Believe me the second part is way more of a surprise. The last eight months or so he's been listening to this stuff called nerdcore by a guy called MC Frontalot. It's rap or hiphop or something about being a nerd. I'm sooo not kidding. There's even a guy called MC Hawking who converts Stephen Hawkings' voice recordings to rap music. Or something. It's all very weird and believe me, there's nothing cuter (or funnier) than watching my tall pudgy white nerd husband rap along with these guys while he's out driving our little CRV.

Now the food. Wow. The other night he made Thai shrimp with couscous and fresh organic green beans. In about fifteen minutes. WE LOVE YOU TRADER JOE'S!

I've felt really swamped with stuff this week but if I look around at it all I feel like I haven't accomplished much. I've sold a few skeins of the gypsy scarf kit which makes me very happy. I was worried that I was charging too much but everyone kept telling me to keep it at that price and it would sell. I tend to underestimate my prices.

I did put my gypsy scarf pattern up for sale in the shop in pdf or snail mail format. It's only 3.25 and it has some great ideas in it. Including a fun yarn randomizing technique. Hee. I'm really proud of that pattern I think it would be a lot of fun for new knitters and experienced ones who want to try something new and weird.

I've also been playing around with our sewing machine (a 1960s Kenmore we got from an estate sale) making little bags to fill with a dried lavender rosemary blend I have. I like tossing in a little bonus gift in with my sold items. I've used up the stuff from the Japanese dollar store and this is a good way for me to practice some sewing. And lavender is a natural moth-repellant so it's a great little bonus. Not the most technically well-done but who cares right?

I've been worried that I haven't been very ambitious with my little shop. I've been selling on Etsy for a year now, since the Katrina fundraiser, and I've just stayed with Etsy because I think it's a good website with a built in market of people who understand and appreciate handmade items. Those programmers work hard and probably deserve way more than they're making, and I know how that feels. So I intend to stay with them until I have the time and energy to mess around with hosting a shop on my own domain. Since I do my own tech support that's more trouble than I think it's worth at the moment.

I did register a domain that will redirect to my etsy shop. It's weird because it was my old domain way back when I first had a website in 97: http://www.noellesnoodles.com It was much, much cheaper to register this time.

Since it's been a year I've been thinking about what direction I want to go in with the shop. If I want to just keep doing what I've been doing. To be honest this little enterprise isn't about making the most money with my time really, it's about art and self-worth.

Every yarn I spin, or paint, or put together is a piece of individual art to me. I can try to make something like it but the individual pieces can never be copied exactly. The fact that I can put it up for sale and people will buy it is like a friggin miracle. I'm not kidding.

After I finally finished my sculpture degree I never thought my work would be commercially successful. Remember I was in Santa Fe and had spent years competing with the "big power tool boys" in the sculpture department. My stuff wasn't big and sexy it was usually small and intimate or largely abstract but in a way that was hard to explain and usually a bit brooding with a lot of background story to it.

I was probably most well-known for my nudes and had just started a series of self-portraits that reflected a whole new echelon of self-image and my own body acceptance. While festively plump women aren't very well-received in the fashion industry, for the most part, plus sized nudes aren't all that sellable in the art world either. I'd given up on commercial success with my artwork by 1997 but I'd also had a really great year in my personal life.

It was a trade off and really made me wonder if it was possible to be artistic and romantically happy at the same time so I started to design websites. LOL sorry that was just a hilarious sentence to me. I designed websites professionally until about 2000 when I got totally burnt out with having to keep up with the latest technology all the damn time while only getting to use a tiny bit of creativity.

Anyway, having a little store now where I can be creative, create something I consider art, and actually sell it..unbelievable. But I also am hell-bent on keeping this fun. I don't handle stress well. So I don't really court many special orders or advertise much. I just create stuff I think is cool and put it up for sale. I try to keep the attitude that if people don't buy it that it's ok I had fun making it. I just want to keep enjoying the process. I would like to pay for the cruise with what I make but we're also saving up for it in other ways.

I don't mean to be a big downer or anything, it's just time for the annual stockholder's review so I'm taking stock, so to speak, of how I feel about it all. All in all I feel pretty good about it. Maybe a little defensive of my decisions and actively remaining small but I'm pretty used to making decisions that other people might not make.

Except voting Tucker Carlson's butt off of Dancing with the Stars. Must admit I felt some Schadenfreude watching that.

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Posted by: Ramona Chesley at September 15, 2006 3:28 PM

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