Still here!

Hi – I haven't forgotten how to blog or anything — just been up to my eyes in work and the looming Christmas season.
My weekend market was just fantastic. I sold almost everything and made a very handy pile of Christmas cash. Perfect! Plus it was great fun, and we learnt a lot that will come in handy should we decide to hold another towards the end of autumn, in time for Mothers' Day and selling lots of wintry goodies.
The biggest lesson was that you need to have stuff with a big range of prices. My most expensive items were my tea-cosies and my aprons, all of which I sold for $35 each, and they all went. The 15 or so zippered pouches I made and sold for $15 were also snapped up — much to my surprise.
A heap of baby bibs I made after seeing Barbara's beauties were also big sellers, at $10 each. I made mine with Kokka gauzes rather than Liberty prints and people really liked them, so thank you so much, Barbara, for that great idea!
In sum, I reckon I got back more than the cost of materials, but not much per hour, really. But the fun was the thing!
Jane also did really well and sold a mass of stuffed toys and sock monkeys and almost all her beautiful bags.
But she sold only one baby quilt. We reckoned people did not expect to be buying big-ticket items like quilts, although there was plenty of interest in them, and lots of admiring inspections. Perhaps a market of quilts alone would be a better idea? And again, it's so much more of a winter thing — in summer, in Perth, people don't want to think about wrapping up, however beautiful the wrapping may be.
:: We are putting together two papers this week, then next week is a holiday after which I will be in the hot seat while Sir takes his family down south.
I'm almost ready for Christmas — though the forecasts look awful: 38C and cloudy - yuck.
Lots of love to you all and a really merry Christmas and I'd better wish you all a happy New Year just in case I don't get my act together before then!
Looking forward to 2011 (it can only be better than this year has been) ...

PS: I'm having to check the comments before they get published now as I've been consistently spammed by visitors from Mumbai and Gujarat!

Making merry today!

Before ...

... and after! It looks truly amazing.
We opened this arvo for a couple of hours, just so we could see how everything looked and work out our positions and prices and labels etc etc. The sale starts properly tomorrow.A TA for dinner tonight, and then I'm watching the telly until I fall asleep (about 8.30, I reckon)!