"She's all, 'Etsy?' and I'm all, 'Etsy!' "

I made my first sale! Yes, it was to my father-in-law for his wife (don't tell her). And I don't have to pay shipping because he'll pick it up when they visit in a few weeks.

But it still counts, because it's money I didn't have in my pocket yesterday.

I spent some time browsing the Etsy forums and other pages, and ran across some of the marketing tips they offered for the "Buy Handmade" pledge campaign. I didn't do so well -- I bought only one item, earrings for my sister-in-law in Ireland.

But she adores them -- which is the main point -- I could afford them, and I supported Deryn's art habit as well. Coulda been worse.

This one's for The Husband

If you love author Terry Pratchett, you'll love this quiz. I'm Nanny Ogg. I'm slightly less likely to be Greebo, Lord Vetinari or Death.

It makes a lot more sense if you read Pratchett.

Good Christmas

This year was a lot more fun for The Husband and me too, because The Boy was old enough to tear into his presents himself. Here, he's pulling one of the characters from the movie "Cars" out of the gift bag, one of four he received. (Mommy is lazy. Plus, she buys good wrapping paper and uses it to make art.)

The Husband made Christmas dinner, with our personal cultural references: collard greens with kale, sweet potato latkes (with potato starch as a binder instead of egg, in deference to The Boy's allergy), homemade brown sugar applesauce, and pot roast. Oooh, you should've just been there for the smells...

I also made the long-distance calls to relatives and said hey. My mother's sister, who's the nexus of many genealogy contacts and provided many of the stories I've learned, remembered another tidbit that day. Apparently her favorite aunt ran what you might call a speakeasy or private club, out of her apartment! (The Husband makes an excellent point that the rebellious aunts are usually the favorites.)

My aunt remembers going to see Aunt D on Easter Sunday as a child, with my grandparents and mother. Apparently Easter was a busy time for Aunt D, so my grandfather went to her door and brought her out of the apartment to see the kids. (See, carefully avoiding any corrupting influences.) Aunt D oohed and ahhh'd over their dresses, spent some time chitchatting, and then went back inside. Aunt D never married, but I'm thinking that might've been because she couldn't be bothered. She lived to a ripe old age, though -- 87, the same year my grandfather died at age 95.

Etsy store -- stealth launch

Day after Christmas, and my Etsy store is UP!

Sometimes I have to sneak up on myself to get stuff done. If I pay attention too closely, I'll hear all the poisonous, "what, are you kidding?!" shrieks from my inner critic. But tonight and last night, I went in all ninja-warrior and completed my Etsy store front, complete with four items.

Now you have somewhere to spend the money that Great-aunt Eglantine sent you. Or somewhere to send your Cousin Ulf when he asks you what you want for your birthday.

Libby-Libby-Libby's on the label-label-label...

Anyone else remember that old Libby's vegetables jingle? No? Well, all right then.Ta-da! Clever packaging for the notebooks. That was a Husband-directed Photoshop lesson. Tonight I'm going to post pictures for the Etsy shop. I might even beat Mija to the punch by getting the shop up and running before the new year!

And one last thing: remember when I painted the plastic rosary for the commission, and it wasn't turning out the shade of copper I wanted? Huh huh huh... wasn't paying enough attention to the label. I'd meant to use Interference Violet (Fine)... but I'd actually painted with Interference Oxide Violet. Whoops. Well, now I know which one to use when I'm going for "old penny" versus "old old old penny."

Merry Christmas to all.

New Flickr pix

Finally got around to downloading some more pix into my Flickr. Go see.

Good thing I didn't find this earlier

"Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing."
-- Dali

Well, I guess if I'd found this quote earlier, we wouldn't have had the fascinating discussion that started here. Whew. Dodged a bullet.

Budding evil genius

For most of his life, The Boy has been in the same classrooms at day care as another little boy, L. The other kiddo is slightly shorter, built like a sack of potatoes, but L runs just as fast as The Boy. The Husband says someday L will be The Boy's enforcer (even though this is a kid who gives me a hug goodbye when the The Boy doesn't feel like being cuddly). M-E is a recently-reformed terror who now is usually more social than The Boy.

So in the spirit of Dooce, a nubbin of something The Boy said tonight:

THE HUSBAND: "Is L your friend?"

THE BOY: "No."

TH: "Is L your minion?"

TB: "Yeah."

BLOGGING QUEEN: [after an explosion of cackling] "Well, a minion is someone who does naughty things so you don't have to. Does L do naughty things so you don't have to?"

TB: "No."

TH: "Is M-E your minion?"

TB: "No! [emphatically correcting The Husband] M-E is my friend!"

TH: "Well, is L your friend?"

TB: "No."

TH: "Is L your minion?"

TB: "Yeah."

