Category Archives: creative

crafty 2 Comments

Etsy (or, Who Knew I’d Buy Homemade Crafts?)

I first learned about Etsy from Dooce.com. Heather buys lots of interesting and kitschy prints and bags and whatnot, and posts about them on her site. Honestly, a lot of the things she posts about are a little too cute for me, so I didn’t really go check out Etsy just on her recommendation.

Later on, Aaron pointed out some video game related items that were posted on Etsy: earrings, specifically, I believe. It was at that point that I realized that there are all kinds of crafty people that make all kinds of crafty things, and I started looking for things that would suit my own style.

While I’ve found some interesting items that I haven’t actually bought, I have purchased an etched Buddha pendant, and I have some more purchases on the way this week, including a hand-thrown bowl (for burning incense on my Zen altar) and a cup/mug, and a triptych of Zen-inspired gicleé prints.

Maybe I’ll pull a Dooce and photograph my finds and post accolades as appropriate. We’ll see…

P.S. – I can’t deny the fact that I’ve considered making things to sell on Etsy myself — specifically, my soy candles, and maybe prints of my photographs. Honestly, though, I’m not sure they’d sell very well. I’d have to come up with some sort of gimmick to make them more saleable — holiday gift sets, or unique packaging, or something like that. I haven’t ruled it out, but I have plenty of other projects to keep me busy right now.

P.P.S. – Along those lines… If I were to start offering a weekly candle sale on my blog, to liquidate my current inventory (and actually make some off-peak income to keep funding my hobby), would I have any takers? Or would it really depend on the price? Leave feedback in the comments…

writing

Eagle-Eye or Anal-Retentive?

commerical? missile has two 'i's, Washington Post...

I see these all the damn time online. I suppose I shouldn’t be so continually surprised that professional organizations are apparently bereft of their copy editors in the rush to get news posted online. But typos in ads? This banner ad ran on CNN.com for several weeks before a corrected one appeared.

I’m such a stickler for typos anymore. I guess I always was, but I’m finding them even more lately. I just finished reading a trade paperback — a Sci-Fi Book Club printing, I believe, of The Dragonriders of Pern — that was embarrassingly rife with typographical errors. They’re like speed bumps; they take me right out of the story. I can’t fathom how a three-in-one book like that got published with so many typos. Don’t these companies have editors? Even for a reprint, mistakes happen, and I’d think there would be someone to catch them.

Simple errors like that can make or break a professional relationship, especially one so dependent upon the written word. Would you trust a newspaper that misspelled the word “missile”?

photography

My Obsession With Photos

This weekend, Aaron and I spent an afternoon with his Dad and brother. We went out to lunch, then spent a few hours just talking at their Dad’s house.

Of course, me being such a sucker for photos, and being curious about Aaron’s family, I started off the requisite photo album viewing by declaring, “I want to see pictures of Fat Grammie!” (Referring, of course, to the brief period of time in the early 1970s when Aaron’s grandmother was quite overweight. She went on Weight Watchers and lost it all, and kept it off over the years.)

We ended up looking though nearly a dozen photo albums from the late ’60s and the ’70s, and I got to see not only Fat Grammie, but Poppa with a beard, and Baby Aaron at two weeks — and Aaron’s mother, who passed away just about five years before I met him. I kept being amazed by the people and places I was seeing in these photos — “Wow, you really do look like your mother,” and, “Is that the same rocking chair that’s still at Grammie and Poppa’s house?” and just looking over toward the kitchen to be sure that the linoleum in that photo from 1978 is really the same linoleum that’s still there today.

It wasn’t until then that I realized why I have such an obsession with photos, and candid, unposed shots in particular.

They’re a time capsule.
Continue reading →