I’m on Etsy…

So I finally got my act in gear and made an Etsy shop for the smaller quilts. It’s here (also in the sidebar). I had to mess with the prices slightly to fit their system. On here, the shipping costs are already in the price. On Etsy, due to their fees and separate shipping fees, I had to change it slightly. These quilts are small enough that I can’t really float the shipping in the price. I was kind of amazed by some people shipping for very cheap, but I usually have to buy a tube and ship that, which costs more, but protects the larger quilts. The smaller ones, the 8×10 quilts, they can go in a padded envelope. Anyway. It’s another experiment, right?

The next step is to photograph the other bird that didn’t sell (bad photo) and put it on there, and then decide how I want to deal with custom work. I have friends who successfully use Etsy for their work…we’ll see how that goes. I left most of the weird stuff off of there…figure that’s why you’re here, on my website.

Anyway, more work towards putting kids through college. I’ll be glad one day when I don’t have to think so hard about it.

Back to It…

The week we get off at Thanksgiving has never been a relaxing vacation for me. Whether I stay home and do the whole deal here, or go to Seattle for four days, or what we used to do, which was go to Lake Arrowhead and hang out at my parents’ cabin…it was never relaxing. It was hectic, full of crazy errands and grading before, during, and after. Sometimes I’d manage to quilt or stitch down or cut out a bunch of pieces, but mostly it was tense chaos. And I’m not even the one who usually cooks. I support the cooks by cutting stuff up or whatever. This year, I barely did anything (thanks to my cousin and all HER hard work).

Last week did not break that trend. I did not shop on Black Friday or even Small-Whatever Saturday, mostly because money’s pretty tight right now. Property taxes are due next week and I need to be able to pay them and a credit card bill. Deep breaths. Then I will think about Christmas. I did hang out for a while on Saturday because I needed to do just that. Not grade more papers like I did Friday off the plane. Sunday was the inevitable catch-up day. Five stores later, I think I had got there. Although there are at least two more errands I need to do this week…I lied, three. Maybe more. And then I came home and worked until about 10:30 PM. I did make dinner in there somewhere. My SIL’s convinced I’m eating all this hidden sugar in my diet. She’s wrong. I know where all of it is. I mostly cook from scratch. Seriously, on a good day, I eat fairly healthy. I made kofta balls from scratch, put in lettuce wraps with a cucumber/yogurt sauce and a bit of brown rice. I do OK some days. And there’s leftovers.

I’m not ready to go back to school though. Then again, we never are…teachers. I’m sure the kids aren’t ready either, but they have it pretty easy. I have all the lesson plans done. I’m hammering grammar starting this week. I’m tired of reading their work with no spaces after punctuation, no first word capitalized, the word “I” never capitalized, starting every sentence with “And,” never putting in periods. The computer age may be upon us, but my students aren’t prepared. The English teacher is coming along for the ride. If I have to read all that stuff online, then they better be improving their practice. Meanest science teacher ever! Yeah whatever.

Meanwhile though, and I feel good about this, I finished cutting out the Wonder Under (finally!) for Bathtub 5, which got totally sidelined by the holiday.

It only took about 4 1/2 hours to do it, but I just didn’t have the time before I left for Seattle. I was determined to finish it last night, so I stopped grading tests (because that was kind of depressing anyway), and finished this instead. Tonight I can sort them and maybe start picking fabrics. Except I’m not sure if I have a background big enough. I’m pretty sure I do, plus I’m supposed to be at the local quilt store tomorrow after school to deliver one of the sold quilts, so I can manage that then. I’m hoping (moneywise) that there is something here big enough. I will need some blues and whites though. I think. There’s some really big white pieces in this quilt, and big is always an issue for me.

But the next part is the fun part…the fabric-choosing part. I’m going to need to clean more of this space up to manage that though. Damn. Forgot about all that. Sigh. So maybe NOT picking fabrics tonight. We’ll see.

By the way, if you’re interested in one of the smaller quilts (cats, birds, hearts), I suggest you tell me soon, because I’m going to put them all up on Etsy sometime this week, and I’ll have to raise prices to do that. Under Recent Work, Catching Cancer 2, Owl 2.0, Cats 1, 2, 5-7, and Heart in Hands 1 and 2 are all available. Also, Birds 7, 11, and 13 are also available…see below.

Bird 8: Purple Bird, 18.25“ w x 14.5“ h, $205.

Bird 11: Dove 2, 10“ w x 8“ h, $100 (no binding, no sleeve, hangs on rings).

Bird 13: Diving Bird 2, 10“ w x 8“ h, $100 (no binding, no sleeve, hangs on rings).

Just contact me on the website or in the comments. Shipping is included in the ones I did this year, unless it’s going international. The birds will need to have shipping added. I include hanging hardware. Think of the holidays…

Numbering Around the Cat Butt…

So first of all, I finished one of the little quilts. This is Owl 2.0, actually the 18th bird I’ve made.

Nov 6 15 003 small

She (he?) is 17″ wide x 10 1/2″ high ($235). These are for sale…would make great holiday presents. They have a sleeve on the back and I deliver them with a dowel with eyebolts for hanging. Shipping costs are included in the price, unless we’re going abroad, in which case, we may have to negotiate.

For some reason, I seem to be completing them in backwards order, which only matters to me because I list them in order of completion, and when it comes to the cats, they’re numbered in opposite order from what I seem to be doing. I probably could fix that though. Maybe. The owl has quite a few pieces in it, so besides Cat 6 (the one with the eyeballs), most of the other small quilts will cost less than Owl. I’ll post them as I finish them…and then put them up on my Recent Work page…or I’ll continue to debate having a page titled Small Work for Sale. Because almost all of my work is for sale…but I guess most of it is not small and relatively affordable.

Anyway, so that was my achievement for yesterday…except for this one. Do you know how hard it is to number a drawing when the cat is sitting on it? And I moved her about five times, then started sliding the drawing around with her on it until she got a clue and moved her furry butt.

I’m actually quite pleased, because it only has 773 pieces in it, and that’s not so bad.

So I just went rock climbing in the boychild’s room (no, I haven’t moved everything back in here yet…I’m trying to go through it and I was too tired to do any of it last night) because I wanted to find the drawing for Bathtub 2 to see how many pieces IT had, because I know how long it took to make (the cats love watching me kamikaze through his room, because apparently everything I really need is on the bed, which means holding onto the dresser to maneuver around the chair and then walking on the back of the bed after climbing up onto it). Well damn. I thought it was 800-some pieces, but it wasn’t. It was only 568 pieces and took about 64 hours. So. Hmn. I think I need a database of my quilts that includes number of pieces and hours to completion and size, and then maybe I can come up with a formula. Ventura was 891 pieces and took 89 hours. So I think I’m looking at about 75 hours total. Before the end of January. But really, earlier than that, because there’s another one I want to get done by the end of February, and it doesn’t even exist yet.

Yeah. There’s some crazy in there. I still need to finish all these little quilts; they each have about 2 hours left in them, maybe. So that’s about 17 hours right there. That’s a lot more than I thought. Sigh. OK. Hunker down. Figure it out. Grades are due. Life doesn’t stop because you feel like you’re hurtling through the days. You just have to take deep breaths and keep working. You can do it. It’s all possible.