market – dangermouse.net

Another day out: Scully’s buddy and Ryde markets

Today after my morning 5k run, we went for a drive over to Meadowbank to visit Scully’s best friend, Luna, the poodle who used to live next door to us. My wife and I met her owners too, and we all walked together over to the Ryde Wharf Markets. This is a small local market; it had a lot of food stalls, but only a dozen or so other types of stalls, selling jewellery, knick-knacks, clothing, etc. I got a couple of jars of fig jam from one stall, one sweet with cinnamon and ginger, and one more savoury, with rosemary and balsamic vinegar. I tried them both but couldn’t choose between them, so got a jar of each. I’m a sucker for fig jam!

I grabbed a hot snack from one of the food stalls, a spinach, cheese, and minced beef boureka. After looking around a bit we retreated to a nearby cafe to have drinks and sit for a bit to catch up. Here’s Scully (left) and Luna (right):

After this we drove back home and I had to finish making some sourdough bread and work on some comics and then get ready for online classes in the evening. For dinner I made omelettes.

New content today:

Two Chaps and Marrickville Organic Market

This morning I went for a 5k run in the cold. It was a bit tough backing up from yesterday’s 7.5k. My legs are very worn out now. Not sore, but I can definitely feel them when walking around.

To make up for this, we went on an expedition, driving over to Marrickville and Two Chaps cafe for lunch. It was very busy when we arrived just before midday, and we had to join a list of people waiting for tables. But they said that the waiting list was for indoor tables, for which half of them in an annex were okay for dogs, while the outdoor tables on the street kerbside were up for grabs as soon as we saw one free. After waiting a few minutes we saw people leaving an outside table, so we grabbed it.

Here’s Scully enjoying the cafe ambience.

We ordered our meals. I got sourdough crumpets with peri peri, fried cauliflower, capsicum salsa, and smoked almonds:

I’d never really considered crumpets for a savoury dish like this. At home I usually just toast them and have them plain with butter, or with honey. I have tried melting cheese onto them a few times, but generally I think of crumpets as more of a sweet topping carrier. But this dish was spicy and really delicious.

My wife got the quinoa porridge with warm lemon and plum compote, mixed fruit and nut granola, topped with rose petal and pistachio:

The food here is all vegetarian, and insanely delicious. We really enjoyed the lunch. They do pasta nights on Fridays and Saturdays, and we keep thinking we should try that one time.

After eating, my wife asked if there were any markets nearby. I found the Marrickville Organic Farmer’s Market, just a block or so away. We walked over there and found it was larger than I expected, with a lot of outdoor stalls selling both produce and also assorted bric-a-brac. And dozens of food stalls doing a brisk lunch trade. Plenty of people, many with dogs, walking around. It was pretty cool. My wife bought a bag of freshly made plantain chips, and a cheap bag of mandarins.

After this we drove back home. I made up a sourdough loaf to use for lunches during the week and did my early evening classes online. For dinner in between I made fried Brussels sprouts with mushrooms, garlic, chilli, and miso. And now later in the evening I’m baking the bread and will head off to watch some TV soon.

New content today:

Le Marché Français

This morning we went to Le Marché, a French market which is held twice a week in a suburb not too far from us. Parking was tricky – we had to park about three blocks away. And when we got there, soon after 9am, it was already pretty crowded.

The market has some fresh produce…

French bread…

Cheese…

French decorations…

And pastries and sweets!

That’s a chocolate Parisian flan, which I had. It was incredibly rich and delicious. I didn’t feel like any lunch afterwards until I had a small snack around 2pm, which was plenty to last until dinner.

This afternoon I mainly worked on comics, until my three evening ethics classes. It feels like it’s been a very full day.

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Games night and market day

Friday was online games night with my friends. During the day I did the usual grocery shopping and 4 ethics classes. At lunch I picked up Scully from my wife’s work and then drove out to a place to get lunch. I chose a place next to a large playing field where Scully could wander around and explore while I ate, and then I did some ball throwing for her to chase. The field is next to a primary school and a whole bunch of kids poured out during their lunch break to play on the grass, herded by a couple of teachers. Some of the kids came over and asked if they could pat Scully, so they got to do that.

