Monkeys and keyboards aside, one Random + CSS still doesn't make poop.

Nekocon was a fairly laid-back con, all things considered. It didn't feel like there were too many people there, and I heard a few people say that sales weren't as good as last year's . . . but that being said, when they hit at the artists' alley, they hit hard. My sales there beat ACen's and are just dollars away from ANext's. This means I am a very happy Random.

Weird con was weird, though. Standard heavy sellers like the metal flower kanzashi and hair sticks didn't move like usual, though the new steampunk cuff prototypes couldn't be kept on the table and I sold more single earrings than I have during my entire crafting career. The co-conspirator had the same problem--she wasn't really moving her magnetic katamari balls, which are usually gone by Saturday, but sold scarves instead.

Otherwise: The weekend was strangely relaxing. Our (cheap!) hotel had a pool and a hot tub, not to mention real sausage for breakfast (not spiced veggie stuff like our Otakon hotel gave us) and real sausage gravy to go with it. Voldemart had cheap wine, and IHOP was made of awesome and win and pecans. Then there was Buckroe Beach--not a show-stopper, but a nice, pretty clean, community-feeling place with a couple neat photo op spots--just five miles away. And best of all, I think I walked away without con plague. I intend to go back again next year. :D


(Also, I got a big plush Appa. He's so snuggly. I still haven't seen Avatar but I love this thingy anyway. *snugson*)

I'm finding that "craft" shows in my neck of the woods are fairly miserable things--in part, probably, because many let buy&sell retailers in with those of us who make all our own product. It doesn't take much talent to order things from Oriental Trader, y'know.

And the kind of people attracted to shows like that, who happily toss their money at rhinestone-encrusted, mixed-metal, glue-and-plastic low-quality wares . . .


Three customers stand out from this weekend, amongst the people who wanted to try all my earrings on (Eew eew eew no!), and the idiots who tried to tell me my belts are really necklaces (yeah, for those of you with 40" necks), and the bastard children picking things up and literally throwing them on the floor, and the worthless parents who stood by and watched their child grab & twist handfuls of my hair sticks' dangles.

The first really memorable one was a woman who came up, put a finger on my sign for maille bracelets, and said, "Malley?"

"No," I said. "Maille." Sounds like "male." Anyone who's ever seen the stuff, or gone to a ren faire, or even just paid attention in history class knows this.

"Are you Malley?"

. . .

"Maille," I said, in case she'd missed it.

"Malley," she said, and poked the sign again.

"No. Maille. Like chainmaille." I poked a different sign, since that seemed to be the language she was speaking.

"Is your name Malley?"

Apparently not.

"It's not malley. It's maille. Chainmaille."

Blank stare.

"Like knights wore. You know--middle ages?"

Blank stare.

I tried again. "Ren faires?"

Even more blank stare.

"You saw Lord of the Rings?"

She brightened. "Oh! Okay, I get it now."

"Okay," I said, and went to roll into the sales pitch--idiot or not, her money'd still feed me--but before I could get going, she started talking again.

"So you're not Malley?"


I miss convention crowd kids. They understand what you're doing if/when you feel the need to headdesk yourself into a coma.


Then, the next day, Maille turned up. With her mom. I looked up from the anklet I was making to find a tween girl & her mother in front of the table, poking my sign again. Thinking nothing of it, I started talking to them--and got a bit of deja vu when the woman asked, "Are you Malley?"

Actually, it wasn't like deja vu. It was more like waking up from a nightmare, only to realize you're still in the nightmare when the creepy-crawly launches itself out from under your bed.

I'd learned, though. "Nope. That's the bracelet, and it's maille."

The daughter's face at this point went from a bland smile to completely blank. The mother kept grinning and talking.

"She's Maille. We've never seen anyone spell their name like this before."

I did not shriek or headdesk or throttle her. "Well, that's maille. Like chainmaille. Like knights in armor. Or ren faires, or Legolas."

