Once again November has proven to be the busiest/stressiest month of the year, so no real surprises there (and hence only three posts on this website during the entire month). Carrie & I spend most of our energies getting ready for our craft shows. She additionally has a bead festival to put on. But let me now try to recall some goings-on:
One of the most fun things was the re-incorporation of Nathan the Orange Fool into Fools Play Improv after a six-year hiatus. He moved back to Olympia recently and so has re-joined our illustrious cast alongside official newcomer Jamie the Ginger Fool. And with Esa the Periwinkle Fool more-regularly attending as well, that means that Mike & I are going to be faced with two-person shows far less frequently. Good news all around. In fact I took advantage of this by taking off the weekend of my craft show.
Carrie stayed on-site in Bellevue during the weekend of the Bead Festival, leaving me home alone. Well, during the week leading up to the Festival she went shopping for various sundries, and came back with New Super Mario Bros. Wii for me as a surprise early Christmas present because she loves me, or at least that’s the reason she gave. Also so I would have something to occupy my breaks between making crafts for my craft show.
The Tuesday after the Bead Festival was Carrie’s birfday. I had already given her a main present (a new outfit that she wore to the Bead Festival), so on her actual birfday I just gave her a li’l something extra, the holiday album by Tori Amos, Midwinter Graces. We went over to her folks’ place, where we were joined by L&C, which was ve’y fun. We played a lot of bowling on the Wii. Carrie’s mum made “linguine with clam sauce,” which is just like a meal that my mum used to make called “clam sauce spaghetti.” As you can tell, the only real difference between the two meals is the width of the pasta used.
Then two days later we were right back over there for Thanksgiving. With a lot more bowling on the Wii. But less linguine. But more turkey.
But the day before Thanksgiving we went out to the new(ish) place on 6th Ave called “Sax.” It had a very strange atmosphere that I couldn’t put my finger on. Thankfully somebody else did: Sax feels like somebody remodeled their basement into a bar. There are no decorations on the walls, there is a green carpet, and the wood paneling isn’t quite of the highest quality. It is almost as if they set out to make a neighborhood dive bar but then changed their minds halfway through and tried to make it into a classy bar, and so it exists in this weird limbo in between them. But we did share the Slider Trio appetizer, and it was very delicious. They really season the meats well.
The day after Thanksgiving, Carrie had a craft show called Gritty City at a hole-in-the-wall gallery on the very southern edge of downtown T-Town. It was difficult to tell from the outside that the building was anything other than either (a) abandoned or (b) just some old-timey storage/warehouse building. But inside was actually a really awesome space. I would love to get into this show next year because it seems like it would really jibe with my aesthetic.
The next day was the craft show out in Purdy that we do together. I had a couple of new product lines this year: Kawaii necklaces and soldered pendants (which as you can see I am putting up on Thirsty Robots). I didn’t do quite as well as last year, though, and the booth fee was much to high to justify doing it again. So next year I’m going to be looking into doing other, more artsy shows that cater to a younger crowd that would “get” my stuff a little bit better than the upper-middle-aged women who are the primary demographic of the Purdy show.
So now I’m done with craft shows for the year, but Carrie has one more this coming weekend, so she’s still crazybusy. And I’m spending this entire week dealing with the fallout from the show; packing back up my inventory, putting all the new stuff up on Thirsty Robots, etc. Plus I got two special orders that I have to make this week.
And that spins us right on out of November and into December. I’m certain I forgot some stuff that I would have wanted to mention, but such is the nature of the November beast. Ah, well. I leave with with some Baman Piderman:
Tomorrow, time permitting, I shall post my “Of the Month” selections for December ’09.
This weekend whilst Carrie was out of town (to canada with Missa’s annual family vacation) I went ahead and hauled out all of my etched glassware and took photos of about 90% of it. I then took those photos and used them to post the items on our Etsy Store!
I’d actually made a 40-cent version of one of those really expensive “light boxes.” I took a cardboard box, flipped it on its side so that the open flaps were now the front of the box. Then I cut out the roof and the two sides, leaving the back. I taped white tissue paper to the cut-out parts and then taped a piece of plain white wrapping paper to the back and floor.
Problem was, the etchings were way too subtle to show up on the plain white background. Like taking a picture of a snowball in a blizzard. I discovered they work much better with natural lighting and a darker background, like, say, my backyard:
See? Clear as can be!
So I posted about half a dozen glasses on the Etsy store and am going to post many more as the week goes on. I also added a little widget to my blog here. Look at the bottom of the right-hand column there →
See? It shows a couple of things from our Etsy site! Well, I think it’s pretty neat at any rate. Now I just have to sit Carrie down and have her post more than the one necklace she has up there, and we’ll be cooking with gas.
Saturday the 13th was our annual “Early Christmas” that we do with Carrie’s bosses’ family. This year was much lower-key than somepreviousyears.
The logistics of it threatened to be a little wonky, though. Carrie’s mum threw a home show that afternoon, where Carrie sold her jewelry and I sold my glassware. How would I go to Fools Play while Carrie simultaneously went in the opposite direction and picked up the kids? We only have one car. Her dad might have had to drive me to a rendezvous point in Federal Way where my brother could pick me up on his way down to Olympia or something like that.
Fortunately Laura also came to the home show, so she was able to drive me back to my house where I was able to leisurely prepare for Fools Play before my brother came and got me. Which he did.
We went down and performed the Fools Play Holiday Special at Mud Bay Coffee. Carrie & the kids came down and watched it. It was an interesting show — it was just me and Mike doing 2 improvised Rankin/Bass-style holiday specials. We’d never done it with only two of us before. It was a hoot! But, man, it was a lot of work, too. Fun work, though!
The first special was based on “Jingle Bells” and was about a music instructor trying to get Santa back on track, and we learned that jingle bells are made out of magic freckles or something. The second special was based on “O Come All Ye Faithful,” and was supposed to be a religiously-based special. But I made it a Science Fiction special instead, my reasoning being, “The Bible is Science Fiction, right?”. It took place way in the future in a distant galaxy (the “Angel Galaxy”). Turns out Jesus’s mum was an alien queen who fled back in time from an evil warlord, and the 3 wise men and Joseph were actually assassins sent to kill them both.
During the show it started to snow. Like a Christmas magic had occurred.
After Fools Play I crammed my stuff into the car (which was still full of the stuff from the Home Show) and we all drove up (through the snow) to the Red Robin in Tacoma for a late din-dins. We were joined by other people I like, such as Christine, Lawrence, Melissa, Travis, and Laura again. After din-dins most of us took the kids on home and hung out there for a bit. We weren’t s’posed to exchange gifts this year (taking the kids to Fools Play and buying them din-dins WAS the gift), but we still ended up with stuffs: Carrie got a bottle of wine and I was given a bottle of Diddy Vodka! By Diddy Vodka, I of course mean Cîroc, the vodka endorsed by Sean Diddy Combs. I wrote a song about it:
When you’re drinking up the hooch Just try not to screw the pooch: If you drink the booze to quick Diddy Vodka makes you sick.
It’s actually really nice vodka! It’s made from grapes. Very interesting.
