In New England we had little black crickets that didn’t even make me—notorious bug wimp that I am—nervous. In Maryland we don’t have crickets, we have Dire Crickets, a reference that any D&D geek will understand in a heartbeat. They’re about five times the size of the things in New England, and way weirder looking. They look like those old crickets after a radioactivity “incident” out of a horror movie about mutants. Worse, they can survive being played with, hunted, and even chomped on by my cat for more than an hour. They’ll repeatedly play dead until he loses interest, then go on the move again. I had to trap one under an empty tea tin the other morning until my husband woke up (I’m enough of a wimp under normal circumstances when it comes to bugs; it’s worse when I have insomnia and bare feet).
Latest book review: John Levitt’s New Tricks. Coming soon: a review of Patricia Potter’s Behind the Shadows.
The holiday shopping has begun! We’re seeing sales jump of our long-time faves the level 70 designs, as well as of our new level 80 designs. Grab ‘em now!
Speaking of holiday shopping, don’t forget the etsy store (errantdreams.etsy.com), filled with hand-made jewelry, bookmarks, etc. in a wide variety of price ranges and styles! More going up every day, and more than 100 items already up; we’ve recently started adding the newest bookmarks we’ve been making. Here are a few example photos:
Harder to get things done these days. As someone with mental disorders, I find my motivation dramatically reduces during the winter months. I love winter, but the lack of light isn’t good for me. I’m sleeping much better now thanks to Seroquel, but it’s adding to the appetite-increasing effect of the Effexor, which also isn’t good. Particularly when you like to cook things like homemade honey-gingerbread marshmallows:
I plan to take most of the batch to a friend’s this weekend!
Two brief thoughts on politics. As usual, I prefer to stick to process here when I touch on politics at all, not partisanship. So take partisan arguments to other blogs.
First, I read an article this morning that said that young people really aren’t turning out much so far in Florida’s early voting. Guys—VOTE! We all like to complain that past generations have left us with a mess of a world, politically, environmentally, etc. But one of the major ways we have of trying to make a difference is by voting for the candidate we think will best clean things up. So I don’t care who you vote for—just do it! It doesn’t take that much effort!
Second, after Obama put out his ad quoting John McCain as saying he’d need a VP who could advise him on economic matters, and then showing Palin winking, there appeared a fresh wave of complaints of sexism. As a woman I’m calling bullshit. The question of whether Palin is qualified to lead the country in economic matters is a perfectly legitimate question. If she is, she’ll withstand the questioning by proving she has the credentials. If she isn’t, well, it’s important to find that out. We ask these questions of male candidates all the time. Refusing to push a female candidate for her credentials just because she’s female, THAT would be just as sexist as saying that she couldn’t understand economic matters because she’s a woman.
I’ve been making more jewelry, and I’m very pleased with some of the new pieces. Here are two that I particularly like, Ice Queen Jewels:
You can click on the images above to look at larger versions at deviantArt. Or, you can click on the text links above them to see 5 different photos of each at Etsy, and to buy them if you wish!
My last customer commented that she was extremely impressed with our packaging. You see, I try to package each piece separately within a little jewelry gift box inside of a padded mailer. I do this for entirely practical reasons. Our mailman has driven me insane with his treatment of packages. He’s shoved things into the mailbox so hard they split open and tore the contents open. He throws things at the house—and I don’t just mean a tiny little lob. So when I package something, I ask myself, “How can I package this so it would survive treatment by someone like him?” If this has a side effect of giving the customer a really nice little box for the jewelry, that’s great!
It’s been two weeks since I skinned my knee and it’s finally scabbing over. I’ve had notoriously weak ankles all my life—I do exercises specifically to strengthen them, but nothing ever seems to work. I was on the last step of the stairs to the sidewalk out front when my ankle gave way. My foot stayed on the step, and my knee hit the concrete below it. I’m really very lucky that all I did was skin my knee. But it took enough layers off that the center refused to scab over for two weeks. Once or twice a day I had to clean out my knee and make sure it wasn’t getting infected. It’s great to finally be able to wear long pants without having to tape gauze over my knee!
