A tiny break, then back to it!
eventsI'm nearly half way through my craft fairs for the year now, so about time there was a new entry on this blog!
The picture of my largest poppy seed lamp below (with birds nest shade by Katherine Miles) is from the most distant show I've attended so far, Masson Mills, Sir Richard Arkwright's 1783 water powered cotton spinning mill in Matlock, Derbyshire.
From darkest Cornwall, that was a 282 miles, 4 hrs 48 mins trek (plus an hour or two for breaks), which I did with friend (and ex-Pottery Throwdown competitor) Ed King, sharing both the drive and the van's load space.
However, if your vehicle breaks down when you've just started off home afterwards, then it might actually take nine and a half hours to make the same journey, by the time you've waited for the RAC man to arrive and sort you out.
Lucky we had limped along to a pub car park as the car started misbehaving, then stopped and died. Just in time for lunch while waiting for assistance!
It was a successful show with all the 50-plus exhibitors exclusively selling and showing ceramics – no painting or needle crafts here, it was pottery all the way down, and up, over the many floors!
I did debut some new smaller vessels at the show which went down well, with me only bringing a couple home again. The big lamp and the birds nest shade sold too, so is hopefully being a fantastic talking point in the buyer's home now.
The weekend afterwards was closer to home at the Exeter Craft Fair, and this time I was amongst a myriad of different craft makers and sellers of all sorts of other handmade items.
This was one of the recent hot weekends, so it was three days of wishing for the time of day that the tents were in the shade to hurry up! Obviously the organisers can do nothing about the weather, and it was one of the 32° plus weekends, so perhaps it's understandable that it was not as busy on the Cathedral Green, in a city... they were all looking for an ice cream at the beach, or hiding in their shady gardens!
Not so busy then, but I still met loads of people that had braved the tropical conditions, and sales have still left me with plenty of fresh stock to make before I whizz off again.
Talking of whizzing off to attend more events, please check out my Events Calendar 2026 page if you haven't done so recently.
I've now updated it (or more accurately, updated my husband who then updated it) with newly confirmed events I'll be at for the rest of the year. And I hope that I can find the time to get some more regular posting going on for this site, so you're not waiting so long for something new to appear here next time!
Jayne x