What a weekend! x_x

Well, it started off with me leaving my house exactly ten minutes later than I should have (I was fussing with cleaning the dishes out of the sink, vaccuming this and that- lesson learned, the world will not end if the dishwasher is not loaded), which resulted in me catching a later light rail than I should have, which meant also missing the connecting light rail.. so fast forward and my plane is leaving in 5 minutes and I am barreling through PDX like a mad woman. I had brought a paper bag with some rare plants for a friend, and this was buckled to my weekend backpack and rustling like crazy. I pulled my small rollaway behind me, and people looked back in alarm as it came whizzing up to them at high speeds on the moving walkways. The Southwest associate kept peeking out of the gate searching for me, and knew I was the missing person as I came huffing and puffing up to the gate. The flight was actually only half full so I still got a window seat, and the plane pulled away from the gate just moments after I buckled in. Whew. With the adrenaline going I didn't really nap and worked on a very last minute storyboard project that dropped in my lap the day before. Because of the extra late check-in, I had doubts my luggage would make it.

Surprise, it did make it!

Well, half of it did. 1 out of two is fantastic considering the circumstances. And thusly my art portfolio came in on a later flight, and I put together the last of my art show stuff in the morning on Friday.

I wasn't too happy about the shift in dealer's room hours to 11am, but during and post con
I take that back. I went to bed early and got up around 5:30am each morning, and finished all of my drawing requests before opening up shop at 11. Unfortunately the going to bed early didn't do me much good because we had some extra foot stompy folks above us, and even with earplugs they woke me up repeatedly at night. So pardon me if I looked especially zombie-ish at this con, I really can't function well without a straight night's worth of sleep. ;-;

Business was slow for me all con, it was especially slow on Saturday which was shocking to me since my Saturdays are usually completely swamped with work, and I generally don't make any plans with anyone as I expected to hunker down with instant ramen and work. I'm a little worried about future sales at Anthrocon if FC is any prediction. But I've noted in the past that whenever I'm in the first row right by the front doors at a con I tend not to do well with business. The flow of traffic tends to just go straight by and up the aisles unless you're extremely popular. Or so I think anyway! Print sales I thought were slightly better, color sketches definitely down. I raised my color sketch prices by $5, but i think because of the round number it wasn't as appealing anymore. Likely what I'll do is keep the old price but raise my extra character prices.

As most of you know, the AC was totally non-functioning saturday. I wondered a little if this had an impact on sales. Chestnuts and I were somewhat closer to the doors, so we had a little airflow. Coming from sunny SoCal it wasn't so bad, but for much of the morning I actually thought I was getting feverish from stress. :|

I sold two of my originals in the art show, so I will post them up soon! The one thing I've noticed about this fandom, is that work sells for incredibly cheap. I'm not sure how I feel about this or how others feel. I've been selling at these cons for 15 years and I know a lot of folks have lot starting bids to encourage bidding, but in recent years, I think even with these low starting prices, pieces were not getting bid up. I priced mine at a minimum bid where I would be fine if that was the price it went for, and I might just make limited edition prints in the future and offer them at lower rates for this market. Wondering what you guys think?

It was great seeing Alty Alty (who I can't believe I have not seen since FC 2009!), and saying hi to many others. :)

Sunday I packed up and chestnuts chestnuts dropped me off at the CalTrain station. This was the icing on the cake of con stress as I had no idea which track I was supposed to get to, and the train was leaving in 5 minutes. Luckily two girls were also heading to SF and I followed them up. As I settled in on the train, I realized I did not have my bag of plants with me.

So, these plants: They are a carnivorous species of butterwort - they're not as well known as the venus flytraps or pitcher plants, as their method of eating insects is passive - fruitflies stick to their leaves, and the leaves don't react by curling around them or anything of the sort. But they have very pretty and dainty little flowers on delicate stalks, so their pollinators don't get near the leaves and thus liquified and turned into plant food. These particular species however, are not available commercially. My bf acquired them from a botany professor somewhere in CA, and they were very lovingly cultivated and were to be a gift for a very botany/horticulture-oriented friend I was visiting in SF. I realized at this point in the trip that I am very prone to freaking out, and freak out I did. After many texts, calls and emails later, it was figured out that I had left them in the art show Sunday morning, as I was in a rush to get to the dealer's room and checking out wouldn't happen any sooner. Ch'marr very very kindly dropped them off with my friend on his way back to Oakland, and I am just 1000x grateful that this was resolved. All I could think of was them ending up in the trash somewhere, and I could hear pinguicula cultivators everywhere screaming in agony at the thought.

I was in SF for a day and a half, and spent a day helping my plant friend remove a very tenacious patch of bamboo from his client's yard, and had dinner with an old school friend of mine. I had hot pot twice at the Little Sheep Monogolian Hot pot place, it was so good. I wish a place like this existed in portland! And so finally I packed up early, struggled down many steps from his SF cottage to the street, and my friend called an Uber for me.

Only he called it 35 minutes later than he should have, and I found myself again.. running frantically through an airport.

And now I'm back! And today I am finally returning to streaming! x_x How was everyone's FC? Or weekend if you didn't go? Thoughts on the art market? I'd like to hear what you think.

-Kitsumi