Anyway, between the fact that I was in constant knee-pain until a day or two ago, and the days getting darker, and my husband having been out of town on a trip, I’ve been incredibly unproductive. But I’ve made some jewelry, and I’m looking forward anxiously to this election being over. I hope you all have a great weekend!
I almost always avoid talking politics here, because that just isn’t what I want from this blog or this site. Talking politics nearly always devolves into nastiness, and I want this to be a comfortable, enjoyable site to visit. I do have to post this one video, however, not because of its politics, but simply because while the production value is quite low, the humor factor is quite high. Enjoy it for a laugh thanks to the amusing lyrics and hilarious facial expressions, and don’t worry about the politics of it:
Meanwhile, I’ve reviewed Mercedes Lackey’s Foundation and Candace Havens’s The Demon King and I. Coming up: reviews of some Cuisipro cookie cutters, measuring spoons, and a pastry blender; reviews of two cookbooks.
If you’re thinking of buying any of our beaded bookmarks [link] from our etsy shop—now’s the perfect time! I just got a shipment of new bookmark making supplies in after using up my original stash, and in celebration I’ve marked ALL of the previous bookmarks down by 20-30%! They make great stocking-stuffers.
Last week I had a dream in which a friend and I went back in time to before Google became large & famous and got jobs there. Since we knew they were going to become huge, we tried to buy up as much stock as possible, but the problem was that since we’d just arrived in the past, we had no lines of credit, and only as much cash as was in our pockets.
I told the friend who was in the dream about this, and she suggested that this was just strange enough that it required blogging. So there you go. Apparently I invest in my sleep. I’m not sure what that says about me.
Anyway, although I don’t yet have a book review for you, I do have a peek at a project from our business partner. He got in a crafty mood and started making Christmas ornaments. We have the first set of four ornaments up for sale at etsy now, and should have at least several more soon. The things are absolutely adorable, or, as the friend who invested in Google with me in that dream said when I sent her a photo, “that’s so adorable I may die.”
I’ve had a wretched headache since sometime last night. But I hadn’t gotten on the wii fit and exercised since Thursday, so I didn’t want to skip another day. I went and did a few carefully-chosen exercises from the balance, aerobics, and strength portions, and then did entirely yoga for about 20 minutes. After all, the headache was centered on a muscle knot in the back right of my neck, and yoga is fantastic for stretching out the spine and the muscles around it.
Whaddaya know—headache mostly gone now. So the wii fit worked better than several rounds of Tylenol.
The latest book review is of Ad Hudler’s amusing and fun Man of the House, and I’m in the middle of reading Mercedes Lackey’s Foundation.
I did a new round of photographing items to go up on Etsy this morning. This includes many of the new wire-wrapped stone chokers, and some other new items like that. Also a cool surprise that our business partner had for us; I’ll post about that as soon as I have it up on Etsy later this week! I also just ordered supplies to make more bookmarks, since those seem to be the things people have been most interested in so far (speaking of which, I sold two more through Etsy at the end of last week!).
I have a feeling there were several other things I wanted to post about, but I can’t think of them, so they’ll just have to wait!
Although I’ve seemed relatively quiet these last few weeks, I haven’t been idle. Today’s book review is of Deidre Knight’s Red Fire, a paranormal romance involving Georgia and immortal Spartans. Really.
I’ve been taking a ton of photos while out and about, mostly of plants and flowers; here’s a sample:
I’ve also been putting together (and posting at our etsy store) plenty of jewelry and beaded bookmarks. Of course what with the economic crisis this was exactly the wrong time to start such an endeavor—I hear even the long-time sellers at Etsy with large followings have made few sales in the past weeks—but I have patience. I can wait until things get better, and in the meantime I’ll build up our stock of lovely things. I’m getting much better at taking photos of items, thanks to a light box and lots of practice:
If you want to buy any of them, the photos at DeviantArt have links below them to their listings at Etsy, or you can go directly to our etsy store (errantdreams.etsy.com). There are a few items that are more expensive—usually jewelry sets—but there are also plenty of items that are under $10.
