Greenbelt Green Man Festival,
Greenbelt, Maryland
May 12-13, 2007

(Originally written on May 14, 2007)

Last weekend I worked at the Greenbelt Green Man Festival. (It's actually my second appearance as a vendor. I made my first-ever public attempt at selling handcrafted stuff at last year's Greenbelt Green Man Festival.) I am now really tired.

Of all the spring festivals I worked at this month, the Greenbelt Green Man Festival turned out to be the most successful for me. On the first day of the festival (Saturday) business was really slow for me because the temperature had grown unusually hot for spring. (The high was 81 degrees.) If that wasn't enough, the weather forecasters kept on calling for thundershowers, which didn't materialize but there was a point where there were a few ominous clouds that passed overhead for a while. The good thing was that the temperature dropped off temporarily. Unfortunately, once the clouds passed and the sun came back out, the temperature rose again quickly.

On top of that, I later learned that this festival was competing with the nearby Greenbelt Pet Expo and it siphoned off a lot of potential visitors.

Despite all these obstacles, I managed to sell a few things. But I'll admit that I was reluctant to work the second day but I decided to go through with it anyway since I was going to close up shop early because it was Mother's Day and my husband and I had planned to take my mother out to dinner. It started off unpromising because a thunderstorm did happen like the weather forecasters had been predicting but it happened overnight and I found out that the clock alarm that turned on before I went to sleep didn't go off because we temporarily lost power in the middle of the night while we were sleeping.

Then we arrived at the festival only to discover that the rain had washed away all the markings that depicted our assigned vendor spaces so my husband and I had to guess where to put up the canopy and tables without any markings.

So I started the day totally grumpy and looking forward to 3 p.m. arriving so I could strike down my vendor space and leave early.

But then the weather was glorious. Last night's thunderstorms had washed away the unusually high spring heat and the temperature had dropped to the 70's with cool pleasant breezes. On top of that, the competing Greenbelt Pet Expo was a one-day event so we got huge crowds coming by.

I had a very successful selling day. I sold a few necklaces (all of which were the newer necklaces/pin combinations where I had embedded my own photographs inside the polymer clay) while my Barbie fairy dolls were the biggest sellers. I even managed to sell two of the Asian 1/6 dolls that I had been trying to sell since last year.

But I did sell one of the 1/6 dolls to a woman who had heard of Asain ball-jointed dolls. She initially noticed my Volks Dollfie Dream on display and we got to talking about them a bit. That's cool to find someone who already knew about Asian ball-jointed dolls at a craft fair since I usually have to explain what they are at such events to various people.

I was so successful that I even stayed a little past my original departure time of 3 p.m. I finally left around 4 p.m. and I felt totally happy. My husband and I capped off the day by taking my mother to a French restaurant where we had a leisurely Mother's Day dinner.

Here are a few photos I took on the first day of the festival. (I didn't bother with the second day because my display was similar to what I had in these photos.) Click on any of the photos to see a larger version open in a new window.

Here's the full view of my vending space.

Here's my vending space at another angle. (By the way, the lion painting in the lower right hand corner belonged to the vendor next to me, who was selling her paintings.)

Here's a guy dressed in Green Man garb who was wandering the festival area.

 

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