We tried, folks. My son considers another sweet-natured, playful 2-year-old to be a human toy to do with as he will. No idea where that came from.

UPDATE: The Boy and L are set for a play date next month. Don't worry, L's mom and I will be there to protect L.

Front and back

I finished the commissioned notebook today! I'll reassemble the front and back covers after the sealer sets. Materials: photos, photo transfers, plastic rosary, gaffer tape, decorative papers, cardstock, microbeads, twine.

The Husband showed me how to do the super-zoom, so I can show you the rosary icons a bit better. This one is at the end of the rosary beads running down the left side of the front cover:And the one at the center of the "sun" (I think it was supposed to be the Holy Family, but it was hard to see even before I painted it):And the crucifix to the right of St. Dominic.
It was a good day at the Castle... I had a nap, went out on a lunch date with The Husband, then came home and finished the commission while we watched our "Little Britain" DVD. (I need an oxygen tank next to me to watch the show because I can't catch my breath for laughing.)

And I even had a little time to do the beginnings of three ATCs for Artfest. I signed up for the big ATC book this year -- 27 ATCs, so each participant gets a book of 25 cards and the organizers Teesha and Tracy each get their own, too.

Two of the ones I made today won't work for the book, whose theme is, of course, Artfest, so I'll just keep those as trades. But one uses some of the leftover transfer paper from the commission, so I think it'll work as a base for a book ATC. I need to be thinking more of the "Forest Floor" theme they have working this year. I've been thinking for quite some time about the other piece we're encouraged to make. But I'll have to do that in between the ATCs, because those have to be in Nantucket by February 15th. Oh crap, now I know I have to be all over those, because I have to help plan a baby shower for February 9th and a dual birthday party for soon after the ATC deadline. Oy.

La commission

No, that's not a sweatband on the man's head, that's his tonsure. Remember Friar Tuck from Robin Hood? Same haircut.

To be more specific, the monk pictured is Saint Dominic. He's the focal point of this commissioned notebook I've almost finished. The client is going to give it to a good friend for Christmas, as a general memories book.

The gift recipient is from Managua, Nicaragua. From what I understand, she likes Catholic imagery for its aesthetics as well as its meaning. So I looked up some info on Managua and found its patron saint is Santo Domingo de Guzman (St. Dominic). Her family also has a vacation home in a tiny Texas border town that holds a prickly-pear cactus festival each year. And her husband raises reptiles. Three references to the recipient, all in that one bit of photo!

So I finally got to use this cool-as-hell white paper that has a lizard-skin pattern. (See, I'm not hoarding! I'm using the good stuff!) The gift recipient likes green, so I rubbed a bit of green acrylic into the grooves of the "lizard skin." I also chose a notebook with acid-free pages and reinforced the bottom edges of the front and back covers, since it's meant to last for a while.

I was just going to assemble straight photos of cactus around the saint. But then my eye fell on the cheap paper I had left over from LK Ludwig's class, the stuff we used for transfers. So I added cactus transfers to the regular photos for more depth.

These are the bits of plastic rosary I was talking about earlier, the ones I painted to look like copper. I think the one on the left turned out better than the one on the right. In real life, the one on the left looks more orangish-coppery, and it's easier to see the detail of the figure's face. (Sorry I couldn't zoom into it better.) I think, but I'm not sure, that the one I prefer was coated with an orange/black wash that tended more to the orange side. Guess I'll just have to keep noodling with it to find out.

I hope to be done with the whole commission tomorrow. And I have the day off, so maybe I can also catch a movie with The Husband, who's currently working from home.

The Grand Tour

It was oh-dark-thirty Saturday morning when we took off to see half of the grandparent contingent, which is why The Boy is wearing his footie pajamas. But he's adaptable, especially as long as he's got his Thomas the Tank Engine trains with him. (We got him excited for his first post-"lap infant" flight by telling him he was flying inside Jeremy the Jet Plane, one of Thomas' friends.)

We landed and arrived at Nana's without incident. Then off to lunch with Nana, then a looooong nap for The Boy, The Husband and me. The grandparents almost never cook, so we went out to an Argentinian restaurant that's just down the way from the place where we usually eat. Now I understand what all the fuss is about Argentina's beef. Damn good stuff; I'll recommend it to Ricë the carnivore. Afterwards we just generally hung out with Nana and Peepaw.
On Sunday, we went to lunch with my brother and sister-in-law, and the niecey-nieces. The kids are five and one, but they both look older than they are because they're tall for their respective ages. (This is what happens when your mother is 6 feet tall and your father is 6'4".) Sister-in-law and I chatted a little bit after lunch, but she had to take Niece Number Two home to rest up and recover from an ear infection. So Knucklehead -- I mean, "Brother" -- and Niece Number One went to Travel Town with us.Although NN1 can be a little distractible, she was great about sticking close to The Boy and encouraging him to run with her like a mad thing. "Cousin C! Cousin C! Come here! Cousin C! Look at this!"They discovered that jumping on the metal plates between trains was almost as good as jumping on a trampoline. The shorter shadow on the left is The Boy; the taller one is NN1.

