More than Fish and Hammocks

Past projects are interesting things.  I keep all my old sketchbooks specifically so I can look at past ideas and see if maybe any of them can help with current problems.  Past projects on the internet are especially interesting, because frequently they never go away, and if they're public, they often stay that way even when you've moved on to something else.

Before I found metal and glass, I was a Fiber Artist.  I still am, a little bit.  I have a spinning wheel tat I turn to in times when I really need to de-stress and think.  I'll probably be a spinner forever.  My other great fibery love was netting.  I learned it in order to make hair nets for costume purposes and then just sort of ran with the idea.  If you've ever been to the nightshaderose.com main home page, you saw under the Studio link a logo for More Than Fish and Hammocks, my netting web site, that I set up when I realized that while there were a lot of pictures of how to net, there was something of a lack of any really good color-coded illustrations.  The problem with pictures is that people tend to take pictures of their own projects-in-progress and when you're showing rows of interlacing and even simple knots, having all the thread the same color makes it difficult to see what's actually going on.

Sheet bend knot illustration from F&H

So anyway, I put up this instructional site, largely as a precursor to possibly writing a book on the subject, did maintenance, periodically added new info, and then life got crazy and I got distracted, and I ended up mostly abandoning it.  As life went on, and I moved from TX to Seattle I didn't think about it much, but I didn't bother taking the site down.  It's not like the information would go out-of-date.  Maybe twice a year I'd get an email praising the site or asking for more detailed info/advice on something, and I answered politely with the best advice I could give, but I didn't think anything of it.  Flash forward to the last couple of months.  I've got the studio site up, and Analytics installed, tracking how many visitors I have and where they're coming from (not a lot, and generally direct), and it occurs to me to put Analytics on F&H, "just to see."
Apparently F&H has been quietly gathering notice while I wasn't looking, and is now considered a standard internet reference on net-making...particularly the illustrations about how to make the knots.  It's getting 30-50 hits/day, with referrals from all sorts of other places.  The most entertaining thing to me is that while I made it thinking on the scale of lace and hairnets, a lot of my traffic is from fishing and utility-related sites.  Apparently everyone needs good illustrations.

Long story short (I know, too late), past project might be current again, simply because the internet kept it from just going away when I was done.  It won't be a lot, just a couple hours here and there to keep things fresh that might eventually add up to enough to publish in dead tree version.  My main focus will still be metal and glass, but you might end up seeing me work silk in on occasion now, too. :)

becoming legitamate, and other legal matters

I know I'm late again.  I'm probably going to change official posting day to Monday or Tuesday, so when I'm late, I'm not so terribly late.  My lame excuse this time is that I spent the weekend in Pasco, on the other side of the mountains, having my convention art show debut.  I didn't manage to sell anything, but learned a lot about lighting and display, and made a few connections.

The big news this week is that I'm going to go legit in the eyes of the law.  I'll be registering name/business with the state department, getting my sales tax #, and possibly even getting my city business license, too.  And that's just the local stuff.  I'm going to be trademarking name/logo as well.

In more creative news, I've finished the solar system buttons!  I'm not terribly happy with how the sun came out, but I'll live.  There should be pics of those in the next few days (they're taken, but not edited yet).  My first set of copper plates for the elemental creatures series arrived on Monday, so I should be able to get going on those in fairly short order.  I think I'll do a Seasons series next, and after that, I'll probably start a long, intermittent series of "species of firebird" (you know, fire peacock, fire hawk, fire sparrow, that sort of thing).

That is all the news for now.  Hopefully there will be pictures soon.

All school, all the time (until next quarter)

The Final Critique in my 4th jewelry design class is Wednesday, and I was really concentrating far more on business than school at the beginning of the quarter, so now I'm making up for it by putting all of my energy into school.  I promise I'll post pictures of everything afterward.  As a teaser, I've been doing mirrors/mirror frames all quarter, and specifically looking at mirrors as scrying tools.  At least one of them is going to end up being kept for my own altar.

In business news, I'm starting to post some leaves on Etsy, but I don't have many available at the moment.  Some have sold, and a bunch are off at Blowing Sands, and I haven't had the time to cut out any more.  I've been looking at finding a fabrication facility to cut custom enameling blanks for me, but that's turning out to be quite expensive.  I have found what look like acceptable blanks for various leaf types available commercially, though.  I'll be ordering some to try it out. 
Also, I'm thinking about maybe starting to do some shows this coming year.  I'm looking at maybe a regular craft fair or two, but I'm mostly looking at sci-fi/fantasy type conventions and the like, as my enamels seem to be tending to the fantastic and whimsical, especially with the leaves.  If I manage to sort out a live appearance somewhere, y'all will be the first to know.

Sales Outlets and General Design

***all apologies!  I wrote this on Saturday with the intent of posting it on Sunday, and then completely spaced it.***

Firstly, a plug for the Silent Art Auction at North Seattle Community College.  It will be on Tuesday, Nov. 30 from 10am-6pm on the ground floor of the College Center building.  If you're in the vicinity, please stop by.  I will have a lot of things for sale, along with all the other fantastic artists among the students, faculty, and staff of NSCC.

Secondly, I'm definitely going to have a small case of various enamels at Wayward Coffee for at least the holiday season, hopefully longer.  It will, for starters, be mostly leaves and a couple of Different Worlds pieces.

Thirdly, I love design.  All design.  I also love it when an organization, particularly a non-profit, turns out to have a deep, honest, ingrained, expansive sense of humor.  If you take these 2 things and put them in a blender, you get 826, a coalition of non-profits dedicated to helping kids become better, more enthusiastic writers.  One of the ways they help support themselves (ans also have bases of operation) is by having physical storefronts selling humorously surreal products.  Some time ago, I followed some links to Echo Park Time Travel Mart, but thought it was just some temporary art installation project.  I walk by Greenwood Space Travel Supply several times a week, and noticed that they were connected to some non-profit having to do with writing, but didn't think much further on it.  Today I followed a link on Etsy to The Museum Of Unnatural History, and in a scramble to find out where the hell I could get some of those posters, I finally put all the 826s together.  There are a number of stores on unique themes scattered throughout the country, and now I want to travel around to all of them and bring home awesome things.

Always test before distributing

Pretty much the first of anything I make is reserved for my personal use, so I can see how it holds up to wear, and if there are any further engineering/durability problems that need solving.  I've been wearing the leaf comb for a week now, and have come to the conclusion that the plastic comb I had the leaves mounted to was an utter piece of crap.  I started out with 7 tines, and now I'm down to 3.  I've ordered some metal combs that will hopefully hold up better.  Also, I made them of slightly-too-thin metal, so the enamel has some cracks in it.  I'm bumping them up to 22-gauge for the next set.

In somewhat cautiously positive news, I think I've found some retail outlets for my work.  1) A boutique up on Phinney Ridge, near the zoo, has expressed interest in trying the leaves on consignment (Yay!), and I think that the focus on hand-mades there will do well for my stuff. 2) My favorite coffee shop (Wayward in Greenwood) also shows/sells art, but it's mostly 2-d hangable stuff, so I didn't really think about it as a venue. Apparently I was wrong, as when I was in there on Friday, the owner expressed enthusiastic interest in my stuff.  Also, I know the clientele there, and it would put some of my more geeky work in front of more geeky people (folks like me!).  The practical upshot of all this is that I need to get a *LOT* of production done this week with the new engineering, as I want to have enough pieces to start negotiating with by Friday.