Luna's Baublebilities

I hope this isn't the beginning of a trend.  This is the 3rd Sunday in October when I have felt lousy.  I'm going to end up on the 'watch list' for our branch - seriously.  I considered going to church today but since my throat hurts when I breathe, speak or swallow, I thought it would be kinder to everyone else to stay home and keep my coughing Maxx home, too.

Hopefully, my body will take advantage of the rest and I'll be back on my feet tomorrow.

I got to use my dye table for silk painting yesterday.   It was wonderful.  It still needs some tweaks - like a few pull out trays for balancing my dye tray on while painting and it would be nice to get the wall behind it painted so it doesn't look so much like a low budget garage but it is generally functional and it makes me happy.  The halogen lights do make the dye dry faster but not so fast that salt effects stop working - just fast enough that I can work a bit faster.  In the past I have always had to either leave the silk on the stretcher until teh dye dried or try to carefully remove the wet silk and hang it where nothing would touch it while it dried.   hat could take hours and I ruined a few scarves trying to move them.  Last night, scarves were dry within 10 minutes of completion.  Awesome.

I also unrolled my foam floor mat yesterday since I was on my feet all day at the dye table.  It also makes a real difference in how tired my legs get.  Now I just need to decide whether or not to secure it there and how.

You know what else is awesome?  Molly Bryn finally figured out that camera angle makes all the difference.  Change the angle - mom looses 20 pounds!  I don't know why everyone else usually wants to photograph my jowls.

Or else completely and utterly stupid.

I would think this was some sort of Horrifying Halloween Hoax if it weren't for the recent history of other, multiple horrifying "adjustments" over on Etsy.

On Wednesday, Andrew - an Etsy admin - posted here:

"Hi all,

We've made some minor adjustments to our search functionality to make it more user-friendly and to help keep our search results returning quickly.

- Due to technical limitations, we’re capping the number of items returned in a given search to 50,000. Our research indicates that clickthroughs drop to less than .001% and purchases drop to .000001% on item listings beyond 50,000 in a given search, so this change won’t negatively affect item discovery or sales. Also, many of our searches currently return less than 50,000 items. In those cases search listings will apear as they always have.

- When a visitor searches for something that our system has no match for, we won’t return any listings. Visitors have long been confused when we returned all items in this case. Now they’ll get to refine their search and find what they’re looking for more effectively."


Search at Etsy has been a huge problem from day one because the search function relies so heavily on tags that people add to their listings when they put items in their shop.   Sellers have been asking for YEARS that etsy address this issue.  So - did they fix the BLINKING blatant tag abuse problem?  No.  

Basically, what this new change means is that if you sell in a high volume category - like jewelry or supplies, the search runs out after 50,000 items and there is no longer any way to jump around and find items that were listed a long time ago.  Like yours if you didn't re-list yesterday.  Your 20 cents no longer buys you 4 months of exposure.  For some of us - jewlers, supply shops, you're lucky if your 20 cents buys you 4 days.

Artfulbeginings spells it out right here:

"So I just did some calculations for the top seller here, Yadanabeads. She has 1829 listings in Supplies. Main category "supplies" cuts off any listings made before October 27th (!). 940, or about half of Yadanabeads listings are from before October 27th - for those, she paid $188 to NOT show up in her main category, Supplies. She only needs to choose one main category, Supplies, to list and supposedly that listing should be good (i.e show up) for 4 months. The $0.20 is a LISTING fee, not a SEARCH fee."

and here:

"Going back to Jewelry, there are 1,617,214 listings. Of those, only 50,040 are showing up on the main category listing page (1251 pages, 40 listings per page). So due to the "technical" difficulties, Etsy is NOT honoring $324,234.80 in listing fees in Jewelry alone.

sadly, my math is good."


This is all very ugly.  Come visit me and a whole world full of excellent artists and crafts people on ArtFire

Studio Tour is coming! 

I have approximately 6 working days to get ready.  With a beading party thrown in this Friday.  And a Halloween costume to make tonight.