The daughter's face started falling. The mother started to look confused. "So that's . . . maille?"

"Yup." I held up my anklet, which at this point was just a shiny silver & purple chain. "This, too."

"That's . . . Her name is spelled the same way, and we say it Malley. No one else spells it like that. I . . . I've never seen it like this before."

"That's okay," I said. "That's what I guessed," is what I almost said. But I figured the kid was probably already scarred for life, so I held back. It's not every day you find out your parent is an illiterate uncultured moron--and thankfully, it's not every day that their being an illiterate uncultured moron saddles you with an unfortunate name.

At least her name wasn't Chlamydia, I guess.


The third . . .

So it was the last day, it'd been raining, I was burnt out and cranky and somewhat miserable, and this woman walked up to my booth, looked at me, and said, "Belly button."

It was my turn for a blank stare.

The woman stared back. After a few seconds, she tried again. "Belly button."

Staring wasn't working; so I blinked a few times, shook off the urge to run screaming, and finally said, "What?"

"Belly button!"

. . .

Maybe, I thought, she was asking to see my belly button. Or maybe she'd slipped her handler.

I took a deep breath, looked around for anyone who might've been looking for her--didn't see anyone, of course--and tried once more. "I'm sorry--what?"

"Do you have . . . belly button?"

I gave up at this point and poked myself in the stomach. "Yes I do! Right there."

The woman started gesturing at this point, and as she started speaking in something more closely resembling a sentence I realized that she wasn't handicapped--she was just phenomenally stupid. "No, like . . . do you have . . . like . . . belly button!"

At this point I realized she was trying to ask for body jewelry.

At this point I also decided that I'm not a fucking mind reader, I'm not being paid enough to translate someone's halfassed attempts at sentences, and it's not my fucking responsibility to ask myself the question about my own stock for them. So I played dumb. "I'm sorry, what are you asking?"

With what looked like a monumental mental effort, she finally coughed out a full question. "Do you have, like, the things for belly buttons?"

"Body jewelry? No m'am--I only carry jewelry that I make myself."

"But do you make jewelry for belly buttons?"

. . .


It really is amazing that I did not kill her.




This coming weekend theoretically puts me at a long-running show where the populace is more artistically minded and the crafters all definitely make their stuff by hand. I've already upped my game with a spiffy new tablecloth and some new displays--hopefully I'll do better there. And not kill anyone. At least not while there's witnesses around.

To do:

Get to Joann's for fabric for new tablecloth

Call the township office again and make sure we're speaking the same language Got voicemail, was polite, will wait for return. (One Kabuki-sized goat requires 20 acres of space!?)

Get to the fairgrounds again and get the paperwork straight for the show this weekend Drop some stuff off, too.

Pics taken and up for the custom sterling byz bracelet

Sew new tablecloth.

Post more things online. Maybe even some things that aren't flowers. *gasp!*

Sort the product/merchandising stuff. (Fix the earring stand, which I knocked over twice and need to re-merchandise anyway b/c my $12 earring section has overflowed.) Ahhahaha. No.

Stock: Finish the barrettes & hair forks; possibly make more earrings.

Print some signs for a slightly more professional touch.



I sneezed all yesterday, have been post-show fried for the past few days, have that weird post-sick taste/feeling in my mouth today, and am wondering if I was able to infect anyone else at work. :D (Especially the one woman who saw me sneeze and freaked out that I might be touching any of the books she might want. Aw baby, it's too late for that. Faggots Sick people been breeding your cows, raisin' your chickens, even brewin' your beer long before I walked my sexy ass up in this motherfucker. Everything on your god damn table got AIDS swine flu!)

Tags: living off shinies

If I do this, I'll have the time to get to everything that needs done. But that silly guaranteed-paycheck day job is in the way . . .

