The studio manager issues a gentle reminder that the doors will be open in exactly twenty minutes. I wistfully eye the other holiday market vendors with their neatly-arranged tabes. While they’re chatting away with each other, my husband and I are muttering under our respective breaths while struggling to assemble and reinforce our table with industrial-sized clamps and dollar store zip ties. Our inventory of cat toys, hats, note cards and leather bags is scattered on the floor well beyond the confines of our assigned space. Though this is our sixth year participating, we feel like rookies each time. What is wrong with us? I wondered.
One problem is that we are constantly changing our offerings, which means reinventing our booth display each year to accommodate new items. The other participants, who have a more consistent inventory, literally roll up with single suitcases on wheels and create simple, elegant, and seemingly effortless tablescapes. We, on the other hand, make our way up Broadway with our stuff precariously balanced on a U-Line industrial plastic cart (the kind that caterers use to deliver lunches to office buildings), a metal table that doesn’t fold (though we have a total of THREE folding tables at home) and three new metal grid-wall panels, held in place with a haphazard web of bungee cords. The grid, our latest acquisition, was supposed to add height to our 4-foot table to fit even more of our stuff. And this year, we have lots of stuff.
Let me back up here. Since 2012, my boyfriend-turned-husband and I have participated in this amazing fair, which is organized by our neighborhood yoga studio-slash-community-center. Over the years, we have had our same corner booth location, in the main room near the shelves of yoga blankets and cork blocks. We are always flanked by a jewelry maker and her husband and the (very popular) ladies who have a waiting list for free chair massages. Over the years, we have formed a little family of sorts with the other sellers, and we have repeat customers who tell us that our catnip fish and origami mobiles now grace the homes of friends and family on other continents. This is not bad for a nights-and-weekends husband and wife side-hustle that basically pays for our crafting habit and gives us an excuse to binge-watch entire seasons of shows like A Million Little Things (which, by the way, I highly recommend).
But I digress.
Why were we so stressed out this year? It’s partly because we didn’t do the market last year (AKA The Year of Endless Physical and Occupational Therapy), when my hands and neck were in constant pain. Sewing and crochet, which, along with writing and drawing, were my only stress-relieving outlets, were out of the question. Two months ago, after a year of weekly OT, I regained my strength and stability enough to begin cautious crocheting while wearing a black plastic custom thumb splint I designed with my therapist. I was determined to make as many hats and cowls and cards and cat toys as possible in the limited time I had. Never one to under-do things, I approached my side-hustle, stress-relieving hobby with the ambition and joylessness of a first-year investment banker (I can’t vouch for the amount of joy felt by any investment banker, at any point in her career, but I would have NONE. Ever). This felt like work, not fun.
We eventually did get our table assembled, we sold a bunch of stuff, and we also managed to pack up and get home without losing anything, including our minds, on the streets of Manhattan. As I counted our earnings, I promised my husband that the 2019 market would be different. All we needed was a different table setup and a few small changes to our product line, right?
Exhausted from the day and from pushing our awkward caravan of stuff down eight blocks of Broadway, he offered a weary smile in response.
Next year will be different. I promise.
this gruntled worker 