So now that we're done with the holidays I'm roasting up my turkey. My boyfriend didn't want turkey while he was here and this morning, now that he's gone home, I was telling Chloe I'd roast the bird today.

Chloe: Is it REALLY cannibalism to eat turkey? Because I really want turkey!

It turns out that he had told her he refused to eat it because he wasn't a cannibal. And she sort of missed or compounded the joke.

Current Mood: cheerful

She just asked me:

"If I read my book, while standing on my head, and the book is the normal way up, would I see it upside down?"

And people wonder why kids have different views of the world...

We went to the zoo. Totally different experience going this week, without the classroom of kids pretending it ain't cool to be at the zoo anymore and ENJOYING it. This time we got to giggle at the gorilla juggling the baby, the macaques capering for the cameras, the wolf chasing a magpie around it's enclosure, the peacocks telling the toddlers off, the cats sprawled out like any other cats (except, you know, for the 1.5m difference in length and 10 cm claw flexes), the otters arguing over fish heads and all the rest.

There was this huge thing in the butterfly garden that I have no idea what the HECK it is:



There were scads of weird looking caterpillars and other stages of bug around the garden.

Spend 3 hours flipping a giggling 70 pound 9 year old over in the pool.

It was hot, muggy and kind of hazy today (for Calgary!) so we headed on over to the closest pool and library. AKA: air conditioning.

When we got out there was a thunderstorm coming in and the barometer was dropping fast enough you could FEEL your ears pop. Which meant getting home was much more pleasant than getting there! Score!

In the other news, the Etsy experiment is off to a good start. I started listing beads mid April with the goal of listing 50 items as an experiment (that's $10 bux for the initial budget). So far, I've listed 48 items and 19 have sold.  Not too shabby. If I can sell half of what I list, regularly, then that's excellent. Since the majority are items from my older stock or items I was making for fall shows, so far I haven't had to bump up the production or materials... just the photo taking. ack. I have not yet gotten any complaints about shipping prices (knock on wood).

Feel free to take a peek at my Etsy beads: http://tooaquarius.etsy.com

The other thing it's helped is with the culling the bead collection. I've been sifting the bags of beads for what would be sellable on Etsy and pitching older, unsold, gimped items as I go. This fall, prices are getting raised on everything and I do not want to bring older, amateur stock along to show. Simple is fine - I love simple beads - but the amateur stuff or the stuff that hasn't sold in 3 years is not going back.

My displays are starting to come together, the stock is beginning to fall into neater 'lines'. I'm optimistic about it all which is a good spot to be in.

This Saturday was my second last show before the fall - it was fabulously well organized, fairly well attended, lots to do... and sales were abysmal. Not sure what's up with that! Perhaps there was too much other fun stuff to do to distract people from buying? Anyways, it was a good outing type day, and since it was a community show there were some garage sale items and social action stuff so I scored a few things, talked to some of the charity folks and hung out with friend-vendors. The kid of one vendor we keep running into was there so Chloe was busy the WHOLE DAY.

Father's Day is always awkward - my parents divorced when I was five and Chloe's dad has never been involved much in her life. I always encourage her to make / get cards for the men in her life (as I do for the women, on Mother's Day) to spread the joy around and sorta normalize things. But they had the Extra Special Art Project this year. *grin* I told her we'd keep it since it was so much work!

You can see a few pics of us, the weekend, the crafty fair on my flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tooaquarius/

Current Mood: cheerful

When did five pounds of clay become a small stack from the sale at Michaels? That's about what I got and then got home to realize I had missed a few colours. oops.

At least I didn't need to get a new Makins extruder - someone with stronger hands than me fixed mine (yay). This weekends canes will be bugs and extruder canes, I think.

What do you tell newbies who are thrilled at the prospect that they could make 100s a month selling THEIR clay creations? (like I do) 'cause the second I mentioned the 100s they don't listen to 'before overhead & supplies' bit.

My guy bought me a bench grinder to buff my pieces with. His sister, I guess, was trying to give him hints on gifts or trinkets and suggested flowers.

