Craft Fair Recovery

The Fine Craft and Design fair went very well. My sales were on par with previous years at the Convention Centre, which I take as a big success, given the move to a new venue, the new 10-day format, the recession, and H1N1. There were lots of reasons to expect things to be down this year, but they weren't. The Arts and Culture Centre had a great atmosphere and I didn't hear from a single customer or exhibitor who didn't like the new location. I saw lots of old friends and met lots of new people. We even did a little shopping ourselves -- including this great hand forged pot rack from Green Family Forge.

One trend that was strong this year was an interest in flintknapping workshops. There was enough interest that I'm planning to do two workshops early in the new year, one on pressure flaking and one on percussion knapping. I'll post more details as they get worked out, but for now, if you are in the St. John's area and interested in learning to knap, send me an e-mail and I'll keep you posted.

Today is a bit of a slow day. The 12 hour days at the fair are long. I find it to be a big shock going from the isolation of the workshop in the weeks leading up to the fair to being immersed in crowds of Christmas shoppers for 5 days straight.

I'll slowly start re-assembling the house today. There's always a mess to clean up in the house after a craft fair because everything else leading up to the fair takes a back seat. This year the problem was compounded by the fact that Lori was sick in bed for the week and a half leading up to the fair. I was left unsupervised during that entire time and the craft fair preparation crept into every nook and cranny of the house.

Photo Credits:
First, Second: Tim Rast
Third: Lori White
Fourth, Fifth: Tim Rast

Photo Captions:
First: Elfshot Booth at 2009 Fine Craft and Design Fair
Second: Green Family Forge Pot Rack
Third: Beer Bottle to Arrowhead Workshop
Fourth, Fifth: The state of our house this morning.

Only Three Days Left!

So far, the Fine Craft and Design Fair at the Arts and Culture Centre in St. John's has been fantastic! I'm loving the new venue and there were actually artisans in the first fair who enjoyed themselves so much during the first 5 days that they signed up to do it all over again at this week's fair!

The fair is Open 10AM to 10PM on Friday and Saturday and 10AM to 6PM on Sunday. Free Parking and Admission.

Don't forget the Flintknapping demonstration - Saturday, November 14th, 10AM to 12 Noon. Hope to see you there!

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Photo Captions:

All: The Elfshot Booth (#512) at the 2009 Fine Craft and Design Fair

Fair and Ballistic Gel Seal Anticipation Builds!

I needed to pick up some shelves and other display items for my craft fair booth yesterday and had a chance to briefly stop by the Fine Craft and Design Fair to check out the show and my booth space. This was my first time visiting the fair in the Arts and Culture Centre and I'm really excited now about joining the fair this week. The place was hopping! At 10 days, the fair is twice as long as it has ever been and the layout and auxiliary events create a big festive atmosphere. The Craft Fair fits into the space so well, that its almost like a new mall dedicated to craft has sprung up in the middle of St. John's. The show is closed Monday and Tuesday to switch over booths and re-opens on Wednesday November 11th at 4:00pm with a new set of craft producers.

But of course, the inside of my head still looks something like this:

(You can make make your own Wordle at Wordle.Net!)

I spent more time working on the ballistics gel seal model. The current version is the 3 layer pop bottle seal. There is a rawhide skin layer, the smooshy fat layer and the sinew laced meat layer. I cut the top end off the two litre pop bottle and used it for a funnel so that I could cut a relatively small hole in the bottom to fill it from. I stretched a wet rawhide skin from a soaked chew toy for dogs over the top, like a drum skin. I flipped it over and filled it up upside down. The initial gelatin pour seeped through the wet rawhide. It was kind of messy, but in the end it helped keep the rawhide rubbery and more skin like when the gelatin set. I used 5 packs of Knox gelatin for 700 ml of water for the fat layer. I did that twice, so 10 packs for 1400 ml of water would be the same thing. For the meat layer I used 7 packs for 700 ml of water and poured it in 3 stages. Between each stage I let it gel slightly and sprinkled soaked sinew strips into the mix. That gives me about 4 inches of "fat" and 2 inches of "meat".

