Jason, Coraline and Harry

Mraz(not the Friday the 13th dude but that would work too.), Jones and Potter. These are three "people" whom I have been hanging out with lately.

A week ago today the girls and I headed over to Dekalb to the NIU campus to see Jason Mraz in concert again. Steve and I took Sarah and a friend back in November to the Aragon Ballroom to see him too. He is so incredible live that it only took a little begging and bribing to get me to take her and Emma on a school night this time. Plus the tickets were only $35 and NIU is an easy 40 minute drive west of here. Emma didn't really want to go but Steve was in California for the week so she had no choice. By the end of the night she was a fan too.
My favorite song of his (I love a beautiful mess!)


Last Friday night was Steve's poker night and it was his turn to host. Sarah had plans to go see Friday the 13th with friends so Emma and I went to see Coraline. She and I are fans of the movie Mirror/Mask and this movie has the same feel to it. I was a little surprised by how many families with really young children were there. This isn't a movie for your typical young animated movie fan. No cute cuddly pandas here, instead you get French & Saunders doing a partially clad Vaudeville number and Terri Hatcher threatening to sew buttons over childrens' eyes.
There are some incredible miniature knits in this movie. Check out how they were made:


And lastly, even though it has been almost two years since we finally found out if the Boy Who Lived well, LIVED, I still get my Harry Geek on occasionally. I wasn't always a Potter Fan. Sarah started reading the series in 2nd grade (2000?) and by the the time the 5th book was released was fully into it and I bought her Order of the Phoenix the first day it was released. I still hadn't read any of them yet at that time. By the time the Half Blood Prince was announced her enthusiasm had finally won me over. We had just put in our pool and I had lots of time playing lifeguard that summer that allowed me to get lots of reading done. I started with Sorcerer's Stone and by the time HBP was released I was full on addicted. I think over the summer of 2006 she re-read the series two or three times. We would swim or soak in the hot tub at night debating and discussing different plot points and share theories about the characters and what we thought would happen in the last book. Our liveliest debate was over Snape. I always stood by my conviction that he wasn't bad, he was just misunderstood. Our first midnight release party was for Book 6. We had pre-ordered it from Amazon but realized that we couldn't wait until it arrived by post when the rest of the world (or so it seemed) would be reading it all weekend. I still wasn't finished with OotP so I could be patient but never ask an obsessed pre-teen to be patient! By the summer of '07 and the release of Deathly Hallows there was no doubt we would be pre-ordering a copy at our local store and staying up until midnight to get it. We ended up taking the train into Oak Park for their big Diagon Alley extravaganza. The boys from Mugglenet were there doing a live podcast and we were in the front row. We made the train back to Geneva in time to get in line for our book and were home before 1a.m. I also bought the book on CD because I knew we wouldn't be able to tag team one copy and I wanted to be able to listen while knitting or driving. (I still haven't physically read Deathly Hallows and have it on my To Do list for this summer.)

This weekend Sarah handed me a copy of Harry, a history by Melissa Anelli. She had finally read it over the long President's Day weekend and thought I'd enjoy it too. I had to confess Sunday morning to shedding a tear or two while reading it. Yes. I'm a dork. It tells the story of the fandom from the inside and how this series of books changed lives, created a new genre of music, brought people together, and how the fans and the internet all had a place in the creation of Harry Mania. Who ever thought an orphaned wizard, a bunch of book nerds and punk rock would all have something in common?

While reading it I realized how this series also brought me and Sarah together and I'm imagining other parents and children had the same experience. I remember sitting on the lawn in Scoville Park in Oak Park waiting for Emerson and the rest of the Mugglecast boys to take the stage and saying to the girls how cool it was to be a part of something like that. While we were sitting there people all around the globe were also celebrating (and mourning a little) with us in a way. Reading Melissa's book brought all of that back to me. There was also a lot about the fandom (and Wizard Rock) that I was unfamiliar with that I found really entertaining and interesting.

Next month I'll be able to share how RENT, (Anthony) Rapp and REM have influenced our family!

Misc. Messy Stuff

     
I am having a bad case of scatter brain lately. I feel like I have a lot of different things going on in my world, life and brain and I'm having a hard time focusing on any of them.

Whenever I get like this the first thing to go is regular blog posting it seems. Maybe if I just focused on putting a few coherent thoughts together on a regular basis the rest would fall into place? Wishful thinking I'm afraid.

One reason for my discombobulation is because so much is up in the air in regards to the store. I thought I had made a decision a few months ago to close and go back to plan A and work from home on building up an online business. I even told my landlady that I would not be renewing my lease and started moving toward that end. This also meant that I came to terms with this decision and wrapped my head around it and accepted it. Once that was done I started to look forward to the change and started mentally shifting gears.

