to market, to market...

Well it's time to squeeze in some blogging into the already overfilled seconds of my life. Henyr is eating mac -n- cheese (the "white" kind ie. safeway organic brand) for breakfast and Max is having his billionth sippy cup of watered down juice. Bob the builder is temporarily keeping their attention. So that's how I do all this in case you were wondering- How does she do it all?This is what my booth looks like on the corner of 8th and Park on saturdays after I've gotten everything out of the car. It is usually about 9:20am at this point.

This is how it looks when everything is finally set up a mere 40 to 50 minutes later.

This is the big breadwinner
board of aluminum earrings. Please note the signs to the left which say "Light Weight Aluminum Earrings-with Sterling Silver Earwires"

Apparently they are invisible to most humans.

All day long I hear the potential customer say, "Those look really heavy " with a disappointed and disapproving tone. I cheerfully say in my I -think- you -are -all -so- smart- and -clever-really tone

"But they're not! They're aluminum!" (What a miracle !)

And then the PC (potential customer) picks it up and says "oh you're right! It is so light! But I can't wear that in my ears. They are too sensitive.

And again I say cheerfully because I love everybody, especially when they give me their money in exchange for my goods)

" The earwires are sterling silver!"

The PC then says something like " Really? They are? ohhhh!"

And this conversation repeats itself all day long with the intermittent PC becoming an actual paying customer. Occasionally after this conversation they say

"oh look, it says it right here."

Yes indeed it does. But then I wouldn't have the pleasure of having this conversation with you.... and you and you and you.

This is Elizabeth ,my market comrad who has been selling at the market as long as we have and is set up across from us. I stare at her booth all day long. I am delighted that she has temporarily moved on from the incense business especially as the allergy season commences and her extra layer of incense filled air really exasperates the twitchy allergy nose. She is now making faux dessert candles.

And now for the mandatory cute pictures of the boys:

How did my big brother get up there?

I did it! He actually was saying that when I took this picture.

Well Bob the Builder has lost their attention and I can no longer ignore my children. Nick is at an auction today so I guess I better figure out what the heck Max is freaking out about. dodo's?

sprouting seeds and head wounds

The sunflower seeds have started to grow!



This is a new design Icall Sterling Silver Vining Spiral Oval or something like that. I decided to start taking the big chunky aluminum stuff down a notch and do some more delicate sterling silver wirework again. Didn't sell them yesterday but I did have a customer tell me they looked like a paper clip. Thanks. Of course Henry had said the same thing but coming from a 4 year old, it's cuter.




I just listed these too. Big Chunky Chain Light Weight Aluminum Earrings.

Well the weather men were off again but this time in my favor. No rain! hooray! It was 10 degrees warmer than last week which made a big difference in over all comfort level and sales.
The freakiest/saddest part of the day was when an old man in a wheelchair assumed (and rightly so) that there was wheelchair access on the end of the curb right in front of my booth. Sadly there was no dip and he went off the curb, causing him to fall over and smash his head on the ground. There was blood pouring out of a huge gash in his head which I did not see but heard detailed accounts of. Luckily the woman looking at my jewelry at that moment was a nurse. She was instantly on the scene applying pressure to the bloody giant head wound and more nurses spontaneously arrived and 911 was called by at least 2 people right away. This situation reaffirmed my belief that I am not meant to be a nurse. But I am grateful for all of you out there who have the calling and can handle the emergency bloody head wound situation with calm and dignity instead of wanting to puke and run away crying.
I thought it disturbing that it took about 10 minutes for the paramedics and fire department to get there when the fire station is 2 blocks away. It was also disturbing that they did not think it was part of their job or a good idea to wash down the giant pool of blood covering the street corner. Yuck.
I particularly enjoyed the idiot hippy dad who watched his son put his hand down in the blood and said- "look, it's the old man's blood."
Neat.

Well the event was not good for sales. But it was all over except for the bloody residue after about half an hour. The market personal did a minimal cleanup and life went on. Hopefully the man will be alright. I really hope so. He had no family or friends with him at the time and the nurse said he was a stroke victim who had no use of one side of his body.

But the seeds are sprouting...

Gardens, Goats and Hexes

Well apparently you can put a hex on yourself when you proclaim your success on your blog even though I thought I took all proper anti voodoo wood knocking precautions. As soon as I posted my last blog post all our Etsy sales dried up. We went 4 days without a sale. We broke the dry spell with the sale of one of my aluminum big wire earrings on friday night.
I went to the market yesterday. It was pretty darn cold and sales were barely adequate especially for the day before Mother's Day. I drank my whole thermos of coffee by 2 and ate every crumb of food I brought with me while trying to keep my toes from going numb.
Well the good thing about not having a lot of sales is that there isn't a lot of jewelry to be made and we can focus more on the other stuff in life that really is more fun and important anyway. Nick has been mowing like a madman. When you have 3.8 acres there is nothing sexier than your man mowing (except as Nome pointed out, your man on a tractor mowing.) But since we don't have a tractor our DR Mower will have to do. We now have our garden area under control so the boys and I took to weeding and adding some bags of real good soil to our hard clay and infertile dirt we call a garden. We planted the mandatory bed of pumpkins and then some peas and beans. Today we planted some basil seeds.



Henry , the forlorn gardener.

Max, the thoughtful gardener.

We now have new squaters on our land too! Our wonderful hardworking neighbors Chris and Shelley ran out of pasture land for their flock of 4 goats and Mama Lama the guardian lama .So on friday Chris took his tractor with the mower attachment to our place and carved out a huge area for them to fence. They fenced it all in one day and now these guys are here in our back 40 (or rather 4) eating up all the nastiness that we can't get under control.


Hey good lookin'.



Max enjoys his goat friend.



I call him sweet ears.

And of course I couldn't post without adding one new pair of earrings. These are my newest giant crazy big aluminum earrings. I sold a pair last week to a young funky hip girl who liked having something dangling inside the middle of a big hoop on her ears. Hopefully others will have the same desire.

They are called Swinging Interior Spiral Light Aluminum Earrings.

Etch A Puke

I haven't blogged much because nothing all that exciting or interesting has been happening. Life is good and going well and that's just too boring to share. The market has been overwhelmingly lucrative and I am pleased as punch. A sweet red juicy sugar laden punch.
The new earring design that I blogged about in my last post have been selling really
well on Etsy. I seem to have found an appreciative audience for my crazy aluminum scheme. The dragonfly wirework earrings are doing quite well too. Who knew people are crazy for dragonflies? I DID!
Well here's something exciting that just happened as I sat here blogging. My disgusting fat annoying cat is throwing up all over the Etch A Sketch on our couch. The Etch A Sketch caught practically all of it. Hooray! One extra layer of filthy nastiness that won't reach my already filthy nasty couch. I tell you, life is just too good these days. Which of course is a scary statement to make out loud because then you have to knock on wood or do some other sort of anti bad luck voodoo dance before the good luck disappears and something horrible happens.
I guess I better go clean up that mess. Or maybe I'll just leave it for Nick to discover when he thinks he can sit down and relax on the couch.
Oh, the picture above is of our Sterling Silver Stamped Lizard Earrings. I carved the die for that many years ago before we had kids and I had time for reverse carving in steel. We just listed it today for the first time on Etsy.
Uggg- I hear the sounds of cat puking going on in the other room. Somehow I don't think there are any other lucky toys to catch the puke on this time. I guess the good luck is over.