Lazy Sunday

So Art in the Park was yesterday - and the weather gods were not so kind to us as they were they first time. It was cold. In fact, if you won't be offended, I'll confess that it was fu@k!ng freezing. We got there at 8:15 to set up, and left at 4:00, and in between was kind of a lot of time to stand around in the howling 40 degree wind. But we alternated taking fun field trips - down to City Market to visit our peeps, and otherwise around downtown, and so the time passed pretty quickly. And here's the shocking part of the whole thing - people still come to these things, even when rain looks imminent and the wind is howling and it's 40 degrees. Me? I'd be curled up at home (or maybe running, but you're moving and get warm), I probably wouldn't be out perusing art booths. But there are people in this world that actually do, and to them I say. . . THANK YOU! Because we actually had a pretty good day, and I find that miraculous. At one point I was actually half way hoping a customer wouldn't buy something, because I was too cold to take off my gloves and operate the credit card machine. But then sense reasserted itself.

To reward myself for my long day in the cold, I got up this morning and was in the Warren Wilson pool at 8am for a swim clinic. To each her own I suppose. It was actually fun - because I can tell that all of my attempts at learning to swim are paying off. (I mean learning to *really* swim - because I could always doggie paddle, but that was about it.) And to reward myself for being in the pool at 8 I slept away the afternoon. Ah, bliss. Ok, I did go run after I woke up, but only for 10 minutes because I'm on this super-slow return to running plan. And it does feel kind of silly to drag on all of my cold weather running gear for 10 minutes, but it's kind of fun too. Like a joke that only I'm in on. I guess you take what you get when it comes to entertaining yourself.

This Week in Pictures

Here are a few random pics from the last week or so:

Art in the Park - weather was GREAT, booth location was GREAT, other vendors were GREAT, customers were GREAT - and we're getting ready to do it all over again this Saturday. Weather forecast currently not so fortuitous.


Sam's fall baseball picture - see, I told you Little League is the cutest sport ever. And you haven't even seen the 5 year olds who are really too young to play but their dad insists anyway. (I'm not being sexist - it's always the dads. Trust me.)


My hair if I blow it dry. Very Diana Ross, no? It's a look I generally avoid, but the other day I left swim practice and needed to go work outside and it was cold so. . . Diana Ross. I picked Sam up at school and he took one look and said "Mom you need a haircut. You're hair's all fuzzy, and kind of sticking straight out on the sides." Perceptive fellow.



New maple leaf candles. I think the red's a pretty good contrast with the beeswax, and even Clark (v.p. of marketing and CEO of the disdainful sniff) thought they came out pretty well. I'm not being overly harsh on Clark here - an artisan crafter pretty much needs a person who makes no bones about what deserves a disdainful sniff. Otherwise you can find yourself going crazy and gluing rick-rack to god only knows what, and pretty soon you're a Cracker Barrel crafter. Seriously, it could happen.

The List

So I figured out today that there's kind of a lot of stuff I'm trying to get done. In no particular order:

1. Make booties
2. Make candles
3. Make wreaths
4. Do yoga
5. Get in an extra swim
6. Run a mile and see if foot still hurts
7. Update Etsy shop
8. Parent my child.
9. Attend parent/teacher conference. (Did this one - turns out he's smart, polite, and helpful. I'll buy that my genes might have helped some with the first, but the second two attributes would indicate he's not my child at all. Add this to the fact that likes, and is actually good at, baseball, and that the thing he's least accomplished at is running, and the chances are increasing that there was a switched at birth episode at the hospital. )
10. Stare at my tri book and my (largely blank) training plan, and hope inspiration hits.
11. Pick up Veg-N-Out for the week. Yes it's vegan. Yes it tastes about like you'd expect vegan takeout meals to taste. We've been eating it for months now. Do I Look Like I Have Time To Cook????
12. Walk the dog. He's driving me crazy.
13. Figure out enough photoshop to make a banner for my etsy shop.
14. Order seed for the fall plantings. Yes, this is a month (or two) late, but in my experience mother nature's kind of forgiving about that kind of thing.
15. Get the tractor guy to come disc up the row for the larkspur and bachelor buttons. After I fill the row completely full of horse manure. In my spare time.