The house is a disaster.  I have two weeks of laundry piled hither and tither.  (A washing machine is coming today!  But not a drier - we need to make sure that we can afford all the other critical construction materials before we buy a drier.)

What was I thinking?

I feel a bit like Kermit the Frog backstage as the show is falling apart.  Aaaaahh!   The Muppets always manage to pull it off, will I?

Time to go clean a spot for said washer, prime the bathroom, make some more sparklies and dye some more silk.  Oh - but first I have to wash the dishes because I can't get to my blasted studio sink because my teenager seems to be completely incapable of washing a dish. 

Cue manic screaming and and flapping of arms.

Ugh.  This was supposed to be a magnificent Peacock scarf.
Instead it is . . . something else.  Something else that is less than magnificent.

I don't know what happened.

Those dark blackish grey areas? Supposed to be deep, rich, warm brown.

The blue and purple are almost rich enough but there's very little definition and they just sort of . . . die as they merge with the brown.

It may be that I mixed too much ivory into my orchid dye - the transition point between the purple and brown.  But that doesn't explain why the brown migrated so little and the blue seems to dominate.  The Brown is supposed to dominate.  Sigh....

The overall effect was supposed to be more like this:

I will over-dye it tomorrow in a rich purple color and hope that will salvage it.

But using my new dye table was awesome.

There are still issues with lighting - in this case the halogen lights are very bright but also very hot. I'm a little concerned about how fast they may dry out silk painting projects - will I still get good salt effects?

I plan to find out tomorrow.

Here's my table with all of the tools moved off of it.  no - it's not glamorous but its a great height and length.  I don't have to dye on the floor anymore!


It is also not good yet for photographs.  I lit the area up and it looked good with my eye but once I got the photos on the computer it became obvious that I need some mode of diffusing the light and some other sources for front lighting. 





The halogens are great for back lighting but the ceiling lights paired with my little Ott light are just not quite bright enough to show colors well and I get lots of puddles of brightness surrounded by encroaching gloominess.

This one of a beaded necklace is O.K.









But the scarf photo is terrible.
















. . . .

This has been a poignant month. 

My girlfriends and I at Church learned that a dear friend who moved away a few years ago was diagnosed with breast cancer a few weeks ago.  She lives far away and we can't take her out for chocolate or help her keep her house clean and her family fed while she goes through whatever treatments are in store for her.  That's particularly frustrating and painful for all of us.

My Aunt Di, thankfully, is still in remission.

The SLC Arts Council is currently running a memorial exhibit of the quilts and textile art of Lorre Belt, who recently lost her life to breast cancer.  Every Thursday, I walk into work and am surrounded by the work of a sister artist who I never met but whose spirit was so strong that she left significant energy in every piece of fiber she touched.  The first week the show was up, I found myself wandering around the gallery touching everything - sweaters, penny rugs, quilts, socks, felt applique work . . . - in spite of my inner conservationist's strident protests.  Some of her work is unfinished.  Seeing it makes me think about the huge jumble of things - art projects, construction and decorating plans, children & family - that I would have to leave behind if I were called home early.

I will be 41 in a couple of months.  I'm carrying far too much weight which raises my risk factors for cancers and heart disease.  Photos from our weekend visit to the mountains high lighetd that fact for me - my Weston jowls have completely taken over my face! 

There's a lot that I do not want to leave behind early.  While I can't control all the events of my life, it is high time that I start controlling a few more of my risk factors.  I've been successful with managing my endometriosis in the past and  I need to translate that success to managing my diet and weight a little better again.  I seem to be past the constantly sick and/or broken phase of my life as Maxx's Mommy.  I'd like to fit into my awesome brocade pants again for the holidays.  I'd like to worry less about my longevity.  Feel free to nag me about it.

Here's a collection of pinks for October- fellow artists working in the color of the moment.

Photos of the new Sparklies that arrived last week. . . .Necklaces coming next.

Thank you, rozine!

When I got home tonight, I found that KittyBallistic had included my earrings in a truly stunning collection!




Thanks, Kitty!  These are so gorgeous!