During games night we played some of the usual suspects, and the new games Nova Luna and Vaalbara. I won the first, but another guy had a runaway victory in the second.

I begged out of games earlier than usual, since we needed to be up at 6am this morning to take my wife to Surry Hills Market, where she booked a stall to sell her dog bandanas and (human) bangles. The market started at 7am! Which is pretty early. I dropped her off and took Scully back home for the day. I spent time assembling the remainder of the Irregular Webcomic! strips from the last batch of photos I took, and then writing annotations for them.

This evening I booked a nice place for dinner, so I could surprise my wife after her hard day working the market stall.

The weather was hot today, but the extreme humidity of the past couple of weeks has been blown away, down to around 20%, compared to the 80s and 90s of a couple of days ago. So it’s much more pleasant.

New content today:

Market without being at market

As mentioned yesterday, today I helped my wife organise her market stall to sell dog bandanas. We got up early and drove over to the market with all the stuff we needed. It’s a bit hectic setting up there, as there is very restricted car access near the market, so you have to queue up for a bit and wait for a car/van to leave before being ushered into the tiny parking area to unload your stuff and get out again as quickly as possible.

We did this and I drove back home with Scully, leaving my wife to handle the stall by herself until the market closed at 3pm, when we did the whole thing in reverse to pack up and head home.

So I had much of the day to myself (and Scully). I spent it writing the rest of that batch of Irregular Webcomic! that I began yesterday. It’s now complete and I can do the photography probably on Tuesday morning when I don’t have any ethics classes.

Speaking of which, I had three more tonight: two of the 10-12 age group, and one class of the new 13-15 group, which had three of the most mature students from the previous class who transferred into it for this year. I think my favourite classes are actually on Sunday evenings, as these classes all have great groups of kids in them.

My wife sold some bandanas and was happy with what she achieved, so that was good. She has a different market booked in a few weeks to see how it goes in a different suburb as well.

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Market preparation

My wife has decided to hold a few market stalls to sell her dog bandanas and bangles. She’s booked a stall at Kirribilli Markets tomorrow – one of the markets where I tried to get established selling prints of my photography a while back. So we have some experience in setting up and running a stall there. We’l be up early tomorrow morning to drive down and get set up. But rather than me manning the stall all day, it’ll be my wife’s project. So today we got organised and sorted out all the things to take, making sure she can use our Square payment device on her phone, setting up a cash float, and so on.

The rain eased off today about lunchtime. We went on a long walk to the bakery for a bit of afternoon tea. Back home we gave Scully a bath. I went out for a run – this time doing 5 km, double my normal distance. I’m trying to do at least one run of this distance each month.

Not much else to report today, really. I spent some time writing new Irregular Webcomic! strips. I’m planning to photograph a new batch some time during the coming week.

New content today:

Our last market day?

My wife and I got up early today, to pack the car and head off to the market at East Lindfield. She has new products to sell – hand made decoupage bangles, to go with the dog bandanas. She’s slowly been crowding my photography stuff to smaller areas of our table, so this time I suggested we just grab a second table and have one each. I thought there’d be enough room, and as it turned out there was plenty, because one of the ladies who usually has the stall next to us wasn’t there, and the organisers had rearranged things a little, so we had a slightly wider space than usual. I was thinking we’d have one table sideways, making a corner, but we ended up just having two tables lengthwise end-to-end, and plenty of space to lay out all our products.

Unfortunately, the numbers at the markets were very low. It was incredibly quiet, with very few people coming through to browse or buy. All the stallholders were commenting on it to one another. We did actually make enough sales to cover the stall hire and make some profit, but not a large amount.

