This past Sunday was the first of only two craft shows I sell my “artisanal knitwear.” It was the Flemington Fine Artisan Show.

How Well Did Artisanal Knitwear Do This Year?

Overall summary of the event was that I did the minimal amount of sales for me to continue doing this show next year. Not great, but acceptable.

I had 113 pieces in total to sell for a total inventory value of about $4,900. I ended up selling only 10 pieces for a total of $502. The Knitted Cross Stitch scarves garnered the most attention overall.

This show is usually much more successful for me. Sales are typically over twice that amount on average in prior years.

There were a few factors that contributed this year.

A couple of things I did wrong and will change:

• My space looked too full and crowded. Most people were overwhelmed and distracted by the space.
• The booth needed a stronger focal point to attract customers.
• I had stopped making my Noro beanies a while ago and a lot of “regulars” missed them. They made good, inexpensive gifts and the newer hats I’ve been making hardly attracted any attention at all.

There were also two factors that I couldn’t control:

• Weather was intermittent rain and in the 70’s most of the day. The rain seemed to have an overall decrease in customers at the event and the warm weather didn’t help to sell knitwear.
• I have a same-day hospital procedure scheduled for this week for the kidney stones, and decided to wear a mask at this event. I find it much more difficult to engage with potential customers when my mouth is covered.

I will say that I enjoyed myself very much. My neighboring vendors were great and the customers that did come were very impressed with my work.

Overall, it’s definitely a show worth doing again next year.

Current Knitting

I was able to finish knitting the second horizontal garter stitch scarf in the bulkier black yarn.

Neither of them sold. They kind of got lost in the cacophony of color in my booth I think. I’ll have to figure out how best to display them at my next show in December.