I had a busy week!

Three sales this week - I am flush with success. Two teapots and a book, and I'm so happy that the eCrater store is truly bustling - and that the listings on Amazon have come back to life. Something having to do with the school year starting up again, I think.

I do hope that the customers are pleased with their purchases. That's the only suspense of shipping the items off - I don't get to see their happy faces when they open the boxes.

Bob came back from a business trip (er, that would be with his day job) with treasures that he found at an antique shop in Savannah that was having a moving sale. Some Wedgwood Jasperware - great! - and a pile of interesting photographs, which I'll take the time to sort through, slip into protective plastic sleeves, and leave for others to wonder just who the people in the pictures are...

Seems all I do lately is polish silver!

Not that I'm complaining - but my shoulder is :-( Not the arm doing the rubbing, but the one that's doing the bracing. I decided to dose up with some ibuprofen and forge onwards. I'm still working through that box of silver and brass that Bob brought home a few weekends ago. Thinking that if I rub long enough, a Djini (that would be a Genie to us modern folks) would bubble out in a cloud of smoke - but, no. I have to content myself instead with the inherent beauty of the piece that is revealed by the effort of applying paste, over time, to a heavily tarnished piece of silver plate.

The favored paste I like to use is still Goddards, which I order directly on the internet. I can't say enough about their products, as the shine comes up quickly and stays for a long time.

I'm not planning to put these items on the website, but only because they get snapped up so quickly at the shows that we do. (Well, also because I find them to be dastardly difficult to photograph, but that's not reason enough!) But a nicely polished piece of silver is pretty easy to maintain. Keep it wrapped up when not in use - that is, away from the effects of oxygen in creating more tarnish on it - and it will stay shiny and lovely. The best way to stay lovely looking, though, is to USE IT. There is something wonderful about the dining experience when silver is involved. A meal prepared with love and care becomes memorable when you are using utensils that have heft to them. I know that I treasure my own set of silver cutlery when I bring it out for holiday get togethers. (Never mind that my mother gave it to me after my parents divorced! I can handle that sentiment...)

Even the brass candle holders have polished up very satisfyingly - they become so warm and gleaming. I'd be likely to cover them up with a hurricane glass cover to prevent spattering if I was to use them myself, but they too are likely to find welcome homes this year.

Just checking in

Nothing's really doing, but I thought I should write *something* to keep my hand in. It's a long stretch until the next show - at the end of September in Dade City. We're confirmed as having the same spot in the parking lot, under some beautiful Live Oak trees with Spanish Moss draped from the branches, as we had when we were there this past spring. If the weather cooperates (we're just now expecting our first major storm of the season to bear down in the next couple of days), it will be lovely. Hot, most likely, but a good show.

Bob came home from his foraging last weekend with a big box of "silver" - was it silver or not? We spent a few days digging in and marveling at the beauties that we've adopted. Silver (plate and sterling) items are always in demand at our shows, so it's wonderful to have an inventory from which to choose. Also in the lot were some brass candlesticks, some German Silver wine goblets - which is not silver at all, but an alloy similar to what coins are made of, and which came clean easily with brass polish. Most of the items were really heavily tarnished, so I've been taking my time with each piece, really giving them a workover with the ol' silver paste and sponge. Somehow uncovering the beauty of an elegantly executed piece of silver gives me great satisfaction, and I don't mind the elbow grease required to discover them. (Though I did manage to do something to my shoulder in the process - it hasn't felt right since I spent the afternoon polishing a bunch of silver items several weeks ago!)

We went through most of the boxes brought home from the last show, and repacked them. We hadn't run out of wraps at all - there were unused ones in virtually each box we repacked, which means that they were in a hurry at the time, and that Bob's help was inexperienced. Um, and maybe didn't relish the thought of ever being asked to help us out again? Clearly Bob and I have evolved in our works patterns so that we've become fairly efficient in the packing process. It was easy enough to recover the "lost" wraps and economically repack the boxes, so everything had a home again.

We're a better team than we give ourselves credit for, undoubtedly.

Next in the pipeline is to put more glass on to the website - we picked out a box full of suitable items. I've got a huge box of jewelry from Steve Cope that needs to be priced up - that will take quite some time to do it correctly. So I think the stretch to the next show is going to feel pretty small.

Lessons Learned

We probably shouldn't book shows that we haven't attended ourselves as customers. Fort Lauderdale was not an appropriate show for Time Travelers, unfortunately, but we couldn't have known it unless we had gone to it in the past. It was high end - what I would consider museum quality merchandise; and there we were, with our quaint and kitschy teapots and painted plates and depression glass. Kind of country mice come to the big bad city. We, er, didn't do well at all. Did not manage to recoup in sales what the fee to enter the show cost us. Oops. Put this one down as a show to have learned from - noted.

But, having said that, here's something downright strange. We sold, in a single day at the show, five sugar and creamer sets. That's astounding! I actually stopped unpacking more sets because I saw how many we already had out, and muttered to Bob, "we gotta stop buying these things!" And what do you know, five of them went in one day, during a show when we weren't selling much of anything.

Which is another lesson - you never know what is going to sell at any given show. (How many people do YOU know who regularly use sugar and creamer sets, or even collect them?)

So, yes, the show was a great disappointment to us. But it was also kind of quirky. And I consoled myself with a fabulous pair of Yves Saint Laurent (the genuine article) sunglasses from another dealer's booth. Diane got a pair for helping us out - Christian Dior, huge honking ones from the 1970's or early 80's, and selected a pair of Guy Laroche, equally as enormous, for her sister Sara.

Next month's show in Dade City is a known quantity for us - we did this show in the spring (and it was lovely and wonderful and one of our best shows ever). No qualms there. And the following month's show in St. Petersburg is one that Bob and I have been attending as customers for 7 years, and we're very happy to have been able to get in to - we'll do just fine.

So, we're down but not out.