My first drawing for Gemma Correll’s awesome new Flickr group – What I Wore Today, basically Wardrobe Remix for shy artists! This is a September pic but I have basically been wearing that Fat Rabbit Farm hoodie non-stop for the last 6 weeks. So, what else happened in August?
Books I enjoyed
Samaritan by Richard Price
Picked up for £1 in the WH Smith sale, hurrah. One of the writers on The Wire so you know it’s good stuff and he wrote Clockers, a few scenes of which turned up in The Wire too. I wasn’t disappointed.
Saved! bt William Hoffer / A Night To Remember by Walter Lloyd
Two books on passenger ship sinkings, how nice. I picked up the first in a charity shop in Oban for about 40p – there were a lot of books about ships and transport in Oban. It’s a real time description of the sinking of the Andrea Doria and, as you can probably tell by the title, almost everyone survived. I then mooched a copy of the Titanic book to compare the two. Both quite depressing and my limited experiences of open sea mean I am steering well clear of cruise ships, regardless of how much the technology has improved. I bet the cost cutting hasn’t.
The Science of Shopping by Paco Underhill
Written by a guy who basically studies shoppers and can thus tell you why things aren’t selling, and how best to grab your shoppers’ attention at the right time. It’s almost entirely about retail shops but I still learned a few things to apply to my craft fair stalls. The internet section is frankly hilarious in its lack of foresight. The poor guy insists internet shopping will never be a big thing until they can work out a way to show bigger product images and think of some way people can order without having to email the store and wait for a response. Oh dear.
Good things I watched
Mission Impossible 3
No way was I expecting to enjoy this as much as I did. Good old JJ Abrams. He really is the best at highly entertaining nonsense.
The Sopranos
Yeah, I finally finished Season 1, only ten years after everyone else. It is fantastic but I kind of wish I had seen it before The Wire as I think I would have liked it even more. Does that make sense?
Projects completed
– a whole week of birthday crazy on SCK
– Glasgow Craft Mafia flyer
– Pattern designs for Spoonflower
– Live chat service added to shop
– Hello! handpainted cards
Interesting new blogs in my RSS
– Quaint Living (Alice Peapods’ new site and lovely it is too)
– We Make Words (just lovely)
– A Home For All Seasons (Miss Crafty’s new home blog)
– FU Penguin (how on earth have I missed out on this for so long? And why is someone cursing at cute animals quite this funny?)
Exciting things I purchased
– Snow Leopard for my mac, thanks to Apple backdating upgrades to June computer purchases. £7.95 = yay!
– supplies for exciting new products
– more drawstring bags for Button Bags, including turquoise!
– more washi and notebooks than you can imagine, for a custom wedding order
– amazing surprise things for my sister’s birthday.
Musical Rediscoveries
As before, awesome stuff I have rediscovered in my epic iTunes Library Relistening project. I’m up to the 3.5 minute songs now.
– Margaret Berger
– Dubstar
– Kenickie
– Bertine Zetlitz
– The Kitchen
Online sales
Items sold on Shopify: 15
Items sold on Etsy: 6
Items sold on Folksy: 8
Items sold on Dawanda: 2
Bit slow this month so thank goodness for mydeco sale madness and craft fairs! Hopefully, we’ll be turning the corner into holiday shopping season very shortly.
