In a word, Fantastic, but I am very glad to have it done. I try not to be the official voice of the festival, acting (and working) more as a "very-involved-founding-sponsor" than the "director" title I have. While the counts haven't been done, and there is still much to sift through it is fair to say the show was an even greater success than either of the previous versions. All the breaks rolled our way this year, with great weather, great media coverage, and the public responding bye coming out to the show and spending. All the work that went in was clearly worth it with the number of vendors reporting record sales to us.
We had scores of volunteers show up to make the work manageable, a store staff that gave their all, a new director this year, Matt Seiden, to help carry some of the much needed organizational weight in putting the show together. However, anyone involved on the inside knows that Christopher Butcher did the work of five men on this festival over the last year, insanely still running half of the Beguiling at the same time. People have had small and legitimate criticisms of things that could have been done better, and I know that I could have done more, but I also have heard how many people go into planning many of the other shows out there, and through Christopher, I know we will have set some man-power to results ratios that will never be broken.
-- Festival Co-Founder Peter Birkemoe of The Beguiling
