where a light box will get you...

so, as previously mentioned, i braved the critiques section of the etsy forums, and though i mentioned that i knew my photos needed work, they were the main focus of the criticism. which, i suppose is nice, but really, i would have rather have heard "well those aren't selling because they're crap." if it were true, that is. but going along with the community wisdom, and my own knowledge, i already had a tab opened to a how to for a quick cheap and dirty light box.

i improvised, of course, as i didn't have tissue paper. i never have tissue paper, and when i've been able to send orders to people wrapped in tissue paper, it's because it was in an order i got. there we go folks, total transparency there. if i've sent something in tissue, it's re-used. i never order anything like goat poop wrapped in tissue paper, so it's clean. it may have even wrapped the yarn that i made your special little something from. so parchment paper it was. i had a leftover bit from an old row that i was damn sure would be good for something one day. and it was.

enter the ikea lamps, with the marvellously flexible necks (they remind me of aluminum flamingos for some reason) and the nice eco-friendly bulbs. i don't know that the eco bulbs put out the kind of light i like, but it's what we have right now. i like to make myself feel better by promising myself that i'll get one of those aluminum collar and single bulb work lights at the hardware store one of these days, but there's much more pressing stuff on the list.

so i re-took photos for things that i thought could have been shown in a better light. here's some before/after makeover style photo action.

for an apples to apples type comparison, i've tried to take the previous main photo of each of the items and compare it to the new main photo for each.

with a bang, bangles before:


after:



i'll be honest, i'm torn on a lot of these. i like seeing stuff on models, so i like the bracelet on wrist "action shot." but there's a lot of that on etsy that i squirm when i see. specifically, hand things, as lots of us artisans don't have pretty hands. my hands personally are bashed up, scarred and often swollen. i don't think the angle on my hand in that first picture was flattering at all and the lighting shows off my new pacific northwest pallor. granted the model for the new photo is a little colorful, and i'm sure plenty of people given the opportunity to voice their opinions might say it's distracting; but that's only if i open myself up to further critique. otherwise, they'll say it safely in front of their computer screens and i'll never hear it. whether it's a good thing or bad thing, i can't say for sure. i think the light looks better in the new one, and though the colors are well represented in the old photo, they're still good in the new one. another part of the criticism that i got for some of my images was that they look too wintry, and i'm guessing it's the cool light and dark stuff in the pictures (which i like, but not everyone seems to) that is making people think of that.


carbonite before:

after:

damn. i might like a lot about the old one better. i love the canteen/thermos cup in the middle. but the new picture does make them look more grey- which they are. they're not black. in the old picture, the bracelets kind of melt into the dark background, having the white behind them, i think helps them pop. which, for heaven's sake, the pictures have to pop. the wire is a sculpture i did in a college design class forever ago.


emerald city bangles before:

and after:
in my mind, these turned out the "best". that's the main shot right there, then i shot each of the bangles individually on the gourd. i love how refined the bracelets look and how organic and funky the dry gourd looks. these shots were the ones i clicked through several times, quite pleased with myself. there's something kind of elegant about them, but maybe i'm just full of myself. but looking at that main shot again, i'm wondering if it's still just a little too dark? how obsessed can one actually get over this thing?

another, shot number five in my shop:

it was hard to make that one square, and i don't know how happy i am with the cropping. however, it was nowhere near as difficult to shoot and edit as this last piece.

eye carry, before:



after:

the before shot is another one of my windowsill shots, and it was working for a little bit, but the light was just too erratic. i got spoiled on that southern california light.
this color orange is hard hard hard to photograph correctly, and the colors are still off. the orange should actually kind of be a canteloupe color. sort of. the purple is kind of close, but i don't love how warm the white in the background is.

as a whole, the shots still need work. as before, how obsessed, actually, can one get with taking pictures of this stuff? i am not a photographer, though i've wished to be in the past. there was a time when my passion for it far outstripped my talent, but honestly, the really good pictures i've taken have been few and far between. it's frustrating, because i know these things i make are beautiful in person and unless i can get the light, the cropping, the setting, etc, all just right, i don't have much luck in portraying them correctly.

