A Busy Time

I've meant to post to this blog before now but my life has been very busy as it sometimes gets. We've just finished two consecutive weekends of art shows and one of my book sales this last weekend at the Caspar Community Center. I'm happy to report that they all went well and were economically successful. We are shifting our scheduling of art fairs to give ourselves 6 to 8 weeks in between so that we have time to restock and also time to relax and do other things. We have almost 7 weeks before our next two fairs in July and I'm really liking this new rhythm. It takes my memory back a goodly number of years to when I was young and crazy and doing 35 plus shows a year, sometimes going to art fairs 10 weekends in a row and feeling tired, burned out and slightly insane. The thought floated into my mind that if I did fewer shows and had more time to work in between and had a better stock of jewels for each one that I did perhaps I might make as much money and my life would certainly be easier. Well. as it turned out, the next year I cut my show schedule down to 20 or 22 shows and ended up making significantly more money. Duh! Live and learn, hopefully. We are down to about 8 or 9 shows now and as we continue on our retirement curve we are having conversations about which shows they will be when we are down to 4. It will be a few years but it's coming. I'm looking forward to this next jewelry making phase before our next shows, I'll have time to be really productive but have the space to also be creative and playful and try new things. Exciting. I'll be posting pictures of new jewels as they get born.