Thanks, I'll take the bench grinder over the roses pretty much any day.

Current Mood: amused

We spent the long weekend in southern Saskatchewan hanging out at my boyfriends place. I brought a tub of clay stuff to do since I heard he had house things to do and the nice boy conditioned all my ugly hard fimo and made blends. The end result is I have a LOT of canes, though some of them, not so hot.

I took clay over to a friends house there while the boys played in the dirt and Chloe ran with the local herd of kids. I do believe that we have a few polymer clay converts though I did catch some flak for showing them the stuff when they can't buy ANY OF IT locally. oops.

It was an exhausting weekend overall and I completely forgot to take ANY pictures. Must take pictures. I swear it is a whole different world there.

Current Mood: tired

Before I go list a bunch of new stuff I notice that the Claychicks store on Etsy has 100 items sold! Yay! The first big milestone. Hopefully the next 100 goes a little quicker (ie: we don't take six months off in the middle).

Current Mood: impressed

Looks like I applied far too late to the Lilac Fest as a jewelry vendor - and there is no way I would have enough non jewelry stock to do a show that size by end of May - so that ones a no-go. Too bad, it would have been my first outdoor show and my first Big One.

On the bright side, I guess I got found by some people with crafty mad money. In the first full month of open and stocked, my web shop got a couple hundred bux of orders which is a Good Thing. Less fees that way - really, the only cost is the time it takes to photo the damn canes and I do that already for my own records anyways - and if it stays that busy, it'll rock.

The Claychicks on Etsy got re-launched this month. I finally buckled down and set up my Tooaquarius on Etsy. Both have had some success since then! You can see some of the pictures from my recent work on either of the Etsy shops or on either one's Flickr: http://claychicks.etsy.com / http://www.flickr.com/photos/claychicks/ or http://tooaquarius.etsy.com / http://www.flickr.com/photos/tooaquarius

As I work through photographing steps for various tutorials and written materials I am coming up against the limitations of my equipment and setup. Really, I live in a small economy apartment so to work on a second project the first ideally needs to be completely cleaned up. There is very little room to have more than one station going at a time - either cane making, bead making, item photographing, tutorial photographing, etc. The camera I have is fine for little web snapshots (well, for little amateur web snapshots) but is not going to cut it to make print pictures.

It's a bit funny - some success seems to breed issues just as fast as a lack of it!

Current Mood: chipper

I whined about my craft fair getting snowed out this weekend. So maybe the events of yesterday afternoon were a cosmic kick-in-the-butt for it or something.

Anyways, at 1in the afternoon or so, loud pounding at the door from one of the landlords agents that we have to get out of the building, there's an emergency. Then the alarm gets pulled and of course, we get jackets on, grab cell phone and get out. It is around -15C, so jackets and boots were a necessity.

Turns out the dry, itchy cough I had been having all day was not an oncoming cold. My bad. I FREQUENTLY have dry itchy, cough until you get the heaves so i didn't even think about it. Walking into the hallway of the building though? I realized there was something else going on. The air in the hallway was unbreathable, heavy, a hundred times worse. We got the hell out.

Despite the insane quantity of EMS calls the city has gotten this weekend because of the freak weather, there were still 3 fire trucks, a hazmat truck and an ambulance there in minutes. It was both watch-the-trainwreck-neat and a little creepy.

They did the air tests for standard building issues - CO, CO2, gas, and a few of the others - and told the landlord to have someone come in and test the attic for the rest of the list but they decided there was nothing serious. Ambulance had a few people sitting and puffing for a bit, and they opened all the building windows up for half an hour.

Closest guess is that someone ran their oven after not properly cleaning the oven cleaner - it was sort of that thick chemical taste - on the top floor and it floated through and accumulated in the attic and got into everyone else's suites.

Nothing like watching people with readers and full suits go into your apartment though.

We opted to let the apartment air out and went to my moms for the day. The building was much clearer smelling when we got back. There were two teams of safety inspectors today putting air quality patches up in random places.

