For the first few hours nothing went at all and every ware was still wrapped in newspaper, and the wind farmer said there’d been no windy motion yet and the notary started writing his own reviews. Then Charm for psyop survivor went from the seer’s stall, and she said afterwards she’d seen it coming, roughly. After that it was slow for a long time, and the night watchman wrote “nothing to report” in his book twice while the notary read his reviews out loud to keep everyone awake, until the wind farmer finally felt a proper windy motion. Near the end somebody came up the path and asked for as many as they could carry, whichever ones, and walked off with them stacked up to the chin, and once everyone saw that go by the rest went very fast and the night watchman gave up writing because he couldn’t keep up. The stalls were empty before morning. The notary said they should have brought a thousand wares and the grandmother went round saying thank you to everyone and YRN said yeah. The wind farmer had been writing a speech all night but it got so long that he got distracted halfway through and it went in the bin anyway. They’re all still sitting around the empty stalls now, maybe waiting for fireworks, though nobody ever said anything about fireworks so somebody will have to make those up as well.
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filed by the night watchman
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From the workshop
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I’m really happy with how the wares turned out.
This collection is quite different from what I usually do. Normally I don’t like giving much context around my work, I’d rather leave the pieces alone. This time the lore showed up on its own, a little at a time. First the pieces started looking like they came from different shops, then the shops needed sellers, then it turned out none of the sellers were really sure what they were selling, and from there it just got very fun to keep going.
Folk magickery is what drives the whole thing. Old love poetry gave me a lot too, even if it might not look like it, and the merchants’ voices mostly come from late-night infomercials.
I’ve always struggled with keeping a collection consistent because I get easily distracted by new ways to move shapes around the canvas, and with this one I just made peace with it. That’s why they’re assorted, and why there are so many merchants.
At first I doubted I could even make 25 without getting bored, then it kept going on its own until I had 42, and then a lot more than that, and somehow it was never that hard to get back into it. The 54 on the stalls are the ones that made the cut.
I made a few little apps just for this collection, a couple to get through the tedious parts quicker and one or two only to make the fun parts more fun, and I learned a lot along the way, as it should be.
I hope yours turns out useful, and if it doesn’t, keep it anyway. I’ll keep tidying up the bazaar here and there, and the board will carry on as a logbook. Thank you for coming up the path.
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