Thursday, November 24, 2016

We're coming to Chico early this year.

We will be selling our work at 
The Christmas Faire of Chico
at the 
Silver Dollar Fairgrounds
Friday-Sunday   Dec. 2-4
Fri. 12-7, Sat. 10-6, Sun. 10-5
Free admission & Free Parking
Festival Food 
Live entertainment by local musicians
We'll have a lot of new Mixed Metal Jewels to show
Hope to see you!
Happy Holidays

For the last 37 years or so we've been traveling to Chico, CA to sell our jewelry at an event called the Bah! Humbug Arts & Crafts Festival. The first BH was up in Paradise at a school gym, then for 10 years or so it was at the old Montgomery Wards store on 2nd street in Chico across from the downtown parking lot where the farmer's market takes place. After that it floated around and settled in whatever building the organizer, Steve Rooney of Cyrcle Productions could find. Sometimes in the same location 2 years in a row but usually in a different building each year. Usually the BH took place for the two weeks before Christmas, we participated for 6 to 11 days depending on how much energy we had, what our stock of jewels was like and how the weekends fell. For a number of years though we have been in Chico selling our mixed metal jewels right up until about 3pm or so on Christmas Eve, an annual ritual. 

We only recently found out that the Bah! Humbug is not going to happen this year. We're not sure about it's long term future. We were able to find another venue though, The Christmas Faire of Chico at the Silver Dollar Fairgrounds which has actually been going on for longer than the Bah! Humbug, since 1974. We started doing the Christmas Faire in 1976 and did it for a number of years, and did it and the BH both for some time, but at some point switched to doing only the BH, we could only do one Chico show because of fairs in other areas and it worked better for us. 
In some ways we are sad to see it go, it was a different and slower pace than most fairs that we do and we enjoyed having the time to spend talking with a lot of our Chico customers, many of whom are also friends. We could also each take time to go out into Chico and meet friends for lunch, shop and explore Bidwell park and other places because one of us could stay and handle the business. At some fairs that we do we have so many people at our booth that even with both of us there it is sometimes hard to handle. 
CHANGE. We are not unhappy about only doing 3 days in Chico this year instead of 6 or 8, it will certainly be easier on my old body. We are also happy that after the Christmas Faire we will have over 5 months before our next show, the Los Altos Rotary Art Show on May 20 & 21. That is the longest stretch of time between shows since we first started doing them in 1971. My gosh, maybe we'll take a vacation. 









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