Smiley face!

Following on the theme of random body parts which express how I feel about craft fairs (see previous post), the title of this post was either going to be 'Burnt Fingers' or 'Smiley Face'.  Luckily it's the latter. 

Over the two days, we sold nine items - seven bears and two mammoths.  For someone who mostly only ever sells one bear per fair (if she's lucky), that's pretty good.  Here are the lucky ones who found homes...

And actually, thinking about it, we must have sold ten items - because there was also the bear with the butterflies, which didn't quite turn out as I wanted him to.  He was one of the first to go though.

Clare Priory was lovely. I never quite figured out exactly how it all worked, but in addition to having this gorgeous old historical building, there were monks walking around, and a shrine that we went past everytime we had to rush out to the loo. Opening on the Sunday was delayed until the church service was over - so it wasn't just a big, touristy event; it had a very strong local and historical feel to it.

The Priory had all these lovely walled gardens surrounding it, in which most of the craft stalls were placed. There were three big marquees, and then lots of small gazebos pitched around them. 

And there were a lot more crafts - as opposed to bought-in stuff - than you find at a lot of craft fairs.  Favourites were the teddy bears (Valerie Noy - the lady who rents space in my unit - was there, with an enormous collection of bears), the Embar pottery stall, the toadstool stand, the button jewellery, the place selling herbs, the bloke making wicker baskets and bird houses, the kids' painting area (we had my niece and nephew there), and my mother bought a leather case for her blackberry which was really lovely!  There was also somebody doing what I think were sculptures made in resin(?) - in particular, a big giraffe with a sort of painted patchwork look about him.  I didn't buy anything, although I was sorely tempted, but my family did.

It was actually quite interesting being there, selling face to face, and in some ways it has changed my attitude towards making teddy bears.  Anyway, I will talk about that later - in the meantime, I've got loads of clearing up, and catching up to do!