgin, to get leather for it. There weren't any pieces big enough in the large-scrap bin (where I'd gotten some nice pebbled black before), so I ended up buying a whole hide. Way overkill for the bag, but we also need more satchels and belt satchels, and black leather (belt) satchels don't usually hang around long. So the plan for the coming weekend is to cut out satchels/belt satchels - I also have a whole hide of bright yellow, and another of bright blue that I haven't touched yet.

Saturday morning, while looking for something else, Ron found the belt pouch he bought with his moccasins at Bristol ages ago. The company he bought them from is out of business now, so I think we may make something similar. It's smaller than a belt satchel, and his is made out of buffalo, which is thicker than the black, blue, and yellow I have, but the style would work with them. It's also machine-sewn, which is good for my hands and wrists.

Besides the black hide, and black out of the large-scrap bin (and a piece of pretty dark green), I found a nice red for softish pouches. And, um, remember the piece that I think I described as "dark Barbie pink"? Yeah. It's not pink, it's purple. Magenta. Whatever. And it turns out it isn't as big as I thought when I unrolled it. Anyway, as you may have guessed it followed me home, too. I decided if I was looking for/at it again, it was meant to be.