MCU Gen: Fic, fanart & recs

Thursday morning, I got up on time, packed the last few items into my bags, loaded the truck and hit the road. I had plenty of time to make the trip, which was good because my stomach was upset. It was somewhat upset the entire trip which was a bit of a downer but not so much that it really affected my plans. I arrived the weaver's guild show and sale venue first, five minutes before anyone else did. We unloaded a few things from people's cars there and then headed over to the storage unit. There was a lot of stuff in that storage unit, which we parceled out between four vehicles (including my truck) and a small trailer. Then we headed back to the venue to unload. 

That's when things got very busy! I was on two jobs: lifting heavy things and lighting. Given I was the only person there under the age of hmm, probably 60, this was extremely important to be able to lift heavy things. All of the things had to be unloaded from vehicles and tables brought up from the basement. Heavy tables, not the nice light plastic ones. Not quite as heavy as those metal ones from the 70s, you know the ones. Once I had brought up all the tables needed to each floor and dropped them off to the appropriate folks setting up each area, I started on lights. The venue is a wedding venue and has absolutely terrible lighting. It's an old barn that has been renovated to the point where all the nice old beams are visible (and will give you so many splinters) but also there's normal electrical and HVAC and things like that. But very dim or yellow lighting. Bad for product, probably nice for photos. 

I hopped on the ladder and put up so many lights. 20 or so clamp on lights and a bunch of track lighting in various places. This involved doing electrical cord things that I would never recommend and can't wait for the year we set the place on fire with questionable hookups. But the lights don't pull much power so it's probably fine. Probably. Then I carried more things as the other guild members arrived to drop off product to various locations. The venue had small offshoots of the main room, each which got it's own product type in there. So main area had clothing, one small room had gifts and misc, another had scarves, upstairs the main area had towels, table runners, offshoot area had shawls and bags, another pillows, etc. I brought my stuff in and set up was more or less finished right around 5pm. 

I stopped through the Venezuelan food place and got arepas, tostadas and an incredible beef, bean and maduros empanada. So good. I stayed in dragonlady7 's cabin for this trip since she wasn't in, so I arrived to the farm after normal dinner time but checked in with A and family and hung out and chatted for a bit. Then Z came out to the cabin to light the propane stove for me and I settled in for the night. 

The next morning, I got up and went back to the sale, the show opens at 11:30, so the members have more drop off time and we can all be ready to go. I helped with last minute light adjustments, carrying more bins and boxes in and helped some folks carry some demo looms in. Then I left. It's a madhouse Friday and I'm not that into retail stuff at this point. I went to the co-op and got food for the weekend, snacks and breakfast food plus stocked up on some baking supplies that I would need to order or find special. I played a bunch of pokemon go around town and then spent that evening sitting around reading a book and knitting. And figuring out that I had fucked up my saturday plans. Originally I was planning to go to an SCA event, but I realized that it was pre-registration only and the registration had closed on the 11th, so that was out. I was kinda disappointed, I didn't read the event page very well when I first realized it was happening and then should have checked it again, but forgot. Oh well. 

Saturday, I slept in a bit, then took myself to the library. I sat around, read a book and knitted and then went over to the yarn store that I've been to before. There I had an utterly bizarre experience attempting to buy things. I picked up 52 weeks of Accessories, a knitting book which the person at the register and then the owner had no idea how much it would cost and as far as I can tell, just made a number up. I also bought some tencel weaving yarns in the hopes that I can weave a couple of scarves for next year's show and sale. It was just deeply odd. That shop has always been a bit weird when I go in there and buy things, so I can't say I'm surprised but it was amazing how difficult it was to give them money. 

Headed back to the cabin again and munched snacks for dinner instead of real food. I knocked my food schedule completely out of whack. There was a storm that night, extremely windy and rainy, so I didn't sleep that well at first, but slept in instead. I killed time for a bit, then went to A Big Gay Market popup which was set up in a very tiny venue. I bought some things for christmas gifts and chatted with a few folks which was nice. Then I went to the Show and Sale. I wasn't technically on the schedule but added myself to do spinning demos since no one was doing them that day for some reason. I think the person signed up that day had backed out, so I did that for a while on my spindles. Chatted with a few people about spinning and weaving which was nice. Then the sale ended at 4 pm. We took everything down very quickly and loaded it all into vehicles and over to the storage unit as a group. We packed it all in by 6:45pm which was fantastic and I went and got myself chipotle since it was close by. The temperature had dropped rapidly and I drove back on some back roads through a snow squall that I was deeply afraid I was going to be off the road since I was crawling along at 15mph and still couldn't see the road well. It was extremely windy. Thankfully it was only 10 minutes or so of it and I got back to the farm fine. A and family had some folks in visiting and I stopped by the house to use indoor plumbing and refill my water and hung out and chatted with them for a while. 

This morning I was up, packed and on the road by 9am or so. It wasn't fun driving in the wind, but it wasn't terrible overall. 

B's cabin was extremely nice to stay in, I slept on the pull out couch with blankets and my nice sleeping bag and pillows. The propane stove was really wonderful to sit in front of in the evenings and mornings, I would prop my feet up to warm them up before going about my day or getting into bed. It was quiet and peaceful and I really only interacted with people if I wanted to. It was so nice to have a quiet home base for my wanderings.

It was a delight to see all of the weaver's guild folks! I missed chatting with them and talking yarns and weaving and life and it was so nice to see them all. They kept thanking me and asking how I had been and how the farm was. It was so nice. It's so much fun to accomplish a big task with a bunch of other people.

The guild has gotten extremely professional about this sale, it is one of the biggest sales outlets for the guild members and brings in a ton of money. This includes spreadsheets that get sent out to all of us which I love to look at! We send in inventories beforehand, get barcodes for items, have standards for labeling and quality. So looking at the overall data, there was 3700 items in the sale and 2200 of them sold. Guild total sales was over $100,000, record breaking! It's incredibly wild how good the sale goes. The marketing is great, the location is great and the barcodes and systems they've got set up is extremely good. At any day, there are 25-30 people working the sale, it's a big thing! 

I only had 25 items in the sale, primarily key fobs and handspun yarn, around half of my stuff sold so not too bad. Those aren't super popular things like towels, so pretty reasonable that they don't sell super fast. As far as I can tell, guild members are the ones buying my yarn haha, they all seem to like it a lot. I can always put the things that didn't sell into the sale again next year, so not a huge deal! 

I can't wait to do it again next year! And maybe this winter I'll actually get some more things made.