T&M Arts and Crafts: August the month of Mayhem!

Wow what a busy month this has been!

We kicked this month off and finished it with trip down to Bude, my old haunt for 3 years and where I first started trading, its great to see Bude market still thriving and growing and its always good to catch up with some of the old traders, but as with any market old ones leave and new ones come. Its a long way for us to travel, but as Hazel gets to catch up with her friend from Bude school, I don't mind and as we stay at my in laws in Halwill it kills two birds with one stone (thank you Mary & Derek for putting us up!).

Next was Silverton Market, we did this last year and had a great day, although slightly quieter for us this year its still a great market to attend with a great atmosphere. We then traveled to the North Devon Show for the 2nd year running, this one was a bit quiet and have thus decided I wont be attending it again next year.

The Honiton Show in the Blackdown Hills Business Association marquee was yet again another great success, I love the way Val organises the marquee with a one way system, it works so well, I do a lot of events in marquees and the coming and going of the public can quite often make it so they miss stalls all together, which was definitely the case at the North Devon Show.

Dunster Show, the Mid Somerset Show and Holsworthy Show were a little disappointing this year, with sales being down slightly from previous years, which bought us to the conclusion that perhaps Mark's wacky way of painting was not really going down too well with all these "farmers" now (as it has changed so much over the last few years) and that we need to look at different events which would appreciate it more, so next year, I am going to look at booking more folk festivals and cultural events.

Watchet Festival this year was a mixed bag for us, taking the children with us this year gave us added things to think about and as our daughter likes her bed too much, she wasn't impressed with the lack of sleep because of the generators, also not impressed with the amount of alcohol consumed at festivals. I think we did a good job of putting our children off festivals for life! Mark took them home on the Saturday afternoon, which ended up being a good job, as the engineers fixed the over head lights on the Saturday morning, which were quite literally over head - over our heads! lighting our tent up brighter than daylight! As we didn't have the children we threw our blow up mattress in the back of the car and found a quiet dark spot in the traders car park and had a half decent nights sleep. We are in two minds about festivals too, they carry lots of pros and cons and so we will be looking and thinking very carefully before adding them to our events list next year.

This year we added Drayton Street fair to the calender, which is similar to Silverton Fair, in the middle of nowhere in a tiny village were up to 80 stalls take over two narrow streets and people seem to come out the wood work from far and wide, it was a good day with a good atmosphere.

I am still attending Glastonbury and Wells every week, which is definitely proving to be the best place to sell Mark's art work and so will be staying on the events list all year next year.

I finished off this month with a fun charity event, a dog show for K9 Focus rescue, I took our dog Rowan with us and left Hazel to man the stand for me, she's been a great little helper (all be it for a charge), while we entered some of the classes, however we were a little disappointed to only come away with a 5th in best Veteran!

Next month is quieter, thank goodness! I will continue with Glastonbury until the end of September and then that will be it until next March (maybe the Frost fair in Novemeber if I can get on). Also Wells every Wednesday (which I wont stop until Christmas eve!). I will also be in Wells town hall on Saturday 20th. I am doing the last Seaton of the month on the 6th. And hopefully if all goes well we will be starting the Blackdown Hills Business Association market in Castle Green in Taunton on the 4th October. Apart from that I hope to be making lots of new stock for the run up to Christmas and giving our house a good clean!

Mark has also been a very busy bee, finally getting his mojo back after having to go back to work in February and painting again, churning out an array of paintings of various sizes.

Mark painted this one for Hazel (our daughter), whilst at Watchet, as a little congratulations present for getting an A in English and a B in Physics in her GCSE's. It is going to be personalised for her, but as the image stands now we will be making reproductions of it, the original is not for sale.