That being said, I've got $7 on Borders going out of business in or by August. (Last week it was $5--then I learned how close we came to going under at the end of last quarter.) We're not getting in a lot of titles again, just like we were when we didn't have credit or funds to buy books from the publishers . . . We've got bargain everywhere, trying to lure in the cheap people with non-returnables and remainders no one wanted to begin with . . . We've got empty shelves left and right, and stores that've been hit by Project Phoenix don't even have the hours to get new releases out of pallets and onto the floor . . . And then the head of Pershing, the company that owns 40% of our stocks and is in charge of our one $42.5 million loan, seems to think that we're really, really aiming towards something we're not.

The business model of book superstores, however, is likely to change over time from primarily bookstores to merchants of a wider variety of products and services which are designed to appeal to the higher-income educated consumer that, on average, spends an hour or more in a book superstore.

Hope Otakon goes well enough to cover the expected forthcoming holes in my finances. Stock-wise, I'm almost back up to where I was for ANext. Two more weeks' hard crunchwork should get me up to a decent level. I hope.



I think I shall stab the next person who asks me if this is made of "pop tabs." (Though the last person to ask me seemed borderline-illiterate--I stood an aisle away from her today at work and listened to her painful attempts at pronouncing titles, and I felt sad for her.)





Reading China Mieville's The City & The City, and remembering how much I missed the thinking person's fantasy as opposed to the straightforward popcorn reads. While it's a little dry and the characterization doesn't really stand out in any way, it's very intelligently written and the worldbuilding's fascinating enough to help drive the narrative forward & keep my attention. I'm about a third of the way through and thus far I like it. :)

I have an ARC and might be persuaded to let it go once I'm finished. :)

ANext = awesome :P I made as many hair sticks as I did for ACen--and I got hit harder on them here than I did there. I made a few dozen maille flowers for earrings, hair sticks, etc.--and have run out a few times. I made upwards of fifty maille anklets and have been playing catch-up since Friday.

You know how fucked I am for Otakon? Epically. I should quit Borders right now. Except for how I ph34r a conventionless winter.

French blueberry vodka? Also awesome. Zomg.

Sleep is still for the weak. And I will graciously admit to being weak, thx.

Today I accomplished a belt, five anklets, three pairs of coppery loop earrings, a pile of balls, and a few too many strange deviantart submission titles. I also realized that this is officially my second full-time job.

And to think, I always wonder why I can't seem get any writing done. Though I'm trying. A few lines here and there is better than nothing.

Tomorrow I make cowrie falls, dice bags, and a billion metal flowers.

Today I finished two belts, five helm weave anklets, two mobius + 4-in-1 anklets, one lapis & half persian anklet, and a dozen or so little metal flowers.

I have nine full days until ANext (most of which are Borders work days) and my hands hurt. I don't expect to finish everything I want to, but here's to seeing how much I can get done by then.




(Planned: Three more sets of cowrie falls, six more 4-in-1 anklets, three more Kuchi coin & maille anklets, three more pairs of copper jingly drops earrings [and a few of whatever other color I have handy], thirty more pairs of hair sticks, four more small dice bags, three more large dice bags, a set of juggling balls, some googlebombing, the displays [painting, foam-filling], a bunch of stuff I've currently forgotten, and a whole lot of drinking.)

The con co-conspirator and I put in our Otakon AA applications minutes after they became available. Here's to hoping it was fast enough.

It's easily gonna be 27,000 people. If I get in there, I'm not seeing any feasible way I'd be able to do the weekend show the week before. But I might not mind.


(Why yes, the prospect of taking in a quarter of my yearly pay in a weekend intrigues me, even as it simultaneously scares me to death. I'd literally have to double ACen's stock just to survive.)

So I wandered into PNC and got a merchant's account, complete with a little credit card reader that was supposed to be sent to me within the week.

I got it. It was the wrong one.


So I called the one guy who called the other guy who called someone else who tried to give me a customer satisfaction survey, only the morons somehow managed to confuse "Call after four" and "Call after three." Screw their survey anyway.