You know what happened next? Things started to pick up at the store. I've done more business at the store in the past four weeks than I did in the entire 4th quarter of 2008. People are interested in and signing up for classes. New customers are coming in because someone told them about me or they had driven buy countless time and finally decided to stop. The old adage that it takes at least a year for people to just know you are there is very true. I just wish it hadn't had to be this year!

This leaves me wondering if I'm jumping ship too soon. Or am I making the right decision and I just need to find a way to make myself and my products available locally somewhere else on a shorter term basis? (i.e. the flea market, open houses at my home, etc.) Could I if I really tried find a business partner (to take over teaching?) or a small business loan to help take up the slack? Am I giving up before I give it my 100% effort?

One thing I have learned is that indecision and second guessing is an awful way to do business. So this has left me feeling confused and out of sorts. I'm trying to follow my gut and my gut tells me that now is not the time for me to continue to risk it in this business climate. Because I am so uncertain and I don't have a solid plan to move forward with the brick and mortar store I'm going to continue to move toward closing up shop.

Well, golly gee! I didn't intend this post to be yet another page-long wank about the store and its future! The row of little pictures above illustrate some of the other little things that have been going on. I have other stuff but I'm so unfocused I can't even manage to take pictures! (Get it, unfocused!)

From L to R:
#1 My new phone. I've been wanting to drop my old service with Sprint and move my account to T-mobile with the girls but my contract didn't expire until May. Monday I was at the mall with the girls and I stopped to look at the T-mobile kiosk while Emma shopped in Claires. (I'll do almost anything to avoid going into that store!) I was then very professionally sold a new phone! Turns out Sprint was forced to offer customers the option to leave without an early termination fee and the time period to take advantage of it was coming to an end this month. I had been wanting either a Blackberry or G1 so I could access the internet when away from home or the store. I ended up with the G1. Very similar to the iPhone but it has a slide out full keyboard. I have an iTouch and was familiar with the interface and I prefer the real keyboard. I'm still learning all the nifty new things this baby can do but so far I give it high marks.

#2 New fabric! Lila Tueller's Soiree came in last week. I only have six prints from this one because I wasn't sure judging from the paper samples I had to choose from if I was going to like it. I may have to order more! It is so bright and pretty and just screams SUMMER! It really brightened up the store when I put it out.

I also have Wonderland from MoMo coming soon. I ordered a large selection of this one because I think it is just incredible. I love the whimsy and fun use of colors and pattern.

#3 Sale fabric! Because I have ordered some new collections and I'm planning on moving everything to my house in a few month, I need to trim the selections down. I've put a lot of great fabric on clearance sale. Holiday and seasonal prints are as low as $4.99/yard. Popular designers like Jennifer Paganelli, Joel Dewberry, Tina Givens, and April Cornell are marked down to $6.99/yard.

#4 Last month my neighbors had a bad case of Abominable Icicles. I sat here and watched them throw tennis balls and anything else at hand toward the roof trying to knock them down. Finally one day a chunk fell and broke the awning roof off from over their backdoor. They then decided to play a little "ice hockey" and got rid of them for good! I was happy that I didn't have to witness an attempt at the Darwin Awards first hand that day.

#5 Clowns are scary. This little fellow was in a bag of plastic clown/doll heads my mother gave me when I was home over the holidays. I still haven't come up with anything to do with them other than frighten small children and taunt the cats. Maybe I'll make a hydra version of Dollipede.

Now I remember why I don't blog more often. This post has taken me almost all day to get done and it doesn't have great pictures or anything. Time for me to take more ginko biloba and caffeine!

Suggestions please.

I'm doing what I guess could be called market research. I need help decided what if anything I should start making to add to my etsy shop.

I'm closing the brick & mortar store in April and moving everything online. I'm in the process of uploading everything to a stand alone store that will be linked to this blog and this domain name. I've been pretty successful on etsy this past six months as a supply seller so I will probably keep that going for the time being.

I also have a second etsy shop where I used to try to sell my photography. But that never took off and it was too time consuming to promote and keep up to date for very little pay off. I am thinking of turning that shop into a shop for my handmade items. I've tried in the past to sell my handbags and a few other things at etsy and had moderate success.

I have a lot of fabric that isn't really popular and needs to move one way or the other and I was thinking of using it to make stuff to sell. I thought if I focused on one or two things I could streamline production and promote easier. I just need to decide what those things will be. I've found that the etsy handbag market is really saturated and competitive so I think I'm not going to go back into that arena again.

I am debating between: aprons, pajama/lounge pants and skirts. What do you all think? The other possibility would be to market to knitters and make sock bags, accessory zip bags, and larger totes.