Mad Woman Makes Masks

I am so ridiculously sore this morning. Even my typing appears to be affected by the aches. You see, I did all my floors yesterday. That means I vacuumed and then I busted out with the Bissell and did a great majority of our carpets and the tile floors. The Bissell has a trigger you squeeze to release the cleaning liquid and apparently using it for hours on end has given my claw hand this morning. Not to mention the sore back and shoulders. Oh and do you know what two of my cats did just as I was finally sitting down after everything was clean and drying? They yakked on the carpet of course and in three different place for good measure. That's love...pure love.

If you constantly troll the tatting on etsy like I've done since the beginning, you might have a ulcer from the discoveries. No, I kid, most of it is quite nice and in no way upsetting to me. Just recently I blathered on cryptically about an issue with someone and despite their promises, they continue to step on my toes. Yes, this is me cryptically complaining again. and on top of that there is also yet another new seller busting out with the tatted masks. Don't get me wrong, I know I have no control over what people choose to sell and the fact that they try the same product lines as me is likely that they see I am successful and they want to copy my shop model. Just because I understand however doesn't mean I can't be miffed about it and I do get worried that customers could mistake their work for my own.

Since I can't be bothered to get even and being mean gives me an upset stomach, I've opted to saturate my shop with so many masks that customers can easily tell who the original creator is without me getting all snippy. I re listed one as a custom yesterday in burgundy and I'm working on a white one I used to have listed today. I have some great modeled pictures of that one, but I want to have it made up so I can get extra photos done. I also have plans to make my Cheshire cat mask in just black maybe with green eyes. That one is a tough one though with the tatting both inside and outside the wires, so I likely won't get to it for a while. With Halloween fast approaching it actually makes sense to stock up on the masks, so I'm not just being bitter. I of course have no idea what will actually get done with the house anniversary party tomorrow and the inevitable cleanup that with follow, but the plan is in place.

Dainty Daisy

How did I do all this last year? I am running on empty over here trying to get all the things done in a day that need doing and three days out I already miss my summer vacation. The morning is spent with the kids doing school, once that's done it's laundry, dishes, housework then somehow it's already lunch time. Then I've only got the afternoon left to write up the Wunderkammer, work on orders, tat and there's still dinner to worry about and more cleaning, oh and lest we forget all the random errands and whatnot that intrude on my time. Just three days of this and I am spent. I suppose I'll get back into the rhythm of it and I'll be fine, but right now I'm a mess.

So given all that whining up there you might be shocked to learn that I did in fact get something new done and listed. I'm calling it the dainty daisy. It's the smaller of the two daisy motifs that I use in all those Grand Daisy pieces. This time I added smaller crystals and used smaller thread and made up three of them for a necklace and earring set. I felt they needed something a little more to hang them from than just a picot so I also strung some sterling silver beads and another crystal onto a pin to hang the daisy from. I think it makes the piece look a bit more finished and well, fancy.

Don't expect anything interesting tomorrow though as I am scheduled to do the floors today. By that I mean that I am vacuuming, carpet cleaning and scrubbing all the tile as well. The children will be off while I accomplish this feat and I am crossing my fingers that the cats have all their fur balls out of their systems and keep any that remain in until after Saturdays house anniversary party. We've been calling it a house warming, but anniversary is more appropriate. In fact yesterday marked one year since we became home owners. I am never doing that again...we're living here until the end of time barring sudden millionaire status of course. While I have no real desire for this day to begin I haven't the power to stop it, so I'm off to it then. Wish me sanity.

I Saw That Coming

The day was a slow crawl of making and teaching. No major sales, no interesting anecdotes,nothing. I was hard at work getting the days school taken care of, cleaning again and getting those ankle corsets made up. I had little time for anything else until the children napped.

This is the point in the day where all those sales from the day before left me starved for attention, a condition commonly suffered by Leos. So I went on a google trip of discovery. Well first I checked out and tweeted all the recent treasury collections from etsy that I was included in. There are quite a few as Halloween is already in peoples minds and my fancy mask was pretty popular. Then I went a-googling. What's funny is when I did a text search all I found was the same old links that I am familiar with, my shop, blogs and a few old features from more popular places. When I did an image search however, I found a treasure trove.

