Sorry to hear you had a bad time MsPuppet. I think for me, having a similar experience, it's taught me to only do markets where I can attend them beforehand and see if the place will work with the style of stuff I sell. It wouldn't hurt to not only just go and look around, but maybe take a single puppet as a sort of "mascot" and see if it generates interest - that way you could sort of busk, without necessarily signing up for a table. (Though I suppose it depends on the busking policies of the market organisers who might not appreciate that, or require permission/fees for busking)

At our recent puppet summit just last month, we had a "artist swap/meet"... which either never eventuated or consisted of a couple of books for sale provided by the organisers. The fact is that the summit attendance was so small and so many people were busy preparing for presenting their own workshops or whatever, that it never seemed to come to fruition. I can totally understand the frustration of going all that way only to have nothing come of it. -- I was fortunate in that I didn't come from far away. I live in the same town.