We discussed whether we should keep doing this market thing or give it up as not worth the effort. We can’t do the April market, because it’s on Easter Sunday and we’ll have a family lunch, with our nephew who will be coming back from Europe for the first time since COVID began – so it’ll be a pretty big event. Our liability insurance expires at the end of May, so we can possibly do the May market and then not bother renewing the insurance for another year. We’ll decide in a while when we’ve had some time to mull it over.

Back home in the mid-afternoon, I did my run in afternoon heat, and then had a couple of ethics classes. In between I made pizza for dinner.

And now to rest after a busy and tiring day!

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Pre-Christmas market day

Today was the first time the East Lindfield markets were held since July, the last few having been cancelled due to COVID restrictions. My wife and I figured it would be a good day, being close to Christmas, and hopefully a good number of people would be out shopping.

I got up and had a quick breakfast before packing the car and heading over to the market site. As usual, I need to make two trips because we have a small car, and after unloading the stuff I returned home to pick up my wife, Scully, and the remainder of the gear. We had our stall set up and ready to go about 20 minutes before the official starting time of 9 o’clock.

The day was hot, really hot. I heard on the news this evening that it was the hottest day since January (last summer). It felt really humid too, although checking the humidity later when I got home it was only around 50% for most of the day. Fortunately, we had an indoor stall, and the community centre we were in had recently renovated and installed air conditioning, so it was fairly pleasant where we were. But all of the people with outdoor stalls under marquees must have been sweltering.

But there were a good number of customers coming through today, which was nice. We didn’t sell a lot of stuff, but we made a profit above the stall rental fee, and handed out a bunch of business cards. And by the time we got home again, my wife actually got an order on Etsy for 3 dog bandanas from one of the women she’d given a business card to, so that sort of counts as well. And it was nice to see some of the familiar faces of the other stallholders there, after so many months of cancellations. So overall it was a decent and positive day.

The hot weather broke into a storm as I was making my second trip home with our stuff. We got a few minutes of heavy rain, but the storm had merely skirted us, and as we discovered when watching the evening news it had caused havoc further north, tearing rooves off buildings, bringing down power lines and trees, destroying cars, and killing a person. The news footage was really quite scary. Another storm front come through later and we got very strong winds here and heavy rain, but I don’t see any damage from our windows.

This evening it’s time to relax, after a busy and exhausting day!

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Wet market day

It was wet and cold for today’s market as predicted. When we got there and set up, we realised that several of the stallholders hadn’t bothered showing up. The organisers moved some of the outdoor stalls into the indoor space where I have my stall, so that area was still full, but the usual row of stalls outside was severely depleted. Maybe a third or so of the stalls weren’t there.

Customer-wise, it wasn’t actually as bad as I feared it might be. Quite a few people came through, probably looking for something indoors to do to spend some of their Sunday. Not a lot though. I sold several greeting cards and my wife sold some dog bandanas. It wasn’t quite enough to cover our stall hire fee, again. If we keep having days where we make a loss we’re going to have rethink doing these markets at all. But hopefully things will improve later in the year when the weather warms up, and hopefully most people will have had their COVID vaccinations.

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Second market day

This morning I was very tired, and could hardly drag myself out of bed at the appropriate time to get ready for the second day of the Turramurra Market. My wife and I arrived there just before it opened, which was fine since everything was still set up from yesterday.

Today went a bit better, with more people coming through, and more stopping to chat and look through our stuff. I sold more greeting cards, and my wife sold a lot more doggie bandanas. But although we did better, overall it wasn’t quite enough to turn a profit on the stall rental for the weekend. This market is on again in September, but I don’t think we’ll go next time.

We had some more conversation with the woman who was running the biscuit stall next to us. She’s English, and she was telling us tales about her days over there. And… it turns out that her brother-in-law is the drummer and founding member of the band Racey! I was in awe, but she was actually surprised that I’d ever heard of them.

At the end of the day we packed up and I had to do two trips home in the car to take everything, but that was okay because the woman who runs the market was still packing up by the time I got back for the second load.

And this evening I’m just relaxing, watching some Doctor Who and taking it easy, after a very busy seven days.

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