But since I was up, I decided to look at my day as one of reentry, do only the essentials, which consisted of unpacking, doing my laundry, blogging, and beginning the process of tidying up my house.  And I need to process about 30 images from the guild meeting last Monday to send to the newsletter editor.  Somehow I got to be the designated picture taker for the guild…  I’m not sure how that happened.  But I did talk my son into doing that arduous task, he owes me some money, so I put him to work.

Anyway, I returned from my guild sale, tired and full of observations.  For all of my efforts, I sold roughly $600. worth of stuff, mostly books, of which I will give the guild 20%.  I was hoping I’d sell more, but I didn’t have any small inexpensive gift items, and this is the small inexpensive gift item season, and I refuse to make small inexpensive gift items, I’m small inexpensive gift items challenged if you must know…

I was hoping for more of a response to some of my clothing, I value the feedback from trying things on different bodies, and I haven’t done that with anything other than my jacket pattern in workshops, in many years.  If there were any interested customers, I didn’t see them, almost no one sold garments over $95. that I knew about. (One of the guild members did buy one of my vests, which was more than $200. and I was eternally grateful, it was beautiful on her and another one of the guild members bought one of my new scarves for more than $100, and again, I am eternally grateful.)  The final numbers and a wonderful statistical analysis will eventually come from the guild treasurer, but for now, the guild show and sale, seems to be about selling small inexpensive gift items, which, did I mention, I don’t do?

I will share that I was sort of surprised at how most of the members priced their work.  Almost everything in the exhibit was either handwoven or handknitted, there were a few baskets, and some inexpensive polar fleece hats and scarves and some jewelry.  I’d say about 90% of the handwoven scarves on exhibit, and there were a lot of them, were priced between $45-55.  I sort of feel like I wouldn’t set up my loom for that, especially since the guild takes 20% of that amount.

When I did craft fairs in the 1980’s, the discussion then, was about pricing your work.  Craft fairs have an overhead, obviously, and just having a studio, paying for equipment, rent/or mortgage if you own the home, electricity, internet, whatever, all of that goes towards the price of an item.  Sadly many of the guild members are just happy to sell anything, since it isn’t their real source of income, and it just allows them to make more stuff.  And that reasoning just undervalues everyone’s work.  I actually bought two pairs of hand knit socks.  I paid $30. a pair.  I’ve made socks, once.  I won’t do it again.  I totally respect anyone that can pick up a pair of needles and whip out a sock, and then do it again for the other foot.  A pair of hand knit socks is priceless.  But $30.?  I can’t even go out with my husband to the local pizza place for $30. For a dinner.  A set of four handwoven placemats cost $40.  I sold placemats, handwoven, lots of them.  That was one of my first production items.  I sold them for $40. for a set of 4 back in 1980.  I just looked at four woven placemats in Vermont Country Store Catalog for about that much.  This is 30 years later, and we don’t live in China.  We are American craftswomen/men and we have a minimum wage here.

So this brings us to the larger discussion, how do you price your work, how do you value your handwork, what kind of prices do others set at guild shows?  Those who have guild sales events, do you sell scarves, handwoven or otherwise for more than $100. a scarf?  Have you tried?

I spent a lot of floor time, talking to customers, about what we do as a guild, what goes into the work we do, the fact that rayon is not a petroleum based yarn, and in some cases, the discussion came around to pricing and I was surprised to hear from more than one customer that a lot of people shop at the guild show and sale because it is well known that you can get really cheap handmade items there.

As program chair for the guild, I’d love to do an evening program, panel discussion on the whole issue of selling your work.  And one of the members told me that it really is all about a fund raiser for the guild, so most should look at this as a guild donation of sorts.  Volume sales are important for the guild to make money for programs.

I use to give seminars on marketing your work, back in the 1980’s, and of course pricing was one of the subjects we talked about.  I was, and am still amazed at how many think that if they sell an item for $40. that’s what they actually make.  And if it doesn’t sell, then it must be too expensive.  I’d love to open this up to anyone reading this blog, to feel free to comment, share, give me some perspective here, and some of the logic behind $30 hand knit socks and $45 handwoven scarves.

Off to move  the next load of laundry to the dryer…

I sat down at the computer this morning, after getting her off with the driving instructor who would take her for her test, and my plan was to catch up on some contracts and proposals that needed some attention, and start preparation for tagging and photographing items for the guild sale this weekend.  Silly me, what was I thinking…

It all started when I happened to look ahead on my Google Calendar, all the way to tomorrow.  I noticed that I was suppose to deliver my piece for the Visual Art Center Blank Canvas auction, and I completely panicked.  The piece isn’t even made yet.  Then I looked at the original sheet with the dates, and the piece isn’t due until November 20th.  Big relief! 

