80th Sunapee Summer Fair in Instagrams

For those of you who have never been, this is a truly amazing fair.  It is 9 days long, for starters, with 2 full days of set up.  Each vendor is judged on the quality of his or her booth, so there is a lot of pressure to have a set up that is really professional and sleek.  So the experience for the shoppers is very high end, like walking around through hundreds of tiny craft galleries.  We had wonderful weather, traffic was steady, and I managed to somehow finagle help from friends or family on every day but one, so the days just flew by.  All in all it was a fantastic experience.  Exhausting, but really great.

I saw lots of familiar faces from last year, which was really nice, and also lots and lots of new faces.  I was again so impressed and amazed at how many families have been shopping at this fair for generations, and have made a family tradition out of it.  They look forward to visiting the same artists from year to year and picking up a new piece each year.  And there was a jeweler in a booth across from me who was participating in his 41st Sunapee Summer Fair.  His daughter was behind the counter helping him, and he told me she was in a playpen during his first fair.  And her sons were there with her, so there were sometimes three generations in the booth at the same time.  I felt a little as though I was looking at the ghost of my Christmas future, and tried imagining Emmett being at the show with me at age 40 with his children in tow.  Almost made me feel like my life was flashing before my eyes.  There is something pretty amazing about joining an organization for life.  It gives one a real sense of permanence and continuity, which is really rare in this day and age. 

This was my second year, and from a booth design point of view I think I learned a lot this year.  There is a true art to putting together a sophisticated booth that doesn't actually take 2 full days and a couple of carpenters to put together.  It is all smoke and mirrors people!  So I have a few good ideas about how to simplify things for next year.  And I really need one that I can modify to fit all of my craft shows, some of which are indoors and can't accommodate 8 foot high walls!  So these old booth walls from these photos have probably seen their last show.  My next goal for booth design is to not only limit the time it takes to set up, but also the amount of lugging.  Note the giant U-Haul truck below.  Yikes. 

Sorry that basically all of the photos are taken from inside my booth.  I'm afraid that on this blog you get to see what I see, and that's where I spent 95% of my time.   You'll have to take my word for it that there was lots of other really cool stuff going on.  But luckily I was so busy I didn't have a chance to play around the fair with my  camera in tow, so it was just Instagrams from my booth for me this year.  I'm not complaining.  And thanks so much to everyone who made it to the fair this year! We all really appreciate your support!