Another Month Bites the Dust

Another month has past since I blogged. If anyone reads these they know I am a very poor blogger. It’s hard to write often. Hard for me, I just get busy and wander off. Then a month goes by.

January we received the email from the other company telling us we had to shut down. We told her no, and we haven’t heard from them since. As I said, there a number of schools out there, more than enough to go around.

We went to our first Teachers’ Convention the first of this month. It was great. We had a wonderful time. Met the teachers from North Central Alberta, were well received and The Clay Teacher looked good. I like “show time”. The people, the promotion and of course the business all crammed into a couple of days is really fun. We will be at the Greater Edmonton Teachers’ Convention next week. I am excited about it. This type of trade show being smaller and only promotion are so much easier to do. One of the best things about these shows is the set up and the knock down. When we did pottery, either wholesale or retail, we would take hours to set up and then tear it all down. We would bring in carpets, lights, walls, shelves not to mention the tots and tots of pots and all the work to make them. We would get home hours after the show had ended. Most venders at the retail show would be home and finished supper and Jim and I would be still knocking down our booth. After the North Central Convention we were home with our three tots and a box, 90 minuets after it ended and it took that long because we had to wait to load the car and drive in Friday afternoon traffic. I doubt we ever do a show again where we have to do the booth, shelves, carpets and all that ever again. I’m too old for that schtuff.

I am really enjoying being The Clay Teacher. It is doing well and I have quit my job with the City teaching the adult classes, as of the end of March. I like teaching those as well, but it is nights and weekends. I work week days in the schools and I was trying to keep a few wholesale clients supplied with pottery and it got to be a bit much. So I have let my wholesale clients go and now with no night classes or the Sunday afternoon class, I am hoping to start playing in the clay again. We will keep the webpage for retail and I have promised a few people to do their wedding registries and we will continue to do those. Clients really like that. We make them their own webpage and their family can shop from all over the world. The wedding is often here in the city, so all the pottery doesn’t need to be shipped and if it is out of town, someone will be going and they can take it with them. It works well. There is one really fun retail show we would like to do this summer, but it doesn’t require a booth and all the other set up that goes with a regular retail show and it is a hoot to be there. Other than that, I am looking forward to playing in the clay again. It has been a busy couple of years.