It time to access my progress again

After all, that's what the end of the year is for. If I jugded by my results at the Mediaeval Fayre, for which I had great hopes, there has not been much. I had three sales, one of them perhaps a mercy sale from the woman running the booth across the way. What is worse is that my friend who makes glass beads, whose booth was right next to mine, did great, as did others, the first day. The only mitigating factor is that there was a beading hobbyist upstairs selling her work for perhaps twice what the beads she used to make the work cost, deffinitely no more. I heard that she was a retired person happy for any little amount that her work brought in. I could go off on one of my classic rants about how charging so little for your work not only harms others trying to get paid at least minimum wage for their hours of work, but contributes to the loss of the craft itself, since it results in the craft only being practised at a low level, since developing higher levels of skill produces no rewards. I'll try to leave it at that.

But I do have to lay some of it at my own feet, even if I'm not sure exactly what I do wrong. There's a lot of admiring appreciation of my work, a good deal of interest in learning to do what I do, but very little understanding and almost no recognition that there are as many as 10 different techniques on exhibit but no buying. The evening of the first day, having sold absolutely nothing, I was reading about Dale Carnegie's book How to Win Friends and Influence People. He recommended never telling anyone they are wrong. But when they think all the pieces are crocheted and there isn't a single crocheted piece on the table? When they are constantly even mistiaking the threadwork for beadwork and vice versa? I did my best on day 2.

I also took my weaving and embroidery work in the hopes of commissions. And this is where the worst thing of all happened. A woman was looking at one of my scarves and I told her that it was the very scarf on which my article in Handwoven was based. I showed her the article. She saw that the article was by me and that the picture was that very scarf. I told her how I had invented the procedure for dropping beads into the waffles of the scarf and getting them to stay put and that was the reason that the work was worthy of inclusion in Handwoven. She asked me for a price, and I said that I hadn't put a price on it. What did she think was reasonable?

She offered £8.

My jaw dropped and I turned it down. She offered £10, and I turned that down too. She said she couldn't go above that. I said I was sorry.

A little while later, she was back. She said she hopped I hadn't been insulted, that she hadn't meant to insult me, that she hadn't realized what scarves were going for. Would I take £25? I said no, that I didn't really want to sell that particular scarf but that I would do one like it. How much? £50. (Which considering it was 100% silk with the labor-intensive beading was quite reasonable. Actually, I must have remembered that last offering wrong, because I'm pretty sure that it was at this point she said that she could poosibly go as far as £25, By this time, I will admit that I was determined that not a single item of mine was going to end up in her hands no matter what was offered.

By the end of the second day, having sold four buttons, two small peyote pendants, and a bracelet, I was discouraged.

The next day, I got a call from a gallery that had had some of my work there for a long time. They had a woman who had just bought the rest of my work and wanted to know where she could find more. they put her on the phone and I told her. A few days later, I took more work to the shop. It turned out there was still one piece left, my most expensive one, but still, this raised my spirits enough to call up my other galleries to see how I had done over the Christmas season.

Not well.

Is a change desperately needed? Is my marketing entirely wrong? Is the beadwork market saturated to the point that already it is not worth practising? Should I be teaching instead of making and selling?

Still, I've got a website that people think is good. I've taken a course of photography which should make it better. I've learned to do several new things. I've exhibited more and sold more and taught more and generally brought in more than last year.

Frankly, my mind is in a muddle. I am thinking of turning myself entirely loose for a while. If I feel like doing patchwork, hever mind the prospects of any market at all for it. I'll do it for the sake of my joy in the making and give the powers-that-be time to show me which way to head next. And I am thinking that I need to take my work more seriously, to do fabulous, meticulously planned elaborate work that cannot possibly be mistaken for kess than it is. (never mind how long that will take and whether there is a market for any such thing within my access.

Comments and advice encouraged.