Portland Saturday Market Video Featuring ME!

The Saturday Market did a series of videos featuring several of the vendors. I was featured in one! Here it is:

Parking Karma

At the Portland Saturday Market, the vendors have a parking lot we can use for free – well, it’s part of our monthly membership. The on-the-street paid parking begins at 1pm on Sundays (yes, Sunday meters - a sure sign of the apocalypse). So yesterday, when there was a race on Naito Parkway and no way to get to the vendor parking lot, I was forced to park on the street knowing full well that I would probably get a ticket. I can’t really leave my booth during the market, particularly not for the time it would take to move my car and walk back. I did the only thing I could think of. I tore off a piece of paper and left a note on my window for the potential ticket-writer.
Here’s the actual note: I had absolutely no hope this would work at all, but of course, it did. When I finished packing up my booth and headed back to my car, I was sure that I’d find a ticket on my windshield. My parking karma was like a protective cloak, keeping me ticket free. I’d like to thank Sunday’s parking enforcement personnel for their judiciousness. xoxo

Opening Day of the Portland Saturday Market

Today was opening day for the 2010 season of the Portland Saturday Market. The 37th season! It was a perfectly beautiful day and a huge crowd was out. (Some in tank tops! in March!) Also in attendance were some of the local media covering the event. A reporter from the Oregonian came by to chat with me and I was featured in his article, along with a few of the other vendors. It's sweet to be in the paper - even if he didn't get all the details quite right (um, I didn't do environmental work for 20 years, but hey, what's 10 years between friends?). Although it's a ton of work (the constant upkeeping of stock, setting up my booth twice a week, etc), I enjoy the market a lot: the camaraderie, chatting with my fellow sellers and the customers, the instant feedback on my work, and spending beautiful summer days hanging outside. And, most importantly, the Market allows me to make a living, doing what I love, working for myself, with great people in a community that is very supportive of local artisans. I hope today's happy crowds bode well for a prosperous season for all the vendors.
Photo by Oregonian photog Motoya Nakamura

Pebble Bracelet

While vending at the Portland Saturday Market a couple of weeks ago, I was approached by a family to see if I could make a bracelet for the girl, a teenager. She was graduating from high school and her parents said they would have a special bracelet made for her. She pulled out a baggie with several pebbles in it and described the sort of thing she wanted. These weren't precious stone pebbles, these were just your basic run-of-the-mill pebbles, but apparently they were precious to her. Her mother explained that they had a whole heap of sentimental value for her, that they were from someplace very special.

When I got home, I sketched out a design and after a few back and forth emails, we settled on something. I created hewn, fine silver "pebble" discs and bezel set three of the little stones. The discs were then riveted together with lengths of wire. I hustled to get it done in time for her graduation and did. She was thrilled with the results.

Starry Night Necklace

A new design that's actually an old design. The original (which has already been sold) was something I made and it sat and sat on my bench. On one recent foray into bench cleaning, it got put in the "I've got to do something with this" pile. I did. I finally cleaned it up, oxidized it, brushed it, tumbled it and put it on my table at the Saturday Market. It sold the first day out. Seems people really like things like moon and stars (and hearts and suns and stuff like that). So I made more. Here's the Starry Night Necklace, available in my Etsy shop and on my table at the Saturday Market.

DIY Table Display - Part I

Last year I upgraded my tabling display and was pretty happy with it. The problem was that it had all of my earrings laying down. I thought that many of them would be better presented if they were hanging somehow, but I wanted the hanging apparatus - whatever that might be - to fit in with the new decor. Since I was starting the Portland Saturday Market this month, I wanted to find something new. I looked and looked. Everywhere. Too many places. I finally found what I wanted at Ikea. It was simple and straightforward; basically just a bar on a stand. Perfect! Only they didn't have it anywhere - not online, not in any store that I checked. Shit. So I kept looking. The other evening I started wandering around a craft store to come up with something to make. The staff was beginning to wonder about me because I was there for so long, wandering around, back and forth. I basically knew I was going to use two dowels to make a bar and stand, but what to use as a base? It finally came to me: small plant pot! I found the dowel that was the size of the hole in the bottom of the pot. Once at home, I sawed the dowels to size and nailed the pieces together. I then glued them for extra strength. Unfortunately, I didn't take pictures (I *thought* I did...), but after the glue was set, I gessoed the bars as primer and to give them a little texture. They were then painted black. The plant pots work great, but needed something to stablize the bars, so inside is a chunk of styro fitted to the pot with a hole for the stick. Perfect! Total cost was about $2.50 (I had the gesso and paint). It goes to the test tomorrow and I hope to remember to take pictures of the finished product and how it looks on the table.