Laura Fry, who I follow both through her blog and via Facebook, reposted this from Sophie LaBelle. I never heard of Sophie before, but google her and you’ll find her great cartoons.
Anyway, regardless of what you do, either creatively or repetitively, I found this story worthwhile enough to post again here.
While I always try to do my best at my weaving, and I am rather OCD, I know that I am nowhere near the perfectionist that some others are.
Unrelated – or at least mostly unrelated – I recently traded out some of my weaving at the Copper Shop on the Roycroft Campus. I was feeling a bit, um, disheartened that I only get 60% of the sale price of each item. Then one night when I couldn’t sleep I did the math in my head. I knew what my total sales were at my recent wonderful show at Chautauqua. And since I’d just entered the data into QuickBooks, I had a pretty solid idea of my expenses, too. So, if I count only my direct costs – jury fee, booth fee, van rental, meals, and the like – what percentage of my total sales did I actually end up with? 70%. That’s right…without counting a penny for the time of my three days at the show, my actual expenses were 30% of my total sales. And this was at a really great show. (FYI the next day I confirmed the actual numbers when I was in front of the computer, and I was dead on with my figures.)
It made the 40% that the Copper Shop takes seem totally reasonable. After all, they have to maintain a staff and has all the overhead of a permanent bricks and mortar store. Put my head back in a good place, and makes me want to send them more of my new work before the end of September when there’s a show on the Campus.
Next time you’ll see photos of my weaving, I promise. If you’re dying for a weaving fix, go visit my Etsy shop…I’ve put up two rayon chenille shawls in the past few days.
Love the Sophia LaBelle diddy. How true!. Shows take a lot of time. I didn’t weave way back but I used to deal in antique linens and there was a lot of work involved. Cleaning, mending ironing just to have them tossed and handled roughly. Enough that it all had to be done again before the next show. Glad you are feeling pleased with your vendor after having done the math.
Good moral, Madame Aesop!
Twarn’t mine, but I can generally recognize a good thing when I see it. 😉
Thanks for the Laura Fry inspiration. Few words, right on.
Ain’t it the truth? To paraphrase what is often attributed to Voltaire – the perfect is the enemy of the good. It’s too easy to get frozen into inaction – in weaving and in life.