- Added some Featured Products to coincide with the school year (including samplers and a constellation in honor of my friend Sirona who teaches science for gifted kids and knows sooo much about planets and stuff!)
- ALL the shades of Persian yarn that I currently have in stock. There are over 300 shades on my website, and about another 50 that are out of stock (i.e., I didn't re-order after I closed up shop so as not to overstock the storage unit and its budget), so if anyone is looking to match a color of yarn or add to what they already have they can do so via my website. Or call me and I'll see about getting it in for you.
- A good quantity of DMC thread, that necessity for cross-stitching, is also on-line. I've inventoried the second third of DMC threads in the storage unit and the list is quietly sitting there, waiting for me to run out of things to do that are more exciting than coming up with creative ways to say, "bright green with some yellow shades." Some call it procrastinating, I call it creativity.
- All of the Teenie Tweenie designs by The Sweetheart Tree are now on-line! There's a bunch of them, and as I added the scissor fob Teenie Tweenies I could just feel my head hitting the desk *headdesk* when I thought "What a great stitch-along these little scissor fobs could have been!" They are great little projects, and for you non-stitchers out there, these are tiny stitched pieces that have a front and a back. You stitch both the front and the back, sew them together, add some cording, and voila - instant thingie to hold onto your scissors! You'll never lose your scissors again (unless the cat gets frisky and decides that your beautiful, hand-stitched scissor fob is just the right shmoo to attack and it must be done at all costs). The best part about stitching these is that they are designed to use scraps of fabric (mostly the small counts, like linen). Think "de-stashing exercise."
- All of the reproduction samplers currently in stock designed by Handwork Samplers. I had carried her designs as an auto customer for several years, until the cost became too prohibitive and the sales were not what my "market research" indicated. I came to realize after a while that they seem to be more a culturally Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic form of needlework. On the other hand, the stitchers who did enjoy stitching this type of needlework are totally enraptured by this form. And it was always nice to take out the folder full of samplers and show customers how so many of these large pieces were stitched by young girls at the age of 8 and 9 and 10. By firelight and candlelight. About 250 years ago. It still amazes me.
- FABRIC! FINALLY some fabric (besides Aida 11 count) is on-line. I had stressed and pondered how to show the colors and changes of the hand-dyed fabrics which I knew I would have to photograph, and I finally realized that I could include a skein of DMC white in the picture, to give a stitcher a frame of reference. Every stitcher knows what DMC white looks like, so no matter how different your monitor shows from the picture I've taken, you can use the skein of white as your touchstone. Pretty clever, eh? I also came to realize that one of the hand-dyed fabric companies, Picture this Plus, already had a website that showed their lovely fabrics on-line, so they had already done the hard part of the photography. Yay! So while I still have a list of R&R Reproduction fabrics to download from my camera, I've been able to enter all of the fabrics by Picture this Plus and some of the Jobelan fabrics currently in stock. Which also involved measuring each piece on the front porch table when the weather wasn't rainy (like today) or too incredibly hot (it was anyway) or the sun wasn't shining too directly on the fabric, thus washing out any picture taking I attempted to do. So if you go to the "Fabric" section of the Cross Stitch pages, you'll see the different sizes of pieces I have, such as 8 x 13 or 17 x 38 and their price.
And the temp orders are coming in hot and heavy (thank goodness!). I had the opportunity to spend time on a mock jury for a case, where the lawyers were trying out their arguments with some strangers to see how their case would stand up in court. It was really, really fun and I had a chance to use my brain, something I really love doing.
Speaking of brain, I really need to get working now on my third of three talks for DragonCon. I was asked a couple of years ago to present a talk on the Tolkien Track about Frodo, the Reluctant Hero, and this year I'm serving on a panel of 3 talking about Music in Middle Earth, and I'm also presenting a talk on Sam as the Companion. My tendency is to read everything I can that I think pertains to the subject (since I'm doing this in tandem with my volunteer work with Mythic Journeys), and when a phrase or an idea just suddenly hits me, I write the talk at a frantic pace. This rainy day is definitely lending itself to a reading and writing day, so I'll end this blog entry now and wish you all a great weekend!