Competing with Fairy Princess Halos ...

Well ... not really competing. I'm guessing that the young parents with little girls who seemed to swarm around the display of beribboned haloes at the Harwich Cranberry Festival last weekend would be unlikely to also go for a layered Shino teabowl. Just a guess on my part ...

It was a bit dismaying to be on the same aisle as the haloes when I set up Saturday, but I grew to appreciate the diversion of seeing little girls try on the ribbons and then march off through the craft fair with them. And, to be completely fair, these items were personally made (along with stuffed frogs and magic wands) by the women in the booth. I saw them making them as the show went on.

The pottery buyers found me, though, and it was a pretty good show on a cool but pretty Cape Cod weekend. I sold some good pots and made some money, which is a large part of the whole point. I continue to be fascinated by the things people touch when they come into my booth. There were six chowder or chile bowls on one table, and a hundred people over the two days must have picked up the bowls and showed them to a wife or husband or significant other. No one ... that is, not one person ... bought one. On the mug shelf, one Shino mug and one crackle-slip-amber-glaze mug were handled an equal number of times. I still have both. It's remarkable how people in a crowd seem to latch onto one or two things as visually interesting, but not something they want to purchase. I don't get it.

But many other things found new homes, including some very nice layered Shino pots. Who knew you could sell crackled and crawled Shino on Cape Cod? Next up, in mid-October, the last show of the season - the Wellfleet OysterFest.

Photos: One boy, with a bacon-and-egg skull and bones shirt, who did not go for the Fairy Princess Haloes; four funky squared Shino bottles, two of which found buyers; much handled but not purchased mugs; ditto on the chowder bowls.