Rambling Thoughts

It has been a pretty long time since I have made something to sell. 

Not even sure where to begin again. 

Do I try the market on Ebay, Etsy?

Join an on line market?

Submit something to Prims or another magazine?

Do I contact my old customer base of emails? Yes

It is a daunting market and truly wonder whether it is worth starting all over again.

Plus I still will sometimes have time to do this and other times no time at all. 

Thus can I keep myself in view and in mind of potential buyers?

Do I focus on one medium? No I can't do this as I love variety and none of the mediums I work with are more interesting to me then others. I love making dolls as much as I love rug hooking.  

I have thought about just making things for myself, family and friends.

I do love to make and create art. Love playing with new mediums and growing in the arts. 

I do love to share what I create with others and it also keeps me motivated to create.

Having said all of this I am about finished with two Witches Boots. Hope to assemble them today. I have been writing the pattern for one of these boots. Not sure where I will try to sell these. 

Maybe on my own website or my blog. 

Eggless Eggnog Recipe

Around this time I start missing eggnog in my coffee.

The below recipe helps me to get by until eggnog hits the shelves again in the fall.

1/3 can sweetened condensed milk

Tbl of honey (optional as you can increase the sweetened condensed milk)

1 - 3 oz. package french vanilla instant pudding

milk 5 cups (you might need to play with the amount of milk start with 4 cups and add more as needed)

vanilla

nutmeg

cinnamon

rum flavoring

mix pudding and dry seasonings together 

mix in 2 cup milk and the sweetened condensed milk whisk for 2 minutes

allow to sit for 5 minutes

Mix in 3 cups milk, vanilla and rum flavorings

chill

Bobwhite Quail

Another new bird for us. 

Bobwhite Quail

The male has the white stripe. 

We have only seen two of these. It must be mating season as they usually are in coveys.

Want to learn more. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Bobwhite

Snowing Butterflies

There is no other way to describe the millions of butterflies that have been present in Texas for over 2 weeks. I have never seen this many butterflies in one place at one time. I could not capture them but all the specs you see in this photo are butterflies. Every where we looked were millions of butterflies. Very impressive.

Below are two close up photos of the yellow butterflies.

 

Witches Boots & Gate Keeping

Finished the punching part of my latest Witches Boot design. I like the 3 strand Valdani but I will try the size 12 perle or pearl cotton as I think I may like it better. The 3 strand was a little hard to work with for me. I contacted Valdani to ask them how the perle cotton size 12 compared to a 6 strand floss. Here is their answer. "In terms of thickness, one strand of perle 12 is comparable to 6 strands of floss." 

Now it is time to assemble this newest Witches Boot design and the Skeleton Witches boot design. Then on to writing up the directions for the pattern. Maybe I can get the first patterns out sooner then I was thinking.  It really depends on how busy the gates are in the future. The gate that we are working at right now it not a really busy one as they are winding down. Should be out of here next week some time then on to another gate. We had one day off between the Paloma gate and the Pioneer gate. Were able to get our laundry washed that day.  Our first gate job was very busy as we were opening the gate up to 240 times over a 24 hour period. David took the night shift and I did the day shift. Here we have our evenings and nights to ourselves. A much needed thing as we were both exhausted. So it is good to know that it isn't always really busy. 

Here is a little guy that comes by everyday.