Lull

Life has been doing its level best to get in my way lately.

I've been sick for the better part of a month now with no real idea of what it wrong. Blood tests have been attempted, but really all that happened was I became a pin cushion. I'll get whatever results from whatever tests they were able to get blood for sometime soon.

There are more color problems on the Flowerpot Kitty. There wasn't enough black floss to finish the back-stitching and the DMC black is has a duller sheen. So I'm pondering what to do about that.

Castor had a seizure in the wee hours of the morning. His thrashing woke FH and I up around 4:40am. He'd been having little seizures for a while, but they were only little tics. This was a full blown, spittle covered, thrashing seizure. It took him a little while to come back to himself when it was over and then his back legs didn't want to work correctly. The vet took blood today and we'll know more tomorrow morning.

One of our young nephews (aged 12) had his appendix burst three weeks ago... the problem wasn't caught for two days due to flu being present in the house to confuse the symptoms. He survived that, survived the abscess that followed, and battled his way through the surgery when they finally took the pieces of ruined organ out. Now however he's spiked a dangerously high fever and is red over most of his body...and has been that way since Friday. His parents are going to switch hospitals tomorrow if no progress is made in diagnosis/treatment.

FH got the desktop PC fixed with the help of his friends over the weekend, so I've been getting all of my pictures in one place again and organizing them. Next comes backing things up. At least I can do that while resting.

I'll hopefully have something interesting to look at soon. Right now I"m just concentrating on being able to attend a wedding this weekend.

Current Projects and Goals

I've been rummaging through my supply room looking through the stash of polymer clay. I've finally decided what kind of cakes I'm going to make for my friends' birthdays and how I will decorate them. I will get the pictures up sometime after Friday. Don't want to ruin the surprise accidentally.

Lately I've been having trouble coming up with ideas for miniature food to sell in my web-store. I come up with ideas and other extremely talented artists from other locals have beaten me to the punch. Since I don't want to seem like I'm copying other people's work, I end up thinking more than sculpting. I definitely don't want to step on toes or hurt feelings since my eventual goal is to join IGMA and start trying for artisan status.

The show that I am planning on attending as a dealer this fall may or may not actually happen. This would be my first show ever. The economy being what it is, and with bigger shows within a 200-mile radius forcing a date change, means that I may have to look farther away and end up with greater expense and less certain profit return. That's the same story I'm hearing from other artists everywhere.

For now I guess I will get these cakes done for my friends and get some stock built up. If the show I'm supposed to go to doesn't happen, I can always try for the St. Louis show in October. It's more expensive, but I wouldn't have to worry about lodging and meals since our families are there.

Cyber House Cleaning

I just uploaded the new changes to my dollhouse miniature website. There is now a whole page of how-to projects that I can add to when I bloody well feel like it as opposed to a new one each month.

I got tired of coming up with new projects each month instead of having the freedom to actually design new things for the store or *gasp* actually work on my own projects.

So now in the "to-do" line up for the rest of the month is:

-finish Benjamin and Anna's birth announcements
- stain and paint the frames for above
-block and frame the wedding sampler that still is sitting around waiting on me
-make and wrap a few birthday gifts for my mini friends back in St. Louis
-wrap the Christmas/Hanukkah gifts for the same mini friends
-finish the cross stitched bread cloth (a chickadee.. for me!)
-finish one un-finished. but "mostly done" miniature project
-make at least two new things for my store