That's as far as I've got. I'll know later today if they work and what changes need to be made.

Photo Credits:
Top, Tim Rast
Second, Wordle.Net
Third & Fourth, Tim Rast

Photo Captions:
Top, Earrings ready for the 2009 Fine Craft and Design Fair, St. John's
Second, Wordle created using the text from the past week's blog posts
Third, Filling the ballistic gel seal. If you expand the photo you can see the sinew in the "meat" layer.
Fourth, Ready to test!

Craft Fair Update

Its been a hectic week of preparation for my run in the Fine Craft and Design Fair at the Arts and Culture Centre in St. John's next week. I've ran into a couple of people who said that they thought the fair was this week. It is, but I won't be there until next week. It runs for 5 days this week and 5 days next week, for a total of 10 days. There are a dozen or more exhibitors attending for the full 10 days and 60 or so exhibitors attending either the first 5 days (Nov 4-8) or the last 5 days (Nov 11-15). You can see the full list of craft producers and the days they'll be attending here.

Elfshot will be there for November 11-15th, and I'll be demonstrating flintknapping on Saturday November 14th for two hours starting at 10AM.

The reason for the move to the Arts and Culture Centre is the Convention Centre downtown kept raising their prices on us. Every year we had to pay more and it was impossible for the Craft Council to break even on the event. There is no comparable sized venue in St. John's. We needed a place with room for 70-100 booths. We picked the Arts and Culture Centre, for a lot of reasons, but the smaller floor space meant that we needed to create two back to back fairs to fit in all the booth holders.

There are some really big benefits to the Arts and Culture Centre for everyone. One is the parking - there are hundreds of free parking spaces, which was a big issue for a lot of people at the downtown location. Since its a public space and so much cheaper for us to rent than the Convention Centre, the admission is free. You can come as often as you want and it won't cost you anything. Although, if you are in the Christmas Spirit, the Craft Council of Newfoundland and Labrador has partnered with the CBC and the Community Food Sharing Association and there will be locations for donating non-perishable food items or cash at the door.

Photo Credits:
Top: Tim Rast
Middle: From the Arts and Culture Centre Website
Bottom: Tim Rast

Photo Captions:
Top: Lost Stone Obsidian Necklace and Earrings ready for the show!
Middle: The Arts and Culture Centre in St. John's
Bottom: More Lost Stone Obsidian

Jewelry and Harpoon Head Ideas

Its a jewelry week here. I'll be focusing on glass, chert, and fibre optic glass. I have bags of points that I keep on hand for emergencies. I don't have a lot of time before the craft fair, so I'll try to avoid starting pieces from scratch and focus on what I already have that is ready to be assembled.

On the other side of the coin, Elfshot is in great shape for artifact reproductions and original knives. I don't usually have this many artifact reproductions on hand so I'm looking forward to seeing how the craft fair display will go together. I have two harpoons ready to go, one is Dorset Palaeoeskimo and the other is a Maritime Archaic Indian style, just waiting for a red ochre application. I put a braided line on the Maritime Archaic harpoon because I liked John's idea so much. The 4 strand round braid takes the relatively thin harp seal leather and turns it into a pliable strong rope. I still wish I could find some good strong bearded seal skin, but the braided line does look nice.