Plenty more things to come soon! I have some cookware to review, as well as a ton of books. I’m in the middle of reading Ad Hudler’s Man of the House, and we’re making recipes out of some cookbooks I haven’t reviewed yet. So stick around!
A while ago I spotted a church named “Christ Our Anchor” and ever since then I’ve found myself pronouncing it with certain… other… punctuation: “Christ! Our anchor!”
What can I say. I enjoy language humor.
New book reviews since the last time I posted them: Dr. Davis Liu’s Stay Healthy, Live Longer, Spend Wisely, on the US healthcare system and navigating it safely. Nalini Singh’s Hostage to Pleasure, which established for me exactly why so many people think so highly of her! And Laurel Anne Hill’s Heroes Arise, a fantasy novel that focuses on world-building. I’ve had a friend visiting all last week so I haven’t gotten as much done as usual, particularly in the realm of reading; it’s fun, though, because we’ve known each other since early college, which means I’ve now known her for literally half of my life.
In awesome news, we now have more than 40 items posted at our etsy store (errantdreams.etsy.com). That includes a great handful of beaded bookmarks—each one unique—as well as jewelry and a few trinket bags. Consider buying a beaded bookmark for a friend this holiday season! This weekend I also made some fun things like a garnet and silver filigree bracelet, so expect to see some of those soon.
We’ve also started posting our level 80 designs at cafepress! More to come soon!
In case this means nothing to you, it means that we’re starting to put our jewelry and other crafts up for sale online. We have the first 14 items up right now, with many more to come soon. (Sorry, but we’ve already sold that magnificent dragonfly choker!)
Here are some of the nitty-gritty details, all of which should also be on the ’store policies’ page of the etsy shop. If you order more than one item, the shipping charge for additional items is much lower than that for the first item. The shipping cost is what it is because we get delivery confirmation and try to package things very carefully so as to avoid any possibility of damage during shipment. We do have to collect sales tax from anyone who lives in Maryland; PayPal should calculate that automatically. All crafts are made in a smoke-free environment, and we do our best to keep our two short-haired cats out of the craft-work!
If you have any questions, do let me know! I have a light box for photo-taking now, so the photos are really nice and should be pretty clear, but I’m learning more with every batch that I do. Here’s a little frobby to show you some of the things we currently have up:
A couple of months ago I noticed that there was a new organic market opening near us. ‘Great!’ I thought. ‘We won’t have to go all the way into Annapolis for good produce and specialty flours and such!’ Eventually this last week I noticed that they appeared to be open (it’s hard to tell from the road) and I did a little searching online to find out their hours. Eventually I located their site. I discovered the owners used to operate a smaller health food store that mostly carried vitamins, nutritional supplements, and health foods, off somewhere on a side street in the area. They’d decided the time was right (and the newly-built location was right) for opening a real organic foods market. They opened on the 8th of August; we went in on the 31st. By the time we went in, it looked like they were already dying on the vine.
Anything perishable (meats, produce, dairy) was in short supply, and either in perfect condition (i.e. just laid out) or really piss-poor condition (i.e., no turnover, and I guess they can no longer afford to throw stuff out and turn it over themselves). I could only find one usable tomato. Of the three(!) quarts of milk on the shelves, two had expired three days earlier. The shop was very clean and very well-organized, so I don’t think it was a case of them not caring—I think they’ve just hit the end of their money and stuff isn’t selling. There was only one other customer in there while we were there, and at any other grocery store we go to it would have been prime shopping time (late Sunday morning, just before lunch).
It looked like they’d made some questionable decisions. The location isn’t great, IMO: it’s tough to see from the road at all. The only reason we noticed it is because I caught sight of it as the passenger; as my husband noted, if it had just been him as driver in the car, he wouldn’t have had the time in passing to read the sign (small sign on a reasonably fast highway). Also, we heard nothing about their opening other than the one sign I spotted, so I’m thinking they must not have done much in the way of effective marketing. When I searched online for them I found a couple of brief mentions in local forums, and one short article printed before they opened in a publication I’d never heard of.