*but as the trip to the farmer's market this morning also included a trip to the library, i'd rather look at those books, and worry about pictures later.*

venting. (to the whiners) [shortened considerably from its original concept.]

i had a more vitriolic post in mind when i was thinking of this entry. i was frustrated at a culmination of moments- and a specific type of frustrated too.
i've been party to many people who do things like what i do expressing dismay over a lack of progress, a lack of sales, etc, and asking the community- what's wrong with me? should i quit? i have only x number of progress points. and invariably, they've been at it less time than i and have made more, in various ways of looking at it, progress points.
note, i'm not talking about some rewards system, literal progress points, i'm just substituting that for number of sales, amount of income, etc, steps in the path of progress/success, however that individual defines such a goal for their own efforts. i'm not talking about stats, like in some rpg. (i think i could deal with this etsy experience if i viewed it more as a game part of me engages in, like a role playing game. STATS!)
[yelling "stats" is a shoutout to my husband, who nevertheless never reads this blog. that's okay, he has to live with me.]

anyway, to sum it all up it's discouraging. i am a competitive person, and so when i see the person who's publicly expressing their perceptions about their progress or lack thereof has more stats than i do, i get annoyed. i am trying to convince myself that i am annoyed because the person seems to be whining in a public forum, not that the person has more stats than me.
i think that the latter is a rather juvenile reaction, and the no whining thing is a bias of mine that makes the public a nicer place to be. but i'm being a bit judg-y and i try to be much more live and let live. in public anyhow. but the critic in my head still smokes cigarettes, and she still flicks the ashes from them rather sharply sometimes.
so what it amounts to, is that regardless of personal preference towards no whining, is that i do it anyway, on my blog, and that while i dislike it, i'll defend someone elses right to do it? eh, okay, not quite. but i will try to chill about it because everyone else's ideas about progress are different than mine, as are what feels like everyone else's production scale, budget, etc.
i think some of those etsy people out there have extra hours in their day. i'm suspecting that reality is just a little biased. (jokes! pointless accusations and jokes!)

and besides
i'd rather not dwell on that because i need more hours in my day. and because there's a lot to do.
and because
i had a Very Good Idea that i'd rather wallow in, instead.
a very very good one indeed.
who doesn't want a cape?
a goddess cape.
stay tuned. details at 11. or whenever.

friday

nothing like a return to other people's schedule and expectations to make one welcome friday.

it's so arbitrary and it happens every week, yet i can't help but mildly celebrate its arrival/existence. a few minutes early to work this morning (quite a short drive), i got to enjoy a whole song of regina spektor's, a pretty melodic and echoing piece that suited this morning's bright sky quite well. things are greening. and i'd already had coffee, breakfast, made a listing on etsy. the eye one
which i adore, specifically due to the adaptation of the embroidery stitch to needlefelting. i love a lot of embroidery motifs, but at this point, i am not an embroiderer. there is a certain appreciation for color, texture, fiber qualities that exists within embroidery, and so i'm interested in taking these old techniques and needlefelting them. well that's an ambitious statement, as this pouch itself is one of the first in the projects that do this.
there's a camel-colored felted bag that's accented with a warm blue and nice dark red that's just gorgeous- it's upcoming. i'm having difficulty finding a suitable button- i'm looking for a nice plain wooden one, on a shank. tougher than it sounds. it's fabulous. should i end up ever with a nice camel colored coat, i'd like that motif to go somewhere upon it, in those colors too. but this pouch is a more tropical assortment of colors, and there's nothing wrong with that either.

an enjoyable evening planned, some baked polenta fries (gotten from 101 cookbooks, a food blog i've come to find really reliable and quality) and broccoli, perhaps a cartoon movie from studio ghibli- one of the few types of movies the three of us find agreeable. maybe some stove popped popcorn, maybe some roasted garbanzo beans. the fantastic feeling of leisure, which i'm sure i will muss up with finding something yarn-related to work on. oh well, if i can't pet a cat, i can at least mess with sheep hair. planning tomorrow's breakfast all the while.