There are probably a few more things to go on that list, but I think that's enough. So instead of doing any of them, I'm. . . listening to Pandora. Ok, and also making a plan for the week that'll try to incorporate all of this. I love a plan. Gives me a false sense of control that's very empowering.

As to the actual list - let's see, I've done numbers 2, 4, 6, 8 (although my mom picked him up at 11:00, so only half marks for that one), 9, and 11. For today I'm giving up on 3, 5, 13, 14 and 15. The rest of them stand a fighting chance.

And, before I forget, Art in the Park was great. The weather was perfect and we met a ton of great people. A good percentage of them just wanted to know how to get to Barleys or Tupelo Honey or the Chili Cookoff at McCormick Field, but a healthy percentage also bought something, so that's a good day all around.

Return of the Crafters

This week we're taking a departure from our regularly scheduled program. We usually (as in every Saturday for months and months on end) are vendors at City Market. And I love City Market - it's big and fun and interesting, with a ton of cool vendors. But for the next few weeks we're trying something new - Art & Craft Shows. It's what you might call an experiment, and one we're really excited about. So, here's where we'll be for the next little while:

October 3 (tomorrow!) & October 17: Art in the Park. Asheville's first Art in the Park, to be held at Pack Square from 10-5. Couldn't be a better location in Asheville, and we couldn't have a better location at the show - come find us in the red tent right in front of the Art Museum. The list of vendors looks amaaaaazing. Beautiful stuff. (check out the website if you don't believe me.)

October 10 - Church Street Art & Craft Show in downtown Waynesville from 10-5. We haven't been to this one before, but it purports to have a bazillion visitors and be way fun. They even have two stages for bands, and downtown Waynesville is like something off of a post card, so come join us for the fun. Again, look for the. . . red tent. Are you sensing a theme here?

And in the midst of all this roaming about, if you 'd like something we make but don't want to roam about yourself, I've finally managed to get the etsy site up and operational. It isn't fully stocked yet, but I'm making some progress.


So how does one prepare for all of this
art & craftiness?? By making wreaths, as evidenced here (also this serves as photographic proof that I should really listen to my mother and consider wearing makeup on a more regular basis.) In addition to my lack of makeup, please note the treehouse-like setting of my flower building. Love it.

And preparation has also included making candles like a maniac. Our sideboard is barely visible under all of the beeswax.

And lastly, prep has included a fair bit of Little League baseball, which is still hands down the cutest sport on the planet. Sam had some good plays last night, but my favorite part of the game was his teammate skipping back to the dugout after being tagged out at first. Skipping. Priceless.

Burning Down the House

I'm in a major candle making fizz this morning. So maybe not burning down the house, but definitely heating it up. Which is a nice change, since it's cool this morning and feels great. In the middle of the summer I feel like a witch standing over her cauldrons, one step up from the pit of hell. So maybe candle production will increase as the weather cools down.

Also good news on the etsy front - I've got most (some) of my items up on the site, and I've actually had a sale this week. A real live, not anyone I know, totally random stranger bought something sale. So here's to you bbjerring! Makes it seem like not such a fool's errand when I'm taking pictures of random stuff in my homemade lightbox and posting on the site. Which otherwise brings up a bit of "why am I doing this again??"

And speaking of things I need to be doing - this afternoon is devoted to making wreaths. The reality of my situation is setting in - the situation being that I need a bunch of wreaths for Art in the Park this weekend, and I don't have them! So it's off to the flower building I go. But only after I ride my bike. Because I'm big on balance. (or I'm just big on playing, one or the other.) So if I'm feeling responsible I'll ride my regular one hour loop up Sunset and back on the River - otherwise I'm heading up Town Mountain to the Parkway and playing for a while. Either way, fun will be had, then wreaths will be made.

