Progress, Rant, News

If nothing else, yesterday was fairly productive. I remained in good health and my daughter also woke as if nothing was amiss. There was a particularly long homeschooling session, but the oldest didn't complain, so again productive. I finished up a couple of pieces that were pending including this convertible piece here, got packages in the mail and started on a mask late in the evening. So while not exactly a creative day, it was productive.

Now for today's short rant brought to you by people who "buy" something and then fail to pay for it. Generally this sort of nonsense occurs with new people who didn't understand that clicking the huge 'commit to buy' button was just that or they don't realize that they didn't finish by clicking through to paypal. While etsy is still saying that they are rolling out express payment, I've had two of these "sales" in as many days and they have been to people who have bought things in the past. The thing that really bugs me though is after I send out a polite reminder of their lack of payment, I get no response whatsoever. Come on people, just a short, 'sorry, I changed my mind' would do the trick, but no I'm stuck patiently waiting until three days have past to cancel the thing. I know I could cancel straight away, but when it really gets down to it, I'd rather give people the benefit of the doubt. I'm just particularly annoyed this morning thus the rant.

Now, I'm racking my brain to find anything else to share with you so I don't leave here with the taste of rant in my mouth...or I suppose more likely the smell of it on my typing fingers, but I can't think of a thing. It's bill day...that's not very upbeat and it's only Thursday so no great weekend to look forward to yet. I'm just going to work on finishing the mask today. I should have the supplies I ordered tomorrow, so I get to start on the wedding mask then. Ooh, I know a small bit of relieving news. I got word that the emergency bridal veil that I made and shipped Express to Canada made it apparently unharmed. I can't tell you the stress shipping that put me under. I wanted so badly to make certain it arrived in time for her wedding. which I hope will be the stuff of dreams!

Floored

I received my karmic reward for complaining about being too busy. As the day wore on I began feeling more and more off. Then right after the children went down for their naps, which is generally my most productive minutes of the day, I was floored by a mysterious illness. I mean this sucker wiped me out for hours. Every time I stood up I felt horrible, so I just laid there. I could only tat with the speed of a tortoise, so I stopped that too. Then when my youngest woke up, she attached herself to me at first worried about Mommy, then she started running a mystery fever too. I woke this morning feeling relatively well, so I hope my punishment is over and I hope too that the young one wakes with her fever gone as well. See, now I have lost time to make up for as well. So to the universe, I apologize for the complaints, I'd like to say it will never happen again, but that is a lie. Instead I shall attempt to keep my mouth shut and my fingers from dancing the words.

In other news, the lovely Kelly of Tatfully Yours just returned from her needle tatting teaching engagement and returned with a few pictures. I had requested them after she asked to use my Cameo pattern as a beginners project.

It is awfully surreal to see folks I don't know working with a pattern I wrote. I was assured that many of the students actually 'got' the pattern and even finished their pieces. So congrats to all the new needle tatters and to Kelly for making it though her substitute teacher gig with apparently flying colors.I also find that I want to try and teach in my area, but I fear there would be little demand, also where remains a mystery. Perhaps I should just sit on the idea for a few more years until the kids are older or somebody local actually asks me.

I hope that my health remains intact and I can get some real work finished up today. There are still many pieces that need to be remade. I also ordered up some supplies for the wedding mask and a couple of random things caught my eye whilst shopping, so if time ever slows down, I'll have some new things to play with as well.

Hot and Tired

I am so very tired. I wish I could blame it all on the weather, which is ridiculous by the way, but alas it is more likely that I am tatting myself to death. Okay, perhaps that's a little overly dramatic, but I have been tatting like a crazy person for days now. Just as I packed up the large order and sent it out, I received another order with a custom piece in it. So, I had to stop with the remaking and start on that of course. Since I really want to get things make and listed, I'm working at the fastest possible speed and taking very few breaks. I assume that this pace with be the death of me, so toward the tail end of the evening I took a break.

At that calming time is when I got an email request for a wedding mask. Again, not normally a big deal, but at this point, it actually exhausted me to read the request. Sure, I'm glad to be this busy, very glad, I just didn't anticipate being this busy now. I thought if I was going to make sales, it was going to be a lot of masks and having made them already I would be in the clear. I need to really stop trying to tell the future and just roll with it.