I don't often have extra harpoons around the house either, so I feel like I'd like to do a little extra photography with them. Its especially interesting because they are so different, the Maritime Archaic Harpoon is a self-bladed barbed point while the Dorset Palaeoeskimo harpoon has a stone endblade fitted into a toggling harpoon head. This would be a good opportunity to illustrate the differences in how they work. Thanks to Mythbuster's the internet is full of recipes for homemade ballistics gel. I think I'll make some and stab it. If I have some successful experiments I'll post pictures.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Photo Captions:
Top: Red glass points ready for jewelry.
Middle: Maritime Archaic indian harpoon head and braided line, around a Dorset Palaeoeskimo harpoon head and line
Bottom: Dorset Palaeoeskimo Harpoon Head (left) and Maritime Archaic Indian Harpoon Head (right)

Craft Fair Obsidian

The 2009 Fine Craft and Design Fair at the Arts and Culture Centre in St. John's starts next week. The fair is 10 days long this year with a switch over in booths after five days. I'm participating in the second half of the fair so I have just under 2 weeks prep time left.

I've been working on larger one of a kind pieces, like harpoons, knives and Lost Stone necklaces this week. They aren't the sort of pieces that I like to be working on at the last minute and if something goes wrong I want as much time as possible to fix them. In the next couple of days I'll switch to smaller jewelry. If there are colours or materials that you'd like to see at the fair let me know ASAP and I'll be sure to have some on hand.

Here's a peak at the knives while the sinew is drying and the Lost Stone necklaces before they are strung. I've had these knife blades around since at least last spring, but I just got around to making handles for them this week. There are a couple maple handles in there from some left over hardwood flooring at Lori's parent's cabin, a couple pieces of yew from this summer's bows and a couple moose antler handles. I don't think I've used any of these materials in knife handles before so the fair will be a chance to see which materials and styles appeal to people. I like the moose antler tines more than I was expecting.

The Lost Stone necklaces are different every time. It looks like I'll only have 6 ready for the fair, so if they appeal to you come see me early between November 11-15th. Parking and Admission are free this year so you can come check out the show as many times as you'd like!

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Photo Captions:
Top: An Obsidian Lost Stone Necklace waiting to be strung
Second: Detail of the most recent batch of Obsidian Knives
Third: Obsidian Knives for the 2009 Fine Craft and Design Fair
Fourth: Obsidian Lost Stone Necklaces ready to string

Area Runner has Fair Idea of Fall Plans

After spending most of the summer thinking about it, I've finally decided to get my application in for the Fine Craft and Design Fair in St. John's this fall. The deadline for applications is Friday, so I'll drop off my application some time today. Its a 10 day show this year, although you have the options of going for the first five days, the last five days or the full ten days. I've opted for the last five days, November 11-15th, 2009. The biggest reason is that it gives me an extra week to make product, because I have very little on hand at the moment.

Remember, the Fine Craft and Design Fair is moving to the Arts and Culture Centre on MUN's campus this year. There will be tonnes of parking and ADMISSION IS FREE.

On the homefront, the last of our summer visitors was delivered safe and sound to the airport last night. Its been a great summer reconnecting with my mom's side of the family. Today would have been her 69th birthday. On October 4th, please consider Running for the Cure, or you can sponsor me here. I'll leave a link up on the side bar leading up to the run as well.

I also have plans to visit the farm right after the fair, in late November. I haven't been home to visit dad since last summer and it looks like I'll finally be able to redeem some of these Aeroplan points.

At work, things are still plugging away on the Parks Canada contract. There are a half dozen or so pieces (out of 34 total) that are very close to completion. I'll be happy to get a few things knocked off the list, to clear up some of the clutter in my head. Right now, I have so many little projects on the go at various stages of completion that its hard to keep them all straight. I'm up to two weekly visits to The Rooms to compare the artifacts to the reproductions every week. I'll probably continue at that frequency until the work wraps up later in September. As an added incentive, the last of my summer wholesale cheques arrived in the mail yesterday - so, with the exception of one Dorset knife order, I can't expect any more income until this project is completed and out the door.

Photo Credits:
Top, Lori White
Middle, screen grab from Run for the Cure Website
Bottom, Tim Rast

Photo Captions:
Top, An Elfshot Craft Fair Display
Middle, Run for the Cure
Bottom, Ivvavik Slate Knife sitting on a piece of slate I picked up from alongside the old railbed not far from my house -- a perfect match!