I think they also made some questionable decisions inside the store. They appeared to be carrying a lot of highly specialized stuff that only a few people would want. Whole trays of wheatgrass, but no squash of any kind, either winter or summer? Don’t get me wrong, the bags of pappadum snacks are freakin’ awesome and I could gain several pounds on those alone, but I’m thinking most shoppers would rather buy chips. I’m glad I finally found a source for amaranth and teff flours, but so few people are interested in those that even the Whole Foods Market in Annapolis doesn’t carry them, and Annapolis has a higher-income selection of residents who are thus more likely to shop for such ingredients. (Besides, it isn’t huge as grocery stores go, and even people who want amaranth flour or teff flour will probably only buy them once every handful of months. So it’s not a great use of space.)
I feel really badly for them. They clearly put a lot of love into the store, stocking items they thought were cool and that couldn’t be found elsewhere in the area, and I loved being able to buy those things. They got top of the line checkout equipment with touch-screens. But they don’t appear to have done the market research necessary to make sure they had the right inventory, location, and marketing, and it was probably just the wrong time and place for such a store. Certainly if they stay open I’ll go there when I can for specialty stuff, but honestly, a lot of what I want an organic market for is the produce—and for that, it’s clear I’ll still have to go to Whole Foods.
In more upbeat news, in light of the crafting stuff we’ve been doing lately, I finally initiated a section of crafting links in the links directory. Feel free to sign up for a free account if you want to submit links for crafters’ supply shops, storefronts, community sites, or blogs. Just make sure it has something to do with hand-crafting!
Speaking of hand-crafting, here are a couple more shots of recent projects:
We’re getting closer to opening up that etsy shop—we’ll let you know when it happens! In the meantime, we do have some new stuff up at cafepress. I turned some of my flower photos and photomanipulations into gift items like mugs, prints, and greeting cards in our flower-lovers’ section. The mixed flowers section so far includes items with four different photos on them. Here are a couple samples of our new designs:
We also have a little bit of psychology humor for you geeks out there, with our ink blot test design:
No book review today, I’m afraid. Between taking a four-day weekend, dealing with a new cherry allergy (having a rash on the roof of your mouth and on your lips sucks), sewing a bunch of bags from that scrap of skull fabric, making jewelry, and putting up designs on cafepress, I didn’t quite finish the book I was reading. Soon!
At least, I have a magpie’s fascination with shiny objects. I don’t actually wear much jewelry at all; I’m a jeans and t-shirts gal. But that doesn’t mean I don’t drool over shiny things. So, it seems I’ve taken to beading rather naturally.
When I was a kid I loved little artsy-craftsy kits. But I also have a practical streak a mile wide, and didn’t have the patience for the kind of things they put out for kids—you know, crafts that come out looking big, blocky, and useless. The kind of things you give to your relatives at the holidays, and they smile with that fake, plastered-on smile that you reserve for ugly things your family gives you that you’ll never use but have to pretend to like anyway.
So, I stopped doing crafts. I picked up sewing briefly in the 90s, but tendonitis scrapped that and I stopped again.
Then I saw one friend of mine sewing beads onto trim for garb-making several weeks in a row, and another friend of mine happened to mention having a catalog for Fire Mountain Gems. The lure of potential shiny objects sent me to the website, and I was a goner.
Ever thought about doing something, and just KNEW it was the right thing to do? That’s how I felt when I looked at beading. It never even entered my mind that I’d make cruddy stuff or no one would want it—it just felt right. So I picked up a bunch of materials and set to work. I posted photos at DeviantArt. I’m thinking of opening an Etsy shop (just at a hobby level for the moment), but haven’t yet, and someone already asked if they could buy one of my pieces. I posted some photos for critique at Craftster and several people said they didn’t look like beginner pieces—they looked pro.
Yeah, I’m bragging. I’m really proud of that last bit. It’s slowed down my reviewing a little, but I AM still reading books for review, and making anywhere from one to eight pieces of jewelry at a time (24 done so far!). Who knows—it might or might not turn into a business later down the road, but right now it’s incredibly fun.
Book reviews posted since my last entry: Easy Beading from BeadStyle magazine; Ace is Wild by Penny McCall; Jinx by Jennifer Estep; and Into the Shadow by Christina Dodd.