whew...that week's over

and last week sure did feel like a busy one.
i did two events last week, and wanted to make sure i had plenty of lovelies available. i'm glad i got all that work done, it was a nice boost to my inventory, but it was a week of late night coffee brewings and plenty of new pattern devisement.
i got to work with some new yarn (that addictive noro niji!) and use up some old- i'm now officially out of crayon green wool. i can think of no other word to appropriately describe the color; if one were to pull the color marked "green" out of a crayon box, this is that color. the new bangles turned out beautifully (of course i'm biased) and i love the spring scarves i made. now just to find them all homes.
i was joking with someone at hip happening on saturday about how it's like having kittens or any other sweet and fuzzy thing that needs a home. it's less like selling than it is having a part of yourself go out into the world. i'm not able to separate myself at this point, i still hope that the things that i make will be used, enjoyed, appreciated. of course i also want them to be useful, enjoyable and durable- thus the ridiculous insistence upon details.
so yes,
there was art walk hillsboro and hip happening here in town.
i think the first event is more popular when it's just a little warmer, which is a bit of a cruel paradox for me. last year, i discovered how hard it is to sell scarves in the summer, in southern california. it just wasn't happening. so i improvised. this year will be the same; i'm really excited about some of the ideas that i'm incubating at the moment (coming attractions!). i had a great time hanging out at styledbaby, and i'm going to be sharing more about that shop soon. voodoo child found a home (after probably being my most-hearted item over at etsy) and i was glad to see it go. the woman who bought it was wearing a coat that had the same exact red- it just fit with her. i think also that she and her husband found it funny that i had a series of classic rock scarves. who doesn't like a theme?
hip happening was this weekend- and i think many of us primarily made sales to other vendors. i would have liked to have been in the upstairs area (the show was in a historic masonic lodge, so the upstairs/main floor had this amazing old theater/stage thing going on, with flats from a play currently in rehearsals onstage) as the atmosphere up there was awesome. beautiful hazy natural light pouring in big old windows. however, those of us in the basement bonded and i met some really cool people. (who i'll also be sharing later.)
but, well, what? the economy? it was slow.
but that wasn't the part that wore me out.
i need do develop some duck's back feathers and protective oily coating so the multitude of offhand comments doesn't start accumulating. shows are great because they allow you to have face to face time with the people who look at your work, and they allow you as a shopper to interface with the person who made the things you're looking at.
but, may i say, there's a lot of comments made. and it's not that they're all negative, not by any stretch. some are constructive, some are interesting. but there's a lot of them.
some of the behavior i see at shows simply wouldn't be allowed in a more formal store. and that's okay, in some cases, but i quite seriously saw a person looking up a booth's skirt- lifting the table cloth up to inspect the table underneath. which was not for sale.
other behaviors just add up. there is the classic gap girl frustration with those who re-merchandise the merchandise- leaving it as thrashed as any teen girl's bedroom. or dorm room. which is okay, i like to arrange and re-arrange, i feel like it keeps the table from looking stale. but it's those who do it after i've seen them eating from their hands. or those who put their super-tall starbux down on my table in the middle of my work, and then start digging. the coffee on the table did annoy me, perhaps if this continues, i'll get a tv dinner tray and request that drinks be placed there, instead.
and there are a lot of picky little comments- "this yarn, but a hat" (well, that yarn doesn't have much in the way of what we call memory, so it would make a pretty unsatisfactory hat, trust me i've made that mistake before), "this yarn, but that color" (i like it too, but that yarn doesn't come in that color), "this stuff is expensive" (i'm sorry but i don't like to use petroleum yarn and the costs for that stuff are subsidized by the future generations, symbolized by the cute kids you've got with you), and so on and so on. i don't answer back to everything, but my argumentative brain thinks the responses, and so i get a little tired.
i think with the closer interface, people feel more defensive about not purchasing. they feel the need to make justifications, and i can see that. there's a ton of verbal tipping, too, those that aren't going to make purchases but give compliments. i got a couple of "keep it up" encouragements from women i'd just had good conversations about yarn with, and that felt nice. i also didn't realize that i've absorbed all of this knowledge about yarn, which i suppose is cool. there's a lot more to learn though.

