Potatoes, the popularity of buttermilk, and pig collecting

So, what's been going on? (You ask.) (I ask.)

I've been very very busy and tired and tired of being busy. My previous attempt to make a "holiday"-themed product did better than I expected with the addition of Father Daughter Robot Flip Book . I think I sold 12 copies of it since my last posting, almost too much to keep up with on top of my other assembly duties. Production in general has been held up due to an series of setbacks and inconveniences.

My car was rear-ended a few weeks ago. And that has slowed down production, not to mention turning me into a car-shopping/insurance-cringing/pill-popping/wheel-screeching mess. My car is "totalled" although it is still currently driveable, I'm trying to find an alternative. It takes too much time. And there's too much to find out about cars that I don't know or don't want to know or don't know I need or want or don't want to know. Sorry, this is my current thought process of chaos and being overwhelmed by everything.

So last Friday I took a field trip to see a vehicle out of town. All did not go as hoped, but I won't tell the sad story here - suffice it to say we turned toward home still in the duct-taped-together auto.



Luckily we happened across Allman's Bar-B-Q in Fredericksburg and they were kind enough to let us in just before the lunch rush, as well as let me photograph some of the pig collection. Mr. Pork Chop would be proud.



And I'd like to say something witty about the popularity and price of buttermilk these days, but I really don't know what that might be.

In other news, I dug up some russet potatoes, which surprised me with their varied sizes:





And, there's other things.

I'm trying to make lookability.com, but right now it's just a booby trap leading you in circles back and forth from hither and yon. I have nearly everything that exists about web design to learn and then forget and then learn again and then learn it's obsolete once I've finally memorized it... but I'm hoping I can get something going there, if only for practice.

So, more later.

Insect or cat fabric? If you had to pick one to wear...

These fabrics would be horrifically clashing if used to make one item:


bug fabric


cat fabric

But used separately, I think they will be great. Yes, I went to the fabric store yesterday. I had my reasons, but I will not go through the motions of justifying all my purchases at this time.

So the question is: Insect or cat fabric? If you had to pick one to wear...

* * *

In other news, a customer in New Zealand wants to order 36 (thirty-six) of my flip books, so I am hard at work assembling those. The probability of x-acto injury resulting from making 36 flip books in a relatively short period of time seems quite high. So I sought out what up until recently I had not really even been aware of: that is the rotary paper trimmer. Thanks, S., for the idea.

I got one of these little cutting platforms with a rotary cutter built in. So far the cutting is pretty good, very even, but the only thing I didn't expect was the way I have to pull up and click down the bar every time I want to reposition the paper. And I need to reposition the paper a lot, so I need to minimize the number of repositionings, because lifting the bar up and clicking it down wastes a few seconds, and is a little loud.

You also need to push down and slide the rotary blade carriage with some strength behind it, so it's not something I can do for hours at a time (it's tiring to the wrist, though not nearly as bad as equivalent X-acto use would be). I'm interested in getting the scoring blade, then I can expand my envelope-making and box-making capacities. There is also a perforating blade, decorative blades, and who knows what else.