This past weekend I got to show off my knitting skills again.  I’m grateful that I can do only the craft shows that are fun.  This one happened to be both fun and successful.

Art of Craft Show Fun

May last show of the year was at a beautiful old grist mill building in Stockton, New Jersey.  Last year, Nora, a friend of mine who has been selling her jewelry at this craft show suggested we get neighboring booths.  It was an awesome suggestion.  She and I work very well together. One of the other vendors wanted to know how we create this freakishly abnormal vortex in our corner.  There was a short time during the show where we had a lot of customers in our corner and it was rather quiet elsewhere in the show.

Nora and I both have the same energy vibe.  And it does seem to generate excitement and joy. We also are very supportive of each other’s booths. For instance, I found that if a customer was leaving her table without buying something, I could say, “Nora, are these bracelets really on sale for only $25?!?”  And it would almost always cause someone to take a second look.  And sometimes buy something when they might not have.  Nora would also tell a potential customer of mine how nice a scarf or shawl looked on them.

Suffice it to say, we both were happy with our sales.

But more importantly, I enjoyed myself.  As soon as this craft show business isn’t fun anymore, I won’t be doing it.

Current Knitting

If you were wondering if I finished the Chevron Striped Scarf I was working on for the show…I did.

I was pleased with how it came out.  Also, I banged out two more West Coast Watchcaps to keep the inventory up during the show.

I have 11 months to replenish inventory. I ended up selling 28 items.  Nora’s rule of thumb for anyone selling things at a craft show is that you can typically sell a maximum 20% of your inventory.  If customers think things are “picked over” too much, they’ll stop buying.  That may be true for jewelry but perhaps not for knitted items.  I had about 100 items to sell, so 28% is a good percentage.