Summer Slump Continues

Wow, its been a really long time since I posted - over whole month ago.

Summer slump has continued in force. We got three more snakes, one of which is Xap's. Lots more reptilian rumination over on my personal blog. MuseCon happened, was busy. Cut out some more doll clothes at and since MuseCon, and then some more over the weekend (after buying even more fabric) since they're amenable to working on in the heat. Misplaced a small cutting mat and both rulers I use for fabric, but was able to use a larger cutting mat and one of the safety rulers I usually use for leather instead. Got a new scale for snakes and packages. Got a new small mat and scale, and then the missing ones re-appeared. As they do.

This year for MuseCon we again shifted Max, The Grinch, and one of the Things into the storage locker, and packed all our stuff into the other Thing. This year we were smart and also put the contents of that Thing into the locker, instead of the house. Sunday we took the beverage cooler, bus tubs, and other stuff that was used for MuseCon back into the locker, and retrieved Otter Necessities stuff for Count-I-Con.

Count-I-Con is this weekend. Saturday afternoon (after doing errands and some non-necessary fabric shopping in the morning) I cut, marked, and punched the ends of amphora bottle hangers and cut and marked another batch of skirt hikes, all of which Ron then punched the holes in. Due to a mis-estimation, I ended up making about 66 amphora hangers, for 48 amphora. And Ron didn't point out that we still had some leftovers from the last batch, so I didn't even need 48. Oh well, they keep. The total for skirt hikes was 21 (12 large, 9 small). Sunday afternoon Ron assembled all those skirt hikes and bottle hangers. 

The bottle hangers are for home/Etsy, but I'll probably throw them in a bin to take to Count-I-Con - I they're likely to sell well there, along with amphora and tails. Skirt hike sales via Etsy have tapered off a bit, but I expect another surge next spring when the Ren Fair season kicks off again, and maybe with the Michigan fair and/or the fall/winter fairs in the SW.

While Ron was working on hangers and hikes, I attacked the 18 tails I had to sew swivels onto. Monday or so I remarked to Ron that it was too late to order tails for Count-I-Con, we'd have to do with what we had. Wednesday night/Thursday morning a little voice inside my head started poking me - didn't I order some, including ones over-dyed red, from New Place?  Was that before or after ACen?  I don't remember putting out red tails or selling any at ACen.  Thursday morning I looked at the e-mail receipt - I ordered after ACen (and my last blog post). So we have a reasonable supply of tails.  And I ordered Stupid Amounts of swivels earlier this year, so we're good there. 

I didn't quite mean to sew swivels on all the tails Sunday, but I wanted to get a good bunch done, and then do a couple/few each evening. So I got a dozen done. Ron was still working, so I did a couple more. And at that point, only 4 left to do was not worth leaving. So I finished them all. I think that's the most I've done in one day. And with lots of beagle help - every time I popped the lid on one of the bins I was taking from/putting in, I had Tommy and Gimli's attention. They were reasonably good - Tommy only tried to take one from me, and backed off when I scolded. But I don't and won't trust them farther than I can drop-kick a heffalump.

Setup for Count-I-Con, which is a comic-con type event, is Friday and Saturday morning, with open hours noon to six pm. Saturday and Sunday. The con's being held at the Lake County Fairgrounds, in Grayslake, so we can sleep at home. Yay. And we don't have to board the dogs. Double-yay. 

The dining/work room is still a disaster. I'm not even pretending that I'll get around to straightening it up again until the summer heat breaks (which it seems to have done, at least temporarily, but I'm not foolish enough to think that cooler weather is really here yet).