Made it.

Last night was a long haul of hinging all the mats, mounting prints and last minute details, along with my mom who was showing her work at the fair alongside me, and I had finally gone to bed around 4 am. What a bad time it was to then get up after just 2 hours sleep to make it in time to set up shop at the designated time. Somehow it was done, with much frantic hurrying. Once there I searched for the "guy in charge," found out where to set up, scrounged one of the two remaining tables, and with my dad's help set up the market umbrella and arranged the 10x10 spot with my mother's and my prints, paintings and silk flower arrangements (the latter 2 being hers; I had only prints large and small). I set up my speedpainting station, intending to garner on-the-spot small commissions, and started drawing and greeting folks who wandered around and came to look. As it turned out my mom had another craft fair to tend to that same day, and wasn't going to join me until after noon. After a while my dad gave me his hat (the sun was very intense and I'd just recovered from a bad sunburn) and headed for home.
Something didn't seem right though. The hours ticked by, and hardly anyone was perusing the stands, tents and tables in the whole lot, not counting the vendors themselves having a look-around. It was dead, and stayed dead. A handful of people appreciatively admired our artwork and one took a business card. Most just gave a quick glance and a few rifled though the browser bins before moving on. I tried to keep folks around longer with a "Hi! How are you?" but usually got no further than that. When my mom arrived and manned the shop with me, it remained the same. There were just no people! Word was there was a lack of advertising for the event...
I ended up focusing on my one drawing, adding color, ink, etc. By the time it was done the wind had picked up and tossed prints off the table and threw business cards around, and even crashed my mom's heavy (by comparison) framed artwork on the pavement and nearly whisked our umbrella away over and over. We took turns holding on to it, since even the heavy iron stand wouldn't hold it down. I jumped up numerous times to help my neighbors catch their goods as they blew my way, as others did for mine. The little caddy attached to the umbrella pole slipped, spilling coffee into the caddy and thankfully on nothing else. As the Earth rotated and the shadow of the umbrella moved, my prints were exposed to direct sunlight and water from the matboard and paper condensated inside the plastic sleeves, lining the edges with droplets of water. What??? After moving the print rack back into the shade I opened all the seals, letting the water evaporate and creating a messy mass of sticky poly-sleeves willy-nilly in the print rack. I had to keep an eye on the other 2 browser bins and moved them as the day wore on. We ate our packed lunch and talked with our more experienced neighbor, who gave me all sorts of advice and insight into doing these shows. She was very nice! My mom made a trade with another lady who we know, who was selling lovely fabric purses and bags. A print for a tote! Later on, the "guy in charge" came by calling out that he had free hot dogs for us vendors. They were delicous. I was getting sunburned. The wind got stronger and people started holding onto their weighted tents. I was thankful I had not brought anything framed with glass.
Around 2 o'clock a few people started packing up. By 2:20, suddenly everyone began packing, unable to further tolerate the wind and poor showing. We were all supposed to stay until 3, but no one tried to stop anyone. I didn't sell a thing.
It wasn't a total loss. I learned a lot (mostly what not to do!), gained experience, took notes, and met some people in the business. I got invited to show at another fair in May, and I have oodles, and I mean oodles of items to list on my Etsy shop. Plus, I was able to do a new painting today, which I posted a few minutes ago.

That's it. We made it. Now it's time to clean up, reorganize and get going again. Whew.

Some pics of the day. :)