I finally did inventory last night. I had to unpack everything from my last show before I could do that. It's also just not a super fun task. The assumptions I made about what was or wasn't selling was directionally right so it didn't modeify my plan for 2025. The biggest modifications will be around what I start making in 2025 vs what I have some inventory on and can make a bit later.

I keep wondering if at some point there will be a saturation in the crab market. So far it has not slowed down so I'm going to continue to make with the assumption that it will continue. I'm going to start with mugs, small plates, bowls, and spoon rests. Despite the push at the end of the year, I have little to no stock in all of those categories.

Birch also continues to be really popular, although less popular with some things like spoon rests and platters.

I need to spend some time thinking about aliens and whether there are things beyond mugs I want to put aliens on given the popularity of the mugs. I don't know that it makes sense to do a wider line, but I'm still thinking about it. What's interesting about aliens and dragons is that they definitely appeal more to a male audience. Females buy them too, but there is a lot of my work that really only focuses on a female audience and I like that these hit a wider audience.

As I think about the evolution of what I'm doing in general I am thinking about whether I want to increase my selection of mugs as a decrease some of the other things that I have. I get a lot of feedback from those that love the variety in my booth, but as we've seen with my metrics what people end up buying is mugs.

An area I think I want to explore in 2025 is texture relief vs impression. What I'm thinking about specifically is having raised texture vs sunken texture. Some of the rolling pins I use do this, but I want to do that will leaves and flowers as well.

The idea of relief work ties to still wanting to be able to unify crochey and pottery more. I saw a video of how to create better impressions of yarn using a caulk mixture. I just now need to try it :)

I actually haven't touched clay since the week before my last show. I need to get back in the swing this weekend.