Current Mood: crazy

Even before I started actually selling at craft fairs I loved to go because you often get that sort of carnival vibe in a smaller format. And once I started selling, well, I was hooked. People giving me pocket change for my little bead bracelets (what I first sold, in my early teens) seemed like heaven! I'd get quality time with my granny, one of my favourite people, and to look at everyone else's neat stuff and make a little spending money.

As all things do, it changes when you're older and trying to make a little better money. The hazards increase and the expenses - my granny no longer gives me her extra buttons and a couple packages of seed beads and fishing line to make bracelets from, alas - too. You worry about the economy, and the weather, and the seller with the stuff that looks just like the low end version of your own.

For the most part, I like my craft fairs - I don't sell items that many people (none that I've seen yet) make. I still like to look at what everyone makes, buy my little kitschy things, thrill my daughter with yet another knitted doll dress or plastic canvas and yarn candy popper. There are a lot cooler things these days than when I was in my early teens - I imagine some of that has to do with the Internet and the proliferation of the craft industry because you used to very rarely find that sort of mixup of stuff at shows.

Last week and this week I had two shows and did poorly at each. Last week, the weather was beautiful, the venue was perfect (affluent neighbourhood, well setup), lots of perks (food, raffles, plenty of volunteers and space) and it still bombed because even though there were crowds of people they were mostly all students - the wrong people were advertised to: students. Students came and spend their 1, 2, 5, 10 bux and that was great. But let's face it - in a neighbourhood full of $400k+ houses, you expect the parents to swing by and make a few purchases as well. And they just didn't.

This week, we got freak weather. The show was PERFECTLY advertised, there was plenty of space, high traffic area... just no chance for it. Half or more of the vendors canceled. The roads were almost impassable. I am sitting at home blogging and crafting the second day of the show instead of showing the kids of the other vendors how to make spiral canes again (which was fun, I always like the kids and the clay).

Really, the saving grace for both of these shows was getting to know a few more potential customers and friends - jewelry vendors seem to be a huge percentage of vendors these days and thats my target audience, really. I got to talk, to see some ideas they had for my beads, exchange contact info... basically, networking for crafting types.

Being the eternal optimist I have another 4 or 5 of these this spring and summer!

Current Mood: chipper

No, not really cool. It's actually kind of nice for here in February.

Geekily, I am thrilled - I now show up as first google result for a couple searches that I aimed for. January of 2008 I averaged more hits every day than I did every week tin January 2007.

Craftwise I scored some serious Fimo loot from a friend-customer getting out of it. She's getting older and her health is poor. So I now have about 20 pounds or so of old Fimo. Like, pre-Classic Fimo. For a lot of people that would be unusable but I'm in no rush. I will chop the colours up, put them in their own big freezer bags with a little softener and mash them regularly and see if a few days of the spa treatment will help tame it. The colours were even useful ones, good amount of white, black, plain primaries and good variety of greens - all stuff I use a lot.

Tossed in with it were dozens of old Fimo pamphlet books, a couple magazines, a sturdy Italian pasta machine, brand I don't recognize, a brand new toaster oven and a bunch of stamps, textures, bottles, etc. A lot of it isn't stuff I'll be able to use so it'll get trimmed.

The same person has a lifetime's worth of neatly organized, perfect condition, beads and jewelrymaking supplies that she wants to sell for basically pennies on the dollar. I promised to go help at least catalogue and photo the stuff that would be worthwhile to sell online. I mean, her studio furniture isn't going to be worth mailing but the tubs and tubs and tubs of pearls, crystals, czech glass, stones, metal, wire, findings, etc. could easily find their way home somewhere else... Like here (I wish). And three or four bookshelves of pristine magazines on mostly jewelry and beads - a whole run of Jewelry Craft (from 1993 on!) and Bead & Button. That was neat to see the style of clay jewelry from that time period.

Now back to the salt mines!

Current Mood: chipper

I figured I'd vent here before I go do it on my much more public site.

Since I got back to working on my sites I went and looked at the logs. Turns out that I was getting a heckuva ton of traffic from a specific forum post on a specific site (and to a lesser degree a few other posts on that site). And yet, they were not showing up as site hits, just as file hits.

