Still Here

Err, oops, I fell off the internet, blogging-wise, again. 

At the end of October Robin left the nest to go to work for Werner, and hasn’t been seen since. Ron resigned from Roehl, so everything that was in his truck came home, and much of it landed in the dining room. And then cleaning up the living room and kitchen for Thanksgiving resulted in more stuff in the dining room. Ron’s gone to work for Schneider, which got some stuff out of the dining room, but it’s still a mess, and pretty much unusable. Sigh. 

We did the Palatine High School craft fair at the beginning of December, and it was a complete fail, sales-wise. The weather also sucked. This Saturday was the Fremd High School craft fair. It was much much bigger than PHS’s, and much better attendance. I think the proportion of nice stuff was higher, too. Unfortunately, we didn’t do very well-sales wise. One of the sales was a set of two kosode to an absolutely adorable little boy. I wanted to hug and squeeze him and love him and call him George, but settled for making him happy as all the profit I wanted. :)  And he had really good taste and picked out the red kosode with the pandas.

I suspect I could have sold my “Happy Narwhalidays” book, except that the interior is dark green and red pages, so it needs a silver, gold, or other light-colored pen to write in it. I should pick one up and sell them together. 

We have some ideas for things that will probably sell better, though, if I keep trying craft fairs. Ron pointed out that things that sell well at craft fairs are probably going to sell well on Etsy, too, so I should proceed with them. I was going to try to make a couple things yesterday afternoon, for the craft fair thing at Xap’s office tomorrow, but I got sidetracked.

While rooting though bins in the storage locker for cotton duck, I also  shopped the stash for lightweight cotton for doll clothes, and upholstery fabric (originally bought for satchels) for slipcovers for the bolsters on the couch. When we got home we used the duck to make a woodcarving apron for Ron. Then I made the slipcovers for the bolsters since I wasn’t getting to doing Otter-ish things. More natter about those on the personal blog.

While we were at the storage locker I also found the very short gridwall hooks that I was pretty sure we had. They were already in an ammo can and pretty much filled it, so when I got home I emptied another ammo can, and transferred slightly longer hooks and cable ties (after making some quick & dirty fabric bags for the cable ties) to it, as the plastic bin they were in had broken on Saturday. Ammo cans may be heavier and opaque, but they have handles, latch securely, and are almost indestructible. I also have magnetic labels for them . . . somewhere Otter’s stuff.

On the doll clothes front I’ve made a prototype Korean-style outfit, and determined that it needed only minor tweaks. I’ve got several more cut out and started assembly work on them. Part of the Korean outfit is an underdress, that is, essentially, a simple sundress. So I’ve got several of those cut out and underway in almost-solids, too. 

Sticking with “ethnic” doll clothing, I made a prototype Afghan nomad dress, aka a doll-sized version of my Very Loud Dress. The prototype fits my doll, but needs modification to reduce the neckline opening, and to extend the center back opening to make it easier to get on and off. The modification leads to an interesting assembly challenge that I’ve pondered and think I’ve decided how to address, but I haven’t cut another one out yet. 

On the more general-public-friendly merchandise front, I need to make some more simple little blank notebooks. I’m also thinking of making some with fabric covers. If that works out, I may suck it up and . . . sigh . . . make some with sports-team fabrics. At the two craft shows I saw vendors with photo album/scrapbooks with team fabric padded covers, which is partly where I got the idea. But making them with blank or notebook interiors will make them more “mine” - I don’t want to do exactly what other people are doing.