It's moments like this that I get homesick for LaLaLand, even with the traffic and the state income tax and the obscenely high cost of living. I know, I probably wouldn't spend every free minute with my family. (How the hell would I get any art done?) But it makes me feel like our little three-person family unit lives in Alaska and everyone else lives (or is buried) in Key West.

Anyhoo, after Travel Town we went back to Nana's for a Hanukkah party with two of Peepaw's kids and their respective families. It was quite the crowd: the grandparents, us three, two of Peepaw's children, their respective spouses, and the four other grandkids (most of whom were under five years old). The Boy couldn't have any latkes, since they were the regular kind made with egg. But he was happy with the corned beef, goldfish crackers, and applesauce. Lots of yelling over the kids, but all of it friendly... only one incident where the kids had to be separated (the youngest kid nearly knocked over another to snatch away a drumstick and bang on a drum). It started about 5:30pm and was over by 7:45pm. And The Boy was bathed and in bed by 8:20pm.A quick stop off for lunch the next day, near Pinkberry. It's supposed to be the thing. I tried a little of it... just tasted like overly sweet soft-serve. I guess it's the 21st century Penguin's. (Remember that place? I think they're still in business.)

The Husband had a great idea for the flight home: go get a DVD suitable for The Boy and watch it on the plane. The Boy has yet to see a movie in a theater, but he's seen most of "Cars" at home. So we watched about 3/4 of the film, unpacked our sandwiches and ate dinner (I hate that airlines don't feed you anymore!) , then watched the rest. Poor Small Person was wiped out by the time we got home, but he slept well and was up and at 'em the next day.

And here's a last bit of LaLaLand to keep you sort of warm... birds of Paradise. We used to have those growing in our backyard. It was years before I found out they're considered exotic almost everywhere in the US except LaLaLand.

We have returned. You may now recommence pilgrimages to the Queen's court.

I got a couple nice pictures from our visit to Nana and Peepaw's, where they have sunshine. We have to import ours at this time of the year. I'll put them in a new post late tonight.

I'm also almost finished with the current commission (that I should've done ages ago). It's a custom notebook, this one with spiral rings and acid-free paper. (Go to my Flickr account to see the first commission, on which I used the same kind of notebook.) That's what I was working on this morning.

I'm finally getting a chance to use this plastic rosary, and I've painted it to look like it's copper. Part of it turned out almost exactly the way I wanted it to; it's the color of an old penny. (Thanks, Michael.) But another part was darker, like a pretty grimy penny. And the rosary beads look more like black pearls than copper beads. It still works, but I wish I could remember how much of each color I layered onto the plastic, so I can get the same color every time. I'd repaint it, but I'm afraid to layer on more paint and then quick-dry it with my heat gun. The rosary bits are small, and I'm sure I've already melted some of the detail work. So I'm officially Quitting While I'm Ahead on that portion of the project.

In other news, I made a few calls to distant relatives to try to find out more information about my family tree. I started these conversations early this year, because I was feeling like my brother and I were the Last Mohicans. Both my parents are dead, and nearly all my direct relations are back East. So I'm filling a little of the void this way.

My brother's mother-in-law has done most of the heavy lifting. She's quite the expert. She's extracted individual information from the US Census and other public records into several reference books for genealogical societies. When my first niece was born, she decided to research our side of the family so Number One Niece would know as much as possible about both her mother and father's families.

But I think I'll wait until after the new year to make any more calls. I called one cousin on my mom's side, and his mother is in hospice (might have passed away by now). Then I emailed one of my father's cousins, to ask if her 93-year-old father could remember something -- and it turns out he died on Thanksgiving. I recklessly made a third call to another paternal cousin, and broke my streak. She and her father, who's had a few strokes but is okay, are trying to jog his memory by talking to a third cousin.

More on the art later.

No flooding here

The Blogging Queen's retinue has not been forced to turn the royal river barge into a floating shelter.

Just wanted to let y'all know we haven't been flooded out by that storm you might've heard about on the news. All the overflowing rivers are way further out in the countryside, and they're rivers that tend to breach their banks later in the year anyhow. Today might help dry things out a bit, too: there are blue skies outside my window.

I'm melting... aaaaaaaaaaagh

Poor little bastard shoulda known better. This early in the game, rain beats snow here in Extra-Blue State.