Oh, I was apparently on the front page of etsy again...in the middle of the night of course. This was Sunday/Monday depending on your time zone. This one resulting in many hearts for the shop, but no sales. Now I just need to see if they can feature me when the sun is out in my neck of the woods....oh, and when I'm actually home would be lovely too. Or you know, they could just make me the featured seller. Could you imagine the amount of overworked complaining I would do then? Wow, that would be awful. I would have to stop blogging to save your sanity or me from getting collectively smacked by you. So off to it for the day.

Hello There

Well good morning Monday...unless of course you are reading this later in the day, in which case a simple good Monday for you. Well, my weekend was full to bursting and that is all due to one little thing that happened in the early afternoon on Friday. I was lacking any motivation to get custom pieces remade and I was trying to think of what to make next. I tossed around the idea of a circlet then stumbled upon a few of them tatted already, but before I could wonder anymore I received a large order.

How large, you ask? Well let's just say that this morning I still have to do the finishing on the pieces so that I can get them in the post later. The pieces are needed by the 9th and even if I drag my feet at this point they will get there in plenty of time. No, I am not going to drag my feet at this point. I was a tatting fool over the weekend though getting the pieces that needed making done and as soon as they are in the mail there are several pieces that now need remaking. The kicker is that none of them are small, easy to make ones. They are all ones that generally take me a full day or longer to make, so that will be basically my week long task.

I also attended the Atwater Fall Festival with the family over the weekend. It's just a small fair that they do every year one town over. The reason I bring this up is that we ran into someone we know running a handmade jewelry booth. Apparently she also has started an etsy shop, but has had no luck there. While passing on what I have learned during my tenure there I was also reminded why I do not bother to do fairs and such in this area. Really, there are so few people who get it here, it being the value of handmade goods. The Fall Festival is dripping with resellers and no one seems to want to pay more than a few bucks for anything. Our area is also at the top of unemployment and foreclosure lists, so while I'd like to be mad at them for this mentality, it is understandable. Then since I have no interest in paying booth fees and traveling to find buyers that can and will purchase handmade goods, I remain as ever solely an etsy seller.

So then, I'm off to get making for the week. If I manage to sneak in anything new and interesting between production modes, I'll be certain to let you know.

In Which I Am Annoyed By Blogger

Well, that's it...I'm done. I have officially tatted everything that needed tatting. Sure, I still have those custom pieces I keep going on about, but honestly there's no real rush on those. I had some grand plan about tatting up a whole rainbow of moths to get listed, but I only ended up with just this one. On a slightly related note, how annoying is this new blogger editor? Seriously, I can get used to a lot, but I hate not being able to re-size a photo with a simple drag it smaller motion. I have to go and edit the size in html. Yes, I am aware of how easy that is. You know what's not easy, adding a link to a picture. I can't figure that one out for the life of me. I guess I need to go look at a previous one in html and copy and paste it to make it work because you know what else, I don't speak html...at all.

I'd like to say that was the whole of my complaining about the new blogger interface, but I simply haven't tried to do much else yet and I'm still a bit boggled over the not being able to link pictures. What I do like is the full view preview. This is particularly helpful since I have the three column thing going on and it is narrower than the previous preview so this one is actually accurate. So I guess I'm spending the morning searching for linking help and perhaps I'll just take the day off from tatting entirely. Okay, that's about as likely as me learning to rock climb, water ski and sky dive over the weekend. In case you don't know me well enough, it's not likely at all. All it takes is a few idle moments and I'll be tatting, it's just what I do.

Oh, I almost forgot, one nice little bit from early yesterday. I received a message on etsy informing me that my ankle corsets were featured on a site called Skirt as their Daily Muse. This was apparently also sent out to their users as a daily email. It didn't bring in huge numbers of views to the shop, but some and it is always wonderful to be discovered and shared. I think that about covers everything, new blogger is annoying, I've nothing to tat and I was on Skirt.com...yep, that's all of it. Have a nice weekend all.

note: I figured out the link photo thing by the way...apparently I'm late to the new editor, but I still don't like it.