Stuff and Moonshine

If your lunch includes beer, that is.

I did not sell a single hat in eight hours of manning a table while techno (?) blared in the background. Mind you, the woman next to me who's a veteran of these shows and makes beautiful hair ornaments only sold, like, two of them, so maybe it was just a slow day. I'm trying to draw lessons from it for next time:

1. Use a plainer fabric for my table cloth - no one actually said so, but I suspect a lot of my wares were hard to see against the pattern.

2. Brighter colours - Half the people there had hair dyed black or dark red - the hats and hair ornaments wouldn't have stood out if they'd tried them on.

3. Different fastening mechanisms - I sewed those stretchy circular hair combs to my hats, because I've found them to be the most comfortable and secure way of holding them on my head; but the learning curve was too steep for my potential customers. U-shaped hairbands are ugly and uncomfortable, but at least people know how to put them on.

4. Maybe I should avoid calling them "hats." At least three people said "oh, they're lovely, but I'm just not a hat person." Possible if I stick to really small fascinators and call them "decorated headbands," people won't be scared off.

An upcoming craft sale has a circus sideshow theme. Which name would most make you want to pull back a curtain?

a) The Mystery Hat

b) The Mer-Hat

c) The Mutant Hat

d) The Hat of Weird

Found on, of all places, the Spoonflower fabric POD website, accompanying a design of piping and robots:

(A Robot Joke) ~~~query~~~ what is optimal number of humanoid automatons to fabricate comprehensive logic module for mechanical rodent components? ~~~diagnosis~~~ does not compute. must self destruct. ~~~~(initiate amusement verbalization for transmission to auditory sensors)~~~~ ~ha~ha~ha~ (yup, robots aren't the best comedians)

Free account, so I can’t actually do polls

What’s your opinion on extreme primitive dolls?

(a) I like them.
(b) I don’t like them.
(c) The whole concept of making fake antique folk art is weird.
(d) Uh-oh, looks like Goody Elspeth’s been hexing the neighbours again.

Finished the short-row ribbed turban; green_trilobite photographed it for me, but the details on a black hat don't show up well, so I'm re-knitting it in red. This should also confirm the pattern so I can write it down. I want to call the main hat "Mother Ship" and the detachable ornament which can double as a fascinator in its own right "Escape Pod." This attempt to tweak the pattern didn't work so well, though.


Also, I'm tempted to bling up these wedges, to which I've already added ribbon ankle ties; the heels aren't actually cork, they're some kind of smooth foam printed to look like cork. After I get paid next week I'm thinking of hitting the dollar store for some acrylic paint (maybe purple!) and rhinestones; or I could draw on the heels in sharpie once I've put down a base coat. We'll see.

This is hilariously sick and twisted:
Wicked Witch of the East bookmark

So, my cousin's wedding is in late May, and the theme colour is blue. OK, I can do blue: ( Read more... )

Some of the pictures from this book lead me to suspect the existence in the 1970s of a sub-set of the BDSM community who were into macrame bondage.....