I Have A Book Published Now!

While it's not stuffie related per se, it does talk about some aspects of it in the later part of the book.

It's called CATNIP PICKING FOR FUN AND PROFIT and just went 'live' today. I already sold two copies and had 25 people look at it so far.
https://www.createspace.com/4732977

The majority of it was written in January/February, I did three rewrites on it, checked everything for spelling, fixed the formatting, triple checked for spacing and any other issue, and would you know it, soon as I uploaded it to CreateSpace I saw two spelling errors and a missing line between paragraphs.  Had to redo the upload after fixing the issues but it was approved and is now up for sale. 

Everything in it is based on all my experience out catnip picking for the past 20 years. Lots of hints, tips and tricks, explanations as to how to do each step of cutting, drying, processing, packaging and selling.  The word document was 26 pages long but with the 5x8" format that turned out to be 60 pages at the smaller size so it's a decent sized how-to book.  I wanted it out by May, in time for people who might want to harvest in spring/summer to have a guide as to how to best do it.

So I'm a published author. Whoo Hoo!

Been Working On Catnip Toys

I've been trying to use up some of the fabric that's piled up here, getting some of the basic toys restocked for this summer.  Shrimp in several colors, pickles in that super soft, bumpy green fabric, red chili peppers, beets, corn on the cob with the leaves still on, carrots, and some chocolate ice cream cones.

They're pretty colorful when you look at it all together.

 

Here's a close up of the shrimp. I did them in raw blue, raw pink, and cooked orange.  They're each about six inches long, and come with little flipper tails.  I used soft sculpture techniques to do the bumpy backs.

OK, I'm Now On Facebook - Come See My Pictures

The Facebook pages are getting easier to post to, so more pictures will be going on that site as I find them in my digital camera files.  There's a lot to sort through.

Already posted some Pennsic booth photos, some Steampunk owls and parakeets, and a few others.  I'll try to do the same here but haven't played around much with the commands.

Ok, guess that wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be. 

This is a photo from my booth table at Pennsic in 2003, I can't get the fur for the foxes anymore, and haven't done the black puppy dogs for a long while, but the zebra doll, the Cthulhu dolls and the dragons are still being made. Wow, those patterns do go back a number of years! I do better work now.

On Facebook my pictures are under 'Weird Creatures'.

Falcons Mew Is Now On Facebook - A Little

As of today I’m up on Facebook as "Weird Creatures", which will be the same shop name I'm taking over at Etsy in the near future. Time to get a few followers this way, if I can.  But I'm sure that it’ll take a little bit to get used to with all the ins and outs of making Facebook work.  Hopefully it’s not too complex. 

I put some photos up there already, the banner is composed of a smattering of the most recently done items.  The squid are brand new.  My avatar is a close-up of one of the squids.  There’s the Steampunk snowy owls and parakeets on already and I’ll be putting more pictures up every few days for a bit. I didn’t want to dump them all on the page at once. 

Second Booklet Is Finished

The Leprechauns Of Upper Wisconsin was cut and pasted into an original this morning and went to Kinkos for printing this afternoon at 2pm.  They look great.  I'd like to redo the cover downward a tad on the next printing but otherwise it's good to go.

I'm not sure which one to tackle next, probably What The Cat Dragged In.  It's only at 6 pages so I need four more pages to finish it up.

So Disappointed

Here I put in over 8 hours making 10 owls and 10 parakeets with Steampunk outfits and sold none of them. 

I attended a Steampunk event, a one day affair, that was doubled up with Anime and a little Dr. Who, down on the MSOE campus.  The primary focus was Steampunk though.  My table had a range of items on, from Cthulhu dolls to large squid, fancy fake fur muffs, the Ferret Tarot, Cthulhu Spawnette cat toys, Victorian catnip mice, wooly hamsters and the keets and owls.  I had backdrop displays and everything looked really nice.

The muffs started selling once I started pointing out there were no moving parts (gotta get humor going, it really makes a difference).  The Cthulhu dolls went fine. The big draw were the squids, which are 16" long and in vivid colors.  But nobody was interested in the tarot or the birds. 

My owls had utility belts with little glass bottles and metal harness.  The keets had ivory tie offs for equipment, small 'leather' bags and glass bottles for 'samples'.  They both looked semi-realistic and had wired feet for perching, were displayed perched on the backs of the displays in full sight.

Nada.  Barely anyone reached out to pick one up.  Maybe it was the price point?  I'd put a lot of work into them and I always seem to underprice my items so put a decent price on to sell them for what they're actually worth and should be going at.  However the general age group there was Anime oriented, between 17 and 22 years old.  Dealers at the tables were the next generation up, and I had more action from them than the attendees - and no it wasn't just at my table, I did notice that most tables weren't selling all that much either.  Maybe the students just had no cash and went for the meetups and programming? They certainly got super rowdy (shouting!!!) for the scavenger hunt that seemed to go on for 3 hours.

Argh.  Well, I'd intended to sell them over on Etsy anyway. 

I did get two possible bites from store owners looking to get in contact later.  I don't think I'm a good fit for one, they deal with Civil War costuming and she was mostly interested in my catnip mice. The other was too hesitant so I don't know if that will pan out, even if they were the ones to ask for my business card first.  We'll see.