I'm About Watered Out

I'm about done with the rainy exercise. Usually it doesn't bother me - my mantra is "we're waterproof", and off I go. But now I'm beginning to doubt that. Because yesterday as Robin and I were riding down South Ridge at Bent Creek, and it's raining and I don't really have enough clothes on and I'm feeling hot and cold at the same time - I wasn't feeling very waterproof. I thought I might melt at any time. Or burst into flame. Basically I felt like crap. So I'm about done with this crazy water. In self-defense I decided I wasn't going to do anything today. At least nothing strenuous. Which stinks because I missed Masters, but I think this was one of those "discretion is the better part of valor" moments.

I am going to do some actual work things today, though. Among them is tackling the etsy conundrum again. I've dabbled with having an etsy shop before, but basically all I've accomplished is discovering that you have to be committed if you want etsy to work. Committed to getting good photos, committed to staying on top of your shop and relisting. So I had let it go by the wayside, until I was reinspired last night at a seminar at HandMade In America. HandMade does a lot of cool stuff for crafters, and lately that has included a series of marketing seminars. This one was put on by Elijah and Kimberly of Leaflet PR and Figs & Ginger. It was a good "tips & tricks" of selling on etsy, and I definitely gleaned some information to jump start me back into the world of etsy.

But to be honest it was also kind of crazy because I would swear about 60% of the participants had never had any actual experience with etsy, paypal, blogs, websites, shopping carts or anything else that was fairly much integral to the subject at hand. And all I could think, every time they asked a question trying to divine the essence of paypal, was that they were in for a rocky ride. It would be about like me trying to build a space shuttle based on a one hour seminar. Totally lost. So more power to all of us potential etsy crafters out there, but if nothing else at least the seminar left me feeling grateful that I had actually been to the etsy site before. You've got to start somewhere.

So today is devoted to exploring etsy, researching how to take decent pictures at home (argh!!!), making wreaths, attending Sam's swim practice, and not one iota of exercising in the rain. Woohoo!

Water Sports

I hate to be so obvious and comment on the weather, but I just can't seem to help it. It's been raining for the better part of 5 days now. I woke up at 3am and heard it pouring down and thought, well, it usually doesn't pour down for several hours in a row, so maybe Robin and I can get our bike ride in in the morning. Proving yet again that you should never pay attention to me for weather predictions. It's now almost noon and it hasn't stopped raining at all. Not a teeny bit. So rather than riding to Marshall I'm instead getting all of the paperwork-type stuff done that tends to go by the wayside when it's good weather to ride a bike. Or run. Or do anything else. That pesky stuff that reminds me I'm actually running a business here. A small one, yes, but a business nonetheless.

The rain hasn't actually slowed me down too much so far this week. I got my bike commute in on Wednesday (although the ride home it was pouring down and Biltmore was very crowded, and even with the reflective vest and flashing lights I was feeling not so smart), and then I ran Thurs., and on Friday Robin and I met at Bent Creek and ran and rode the fire roads for a couple of hours since she (being smarter) doesn't love to ride on the roads in the rain. And since I'm now allegedly a full-fledged adult and am too responsible to ride the trails when it's been raining, the fire roads were about the only option left. We had a great ride, and got filthy like little kids. I had to spray my face off with the water bottle when we got back to remove enough of the grit to drive home. Sure sign of a fun time.

Maybe this weather is a sign that I should be swimming more anyway?? I've actually been consistently making it to Masters two mornings a week for the last month or so, and picking up a third swim on my own, and I can totally tell. Last Thursday morning I was actually (for me) pretty fast - and I felt just like Ebby Calvin Nuke Laloosh (think "Bull Durham"), when he finally throws a good pitch and says "What happened?? How'd I do that??" I still have not much of an idea of what I've done differently when I'm swimming well. Which is really kind of funny. I feel just like little kids learning to ride a horse - when they finally put it all together and jump a good course, but you can tell they have no idea what just happened. Clearly I'm doing something right, but I don't have enough body awareness in swimming yet to really figure out what it is. So I'll just keep showing up at Masters and listening to Andrew and figuring that somehow it's grooving itself into my muscle memory. One hopes.

In the meantime, more paperwork, a quick wet run, an attempt to finish my prototype sock animal (more on that later) and then a swim. And the boys have gone off to retrieve a futon from the flower building so that Sam can complete his man-cave. Should be interesting.