Then I found an ad for an exhibit in Texas, an international juried art competition, but the application had to be sent out today.    So I started looking through the artwork I have committed to specific exhibits to see what pieces would be available for submission.  I came upon the outstanding entry form for the New Jersey Focus for the Art Center of Northern New Jersey exhibit, and looked at the dates and nearly had a heart attack when I read that all accepted work was due today.    I never heard from them, so my assumption was they didn’t get my application?  I called them.  In fact my work had been accepted, and it was due today, and by the way, I never picked up my piece last week from the International Juried Show…   Hmmm…..  Well, I did apparently screw up there.  I failed to mark on my trusty calendar that I had to actually pick the work up when the show was over, you may recall, that was the piece where I won the Merit award.  (In my defense, I rarely exhibit in a show that doesn’t involve shipping a piece and prepaying the return shipping, so it isn’t something I pay attention to, the piece just shows up on my doorstep. ) OK, so I just had to gather the work that had to be brought to the Art Center for the next show, and pick up my poor orphaned piece I had left behind.  I don’t usually make mistakes like that.

I went to my files to see what pieces had in fact been accepted.  And I nearly had another heart attack when I realized that one of the pieces had been woven, but it had never been mounted on a frame.   I didn’t even have the frame.  It was a big piece, 28 x 24″  and I just stood frozen in my studio for a good couple of minutes.  Then I sprung into action.  First I searched my stick barrel in the studio, every weaver has one.  Lease Sticks, Temples, wood slats for warping, dowels, yardsticks, all things long and wood-like reside in the barrel in the corner.  And there, like a gift from heaven, were two 28″ stretcher bars, and two 24″ ones.    This is my lucky day!

I put them together, and built a padded cover, and then covered that with silk.  I mounted the artwork, a piece I wove a few months ago, a larger version of the original Big Sister, and carefully pinned it stretched on the frame.  Then I hand sewed it to the silk, all the way around.  The whole process took about 4 hours, and I was finally able to head out to the art center around 2:30.  This was not what I was planning to do today.  And I found out the artist’s reception is Sunday when the show opens, right in the middle of the guild sale, and no where near the guild sale.  I hate calendar collisions.

I managed to get back from Bergen County around 4pm, which left me about 40 minutes to process images, burn a CD, fill out the paperwork, make out the check, place everything in an envelope and get it to the post office before it closed today for the exhibit at University of Texas at Tyler, which is what started this whole escapade today.  I did make it to the post office with five minutes to spare.

So nothing I had planned to do today got done, except putting in the proposals for Siever’s for next year.  But that’s life in the fast lane, we all went out tonight for all you can eat Sushi for my daughter’s birthday.  I am going to finish up this blog tonight and curl up in bed and read.  I’m in the middle of two good reads, one on my iPod, and the other on my night stand.  One is an Elizabeth Berg novel, about a woman who contracted polio in the 1950’s and was pregnant, and managed to give birth to her daughter while in an iron lung. She went on to raise her daughter by herself, in spite of being completely paralyzed.  Like I said, it is a good read.  The other book is by Brett Lott, called Jewel, about a family from Mississippi whose last child has what we now call Down’s syndrome, but back then, the term was Mongolian idiot.  Both books are from the same time period, and both take place in Mississippi, and I am always appalled reading about how we treated each other and how racism and prejudice were everyday occurrences.  We have come so far and yet, not far enough…

I finally got hold of some of the images my husband shot at the musical Once on this Island, performed last weekend at County College of Morris.  The show takes place in the French Antilles, in the 1950’s.  The story is a folk tale, of an orphan after a horrific storm, who was kept alive by the gods, and how she grew up among the peasants and the indigenous peoples of the island, but falls in love with one of the French Grande Hommes, after she rescues him from a car crash.

I wanted to share the photos, because I helped with the costumes, providing some of the actual garments from my vast stash of amazing clothing.  The god of water, Agwé, wore my peacock vest, actually all four of the gods wore capes of some sort, so my peacock vest was perfect to give the illusion of sparkling waves as he turned and moved around the stage.  In one scene, he covers the orphan Ti Moune, who has been taken by the god of death, (on Agwé’s right in the first two photos), with a wave of water.

I copied a dress with some handpainted silk fabric from Thailand for Erzulie the goddess of love.  The costumer added a cape, and the actress looked like a pink froth of love!  She moved and swirled, and it was all quite effective.  On her right was the goddess of the earth, Asaka, and I put one of my sari skirts on her, and reworked the cape from a costume from another venue.

And of course, there was my son, who played the grandfather of all the french inhabitants of the island, Armand, who came in the time of Napoleon, and in spite of having a lovely wife, to his right, he slept with all the peasants.  My son loved the role…  I designed the look for Armand, and I provided the white lace dress for his “wife”, and the peasant to his left, has on one of my silk broomstick skirts.

After the show, we carried out a carload of garments and fabric, and I’m still cleaning everything.  I was glad to have had the opportunity to help with the costumes, I actually enjoy it, and the challenge of making up something from nothing, and it only has to look good from the audience, and not up close, and it only has to make it through a weekend of shows!  The complete opposite of how I actually work!

I’m going to try again tomorrow to work off some of my to do list.  Wish me luck…