On Thursday night, it snowed here, but got washed away overnight. Then it snowed Saturday, and stuck. Then Sunday, it snowed and kept snowing pretty much all day long. Which is fun when you're trying to run with a toddler, across a partially submerged parking lot, to get into a store to buy eggless cookies you should've bought the day before the party you were supposed to be at an hour ago.

I understand we got enough precip (that's weathercaster-speak for rain/snow) in the past few days to fill five clones of a popular local lake. Ended up leaving the day job early today, because The Husband was stuck in traffic, and I was more likely to be able to pick up The Boy on time.

We're dry now. Mostly. Squish squelch squish.

Crafty

I done learnt a few things about art for sale, after yesterday's holiday craft fair. In order of occurrence in the twisty little corners of my mind:

-- The more expensive items (the full-sized notebooks, as opposed to the palm-sized mini notebooks) sold first. I think that was true of this year's and last year's craft fair. Don't know if that's because people think bigger is better in general, or for this particular type of artwork.

-- I'd like to find something else smallish to alter. Maybe under a certain size, people doubt that something artistic can also be useful? (Other than iPods, that is.)

-- I need to update my Flickr account with my newer stuff.

-- I need business cards or Moo cards. And I need to decide what art I'll put on the cards.

For those of you who have Moo cards, aren't you afraid people will lose them in their purses/bags/pants pockets, and then not know what your contact info is?

This year's craft fair was kinda slow. I blame it on the fact that there was also a craft fair going on simultaneously at the outpatient treatment center of the research institution where I work. The treatment center is uphill -- not a long way, but you know lazy-ass Americans like me. "That's too steep. If I go to both craft fairs, then I have to walk uphill either to get back to my car or to go to the fair up the hill!"

No, I think I'd make the trip. Geez, I'm already there, and the money is burning a hole in my pocket.

Nevertheless, I did make a little cash, and some people didn't sell anything yesterday. The other vendor who was selling notebooks wasn't there this year, so if anyone was interested in a notebook they bought from me. And I pointed some people to my Flickr account so they could order something later. Here's hoping.

I also met a lovely woman named Mary, who's friends with another art friend Stacie (Stacie was one of the co-organizers of the craft fair, as well as a vendor). We got to talking after the fair, andMary said she has a real knack for convincing wholesalers to carry her jewelry. So I asked if I could tag along and see her in action, and she loved the idea.

My brother says I think I need a Ph.D in a subject before I try something new. But preparation + opportunity = "luck." I also learn well from other people's mistakes, which is why my brother's behind saw more spankings than mine did when we were kids.

Probably the best thing about not selling everything at the craft fair: I had said I hoped I'd have a few left over to start the dang Etsy shop. Ask, and ye shall receive, dahling. I'll get this done by the end of this week at the latest. Might not be as purty as everyone else's, but I'm learning once again that sometimes mostly-done is good enough.

Speaking of the in-laws, Nana and Peepaw came over to visit for most of Thanksgiving weekend. It's only our second "family" Thanksgiving, meaning one with relatives as our guests: mostly we've gone elsewhere, or been by ourselves. We had a good time, and no blood was shed. The Husband cooked: turkey tenderloins, collard greens with pancetta (mmmmmmmm...), stuffing, and cranberry sauce from the can (homemade is good too, but it doesn't wiggle enough to be as funny as the canned stuff).

The Boy went to town on the cranberry sauce. The next day, he even ate leftover turkey as long as it was topped with bits of cranberry sauce. And leftover chicken that wasn't breaded nuggets, if it had the beloved sauce bits. And morning oatmeal, with sauce. Good thing we ran out.

Nana and Peepaw have lots of prior experience with (his) grandchildren, so they have a grand old time running around with and reading to The Boy. He's Nana's only biological grandkid, but hopefully my sister-in-law S or I will remedy that soon. Peepaw works out every other day, so he's pretty flexible for over seventy, and Nana just hugs on The Boy and plays until her arthritis pins her to the floor. They've got the tag-team method of Toddler Wrangling down.

The Boy was in denial about Nana and Peepaw going home, so he wouldn't give them hugs when they were leaving. But he came to the door and starting crying when they got into their rental car without him. We cuddled him and reassured him he'd see them when we go to their house this weekend.

Nana also encouraged me to get off my tuchis and get those samples of my notebooks to my friend whose friend owns a local boutique. I told her I was working on it, and that it was too late for the holiday season per se. But Nana said quietly, "you don't know that." Well, we'll see what happens with that. It would be mightily awesome if the boutique peoples want my stuff.

EDIT: Sin of sins! I forgot the sweet potato latkes we had for Thanksgiving! Jaysus, what the heck is wrong with me?! Melt-into-a-blob-o'-happiness good, and the potato starch The Husband uses replaces the usual eggs required for regular latkes. Drool...