i've set a limit on what i'll spend on a table though. i read somewhere once, that it's good to keep in mind how much the rental fees are and how many sales it would take of different kinds to make it back. i've learned this weekend to estimate on the low side; perhaps i'll think of it the way i think of gambling- don't pay a table fee that you can't afford to lose, whether it's six bucks or sixty or six hundred.

lessons, all. and the time can't be considered wasted if i apply what i learned.

thoughts on progress, yarns

projects set calmly aside in annoyance:
1
by 9:30 this a.m.
but let's not go there.
let's go instead to the ball of louet's "clyde" sitting on my shelf, twinkling at me. got it in vancouver at stitchcraft- i agree with whomever said it's near impossible to go into a yarn shop without buying something, especially a new one or one you'll only be visiting once. (i have vacation sprees at fantastic fibers every time i go to alaska, and hit up nancy's knits pretty hardcore in houston- though julia took me into one that was also pretty cool in the heights.)

so. this stuff. boucle. wool with 5% silk, boucle. i approach this yarn with trepidation and limited expectations, as i've never felted a blend with silk in it before.
wait, scratch that, i've used plymouth boku, which gets really soft but is difficult in my experience to felt. let me google that for you: oh no. it's the same silk content. rats.
(oh and folks, let's quit comparing boku and nuro's kureyon. i have a girl-crush on noro, and my thoughts on another noro yarn follow shortly. to compare the two might lead someone to believe that noro is thin, which it's not. i spent some time last summer working with both at the same time and the boku is thinner. it doesn't have the sometimes psychotically wild color variations, though it has some very pleasing ones- i'm thinking fondly of a boku that reminded me of watermelon tourmaline (do yourself a favor and open that link in another tab- it's pretty there! nice work karengilbertdesigns!) okay. so boku's good, and i have an admitted bias towards noro kureyon (which is also all wool, no silk) but they're not interchangeable. nor really comparable- apples and oranges.

additionally, i have a poor track record with boucle yarns. i can't stand the lack of stitch definition (which i'm thinking will be good for felting) and dislike how difficult it makes counting. i'm too detail oriented - the devil on my shoulder says "too anal" for boucle. i made a small pouch with it and we'll see how it felts before moving forward.

so. lastly we come to the noro. it's the noro niji. fiber wise, it's almost the same as blossom, only with less nylon- which i would imagine contributes the core thread (correct me, spinners?) and the really flashy bits of color in blossom. niji is still 5% nylon, which does not excite me about yarn, but as established, i'm a sucker for noro. i snagged color 86, which to me means golds violet, a little green and a dark pink peeking at me on one skein beneath strands of the turquiose i'm crazy about right now. three skeins, and they're all saying something slightly different.
moving through the skeins- they're soft. they're fuzzy. they are all in agreement on the point "spring scarf."
i was attracted by an etsy forum thread on the topic the other day. and i see a piece that's flexible enough to wear day afternoon night. how some lifestyle-y/fashion-y spread would say something about wearing it with a "blouse and khakis or cute boot cut jeans to meet mom for brunch then transition to with a sweater while walking your golden retriever, then over your shoulders with a little cardigan over a dress over tights for a date with a hunk." or something.
but cyndi lauper's "time after time" on my internet radio and the yarn appears to be giving me meaningful looks. more as it comes.

the stats:
louet "clyde" labeled by stitchcraft as "green summer" color 06, lot 17642
chunky wt/bulky 5
95% wool, 5% silk
boucle 50 g/82 yds

noro niji, color 86 lot a
i'm not sure about weight. it's fluffy like a boucle, but not as dense as the louet clyde. comparable to noro's blossom
45% wool, 25% kid mohair, 25% silk, 5% nylon