What I discovered as I scrolled down the page were a bunch of little collages or collections of my listing images that I never put together. Clicking on them revealed several articles including my work from exotic locals. Well, exotic to me anyway a few in Russian, Lithuanian, Romanian, Portuguese and Spanish. I think there were more as well, but you get the point. They're all a little dated, but I never knew they existed. I also ran across some tatting blogs with pieces made from my free patterns and even a few just talking about something I had written, which was a little surreal to say the least. I am disappointed in my google alerts for not finding an alerting me to all this goodness. Perhaps some settings need tweaking. It is nice to know that I did make wave however small, a few months ago...yep, that sates the ego for a spell, but just a spell.

I fear today will be more making as I did not finish the ankle corsets and I have at least two necklace that need remaking. I was thinking about making up some simple daisies as earrings and a pendant to list later. I can knock out fairly quickly and I'll keep the shop fresh. Speaking of fresh though, if you haven't stopped by etsy lately, they're widening the shop pages in a slow roll out, so you can head over and see if you can see it yet. Let me know what you think of my announcement section and new tag line above the banner. I made some adjustments to fit the look better, but not everyone can see it that way yet.

Tuesday Has A Hard Act To Follow

I know I said I would get that bracelet listed yesterday, but I didn't. I never even got the camera out to try better pictures. Well, I did take a picture of what turned out to be a huge katydid on the side of the house, but that is really neither here nor there.

I started the day remaking the small things I sold over the weekend, the pity birthday sales. Not that I am not grateful for each and every one, but I was honestly a little sad that an incentive like a free gift only netted a few tiny sales. In fact it contributed to the overall low mood during the weekend. That was all undone last night as the sales began pouring in for no apparent reason. Even this morning as I look over the analytics data I can see nothing out of the ordinary. There was no spike in traffic from any source, it just seems that more of the people visiting had just gotten paid or something. What else was so nice about Monday's sales, even though I had to cancel a large one this morning because the customer misread the listing and thought I was selling the shoes and that would normally be devastating, I still feel fine. So, go Monday, you rock.

Today will be spent making a pair of sold ankle corsets and since they generally take two days and I started them late yesterday, that is all I will be doing. Tomorrow will be spent remaking the necklaces and bracelets that sold and after so much new creation lately, it's nice to get into production mode for a spell. It also coincides nicely with the home school jump start I'm up to. After several failed attempts to get into the newly redesigned online school, we were off like a rocket yesterday. At two weeks until the official start to school. I'm hoping we can earn ourselves a nice safety bumper against those off days where nothing is bound to get done.

I'm also working with my thread dying genius to match a color for a special wedding party. The kicker, the color is the same as my hair. No, not the purple part, the blue and yes, that is the color they are trying for...well it's not just my hair that is this color, but it is the hair dye shade that they want. I actually ordered some commercial thread to see if it would match and while it's close, I think we'll keep trying to dye it. Oh and a special thank you to Barbara Foster at Handy Hands for superb customer service. Along with the blue thread I had ordered some other colors to try and was sent one wrong ball. I used the simple order contact form and was quickly responded to and offered the correct color. I have always recommended their site to new tatters and will continue to do so. So for all your tatting needs that's hhtatting.com.

Another Grand Daisy Choker

Well, it's Monday. I wish I could say that I had the best birthday ever yesterday, but it wasn't. Oh, there were no major disasters, but I suppose the mental weight of financial issues, getting the house ready for guests and aging one more year without any notable achievements weighed heavily on me. It also did not help that my oldest was in a particularly self involved mood and wanted to do nothing. The day picked up as it went along, but I guess I add another to the crap pile and move on.

What I do have to show you though is a most pleasant new design. The new ankle corset design was expanded a bit to make it longer and the chain portions in the front were adjusted a smidge to lay better on the neck, but otherwise this is just an ankle corset around my neck and I think it looks great. I am also unnaturally in love with that black and white image there. Sometimes I just can't believe how lucky I can get with a picture taken in my dining room with the camera remote in hand. Man, I love that picture...anyway. The necklace was listed on Friday I think.

I didn't do much but clean on Saturday hoping to avoid it on my birthday...I didn't. I did get something made up on Sunday though it's not really new. I had ordered the wrong size crystals at one point. They are a little too large for my mask and I hadn't found a proper usage for them. I thought adding them to the extra picots in the daisy design might be fun so I made the cuff bracelet complete with crystals. This one isn't listed yet and I wish could really capture the shine in pictures, but that is my weak point. I might try a couple of outside shots to see if I can get a little gleam later, but don't count on it.

I've got much more to clean and put together this week along with getting a head start on the home schooling. It's going to take some time to adjust back to that as I had gotten used to extra tatting time over the summer and that will be gone at least until the dust settles and we get back into a comfy routine. Off to it then and may my next trip round the Sun end on a higher note.