So I went to look at the referrer page. And it turns out that a user on there had posted my complete ivy cane tutorial to their forum, the words translated to (not sure) Czech or Polish but the images my originals, still on my server. Not that saving them to their space and posting them would be better but yeah... No credit or link back to me in any form. There were several other tutes on there or links to them, most with at least some partial crediting, either to misspelled artist name or their site but no full 'This tutorial by xyz of such and such site'.

Most disturbingly were half a dozen complete tutorials of page by page scans hosted on imageshack. The book was a French polymer clay book but I can't imagine that the publisher gave them permission to randomly post without credit or link 6 or 7 tutorials on a freebie forum site. From the same imageshack account were pictures saved from the sites of several other artists like Laura Timmins, Lynne S. and so on.

In the larger scheme of things, this is minimal. In a months time, the 2000 or so file hits from these people were only about 30 mb of bandwidth of mine. And several other tutorial sites use one small image from my site to link to. This is fine - they link properly and give me credit. Examples of this, done properly, include items on naama's site.

I contacted the person who posted the bulk of the materials and I removed the specific files they were hotlinking. But it was disappointing - I write and publish tutorials for free use. I do not write and publish tutorials for others to distribute without permission. My graphics even more so. I know some sites are moving to a completely free use license but I haven't decided on that yet.

So basically this is a double whammy - bandwidth theft and copyright infringement in the form of not properly crediting.

Current Mood: grumpy

Ah the weather has made me completely house bound this week. Even had Chloe stay home for one of the days - her teacher tells me that there were 8 of 20 students present that day and only 10 today. Why? Well, with the windchill, we were in the -45 range. Even the walk to the bus stop, which is only a few hundred feet, to see if the bus would come by was painful.

So it's been a cleaning up things and catching up things few days because it's hard to really dig into programming (or get out to the city archives to research) when there is a cabin fever'd 9 year old stuck to me.

Send me warm weather!

Current Mood: cold

The nice cable guy came and crawled around under my desk. It turns out it was more of a wiring issue than a modem one and the replacement of the Very Old and Slightly Shorted ethernet and coax cables should make my online life much... simpler.

He showed me the difference between the before and after numbers and pointed out where they should be (but won't, as the computer is antiquated) and I guess, I'm back.

So next rush will be for a modern computer!

Also, it's monday. How do i know? I poured shampoo in my eye. You would think I didn't do the shampoo thing normally, safely every single day but yeah, right in. My reward is a sore eye 5 hours later.

Gah.

Current Mood: tired

When I was in sixth grade, one of my classmates lived in the house next to my after school sitter. Her cat had the most adorable fuzzy kittens one day and I spent the next six weeks begging my mom mercilessly for one (or two or, you know, six). Eventually my mom caved and we took home two of them in her coat pockets.

Current Mood: sad

I have a nephew! Brand new, July 1st .

I think I will get my non-cooking bro & sil some easy food stashes.

Current Mood: giddy

I lemming'd after Caro!

You are The Star

Hope, expectation, Bright promises.

The Star is one of the great cards of faith, dreams realised

The Star is a card that looks to the future. It does not predict any immediate or powerful change, but it does predict hope and healing. This card suggests clarity of vision, spiritual insight. And, most importantly, that unexpected help will be coming, with water to quench your thirst, with a guiding light to the future. They might say you're a dreamer, but you're not the only one.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

One of my goals for the year - not doing bad with these - was to get back to something that made me feel good: fundraising and volunteering for causes I value.

So today we did the walk for the Kids Help Phone. Chloe was the poster girl for our team of two's pledges and considering the short notice, we did super!

Good weather, well organized, lots of post walk treats... all in all it went really well.

Here's my tuckered out teamie: http://members.shaw.ca/tooaquarius/images/may/bell-walk-1t.jpg

And Kathi? She really does smile, though this took a few tries: http://members.shaw.ca/tooaquarius/images/may/bell-walk-5t.jpg

Current Mood: accomplished