No matter. The right one got here today. It doesn't have the forms for me to send back the wrong machine, and its help line is staffed by the most wildly incompetent girl I've ever had the misfortune of being on the phone with. Five full minutes of silence at a time, interspersed with her trying to tell me I'd plugged the USB port of the card reader into my keyboard.

Apparently I confused her, asking what the hell some of the extra cords I got were for--so she sent me on to a technical support guy. Who couldn't help me, but sent me to the proper training phone center guy . . . who sent me to an online user guide book, after mansplaining at length how some companies charge for this and some charge for that, and some charge for this, and some might do this, and some might do that, but he really didn't know if PNC charges extra for cards processed via knucklebusters.


I just want someone to sit down and answer questions about the dumb thing. Jeesh. Instead, I still don't know what to do with the useless terminal or the printer plate with the wrong business name, and still have no idea what the pink-bagged extra cord (that plugs into nothing) is for--except maybe for a printer I don't have.



At least the virtual terminal site's interface is really user-friendly.




One week to ACen. Starting to be scared. :P

I found a newspaper article about how a very local bead shop hosts jewelry-making classes, and so I wandered down to see if they had any chainmaillers yet. They do; the girl behind the counter showed me an example of the woman's work.

The woman apparently cuts her own rings from Lowe's electrical wire. She doesn't cut them evenly and doesn't line them up properly when closing them. The end result, as handed to me, was jagged and mottled and uneven.

I thought of all the gorgeous and perfect things done by pro maillers on etsy, and I thought of all the people I have ask me things like, "But doesn't it get caught on your skin? On your clothes? On your hair?" and I handed off my business card anyway. Because y'know, I'm an asshole, but I'm fucking good at what I do.




I heard back from the people running the South Side Works Exposed fair, the week before Otakon in July; it seems they like me. I just want to share my (10x10') booth space with someone to cut down on costs. All this is currently speculative, though--if I can get in at Otakon I'd have to either panic twice as hard to finish that much more stock, or skip one. Chances of getting in at Otakon, though . . .


I suppose it wouldn't be too awful of a thing to make a ridiculous amount of stock, though. Hmm.

I am so not good at this part of the business yet.

ETA: Poaching is successful--the shop owner wants me to do a class. Now to figure out what I can teach besides snark-fu. :D

At Tekko, I got an invite to vend at the Wildrose Ren Faire, a newbie fair that's just getting its legs under itself. It looks like a fun time--very laid back, and it'd let me bring Kabuki!--it's just only about three hours away. Travel and lodging would kill me, Kabuki or no. :( (But I still might have to visit one weekend, to look.)


I also got accepted at a local craft festival two weeks from now . . . that wants me to bring my own 10x10' tent. I don't have a tent. I don't know where I'd get a tent, or how I'd transport it there. I might have to bail on them.


But! I am gonna end up at a local bellydance yard sale-type venue next weekend. There's no demands there besides to bring something tasty for sharing.

I love this crowd, really.




Next big show, though, is ACen. I'm not sure what else I need to make for there--though I should probably make a standing/folding necklace display and do have the crazy idea that I should make pirate hats. I figure the pirate market is still out there--lost, confused, possibly a little drunk, and wondering where the fuck all the ninjas came from--and that hats would be a quick way to corner it. I even turned out a few already. They look . . . plain.



Plainness can be fixed, of course--all I need is some buttons, ribbon, possibly feathers, and/or some trim. They also need spray starch. Oh, and to be priced.

I wonder what people would pay for a felt pirate hat. :-\




The con buddy is on the lookout for Otakon's AA opening. If we could get in there, we'd be set for months. We'd also panic for months beforehand, trying to get ready. It'd be epic. I kinda really hope we get in. But with the way artists' alleys have been filling up this year . . .

Meh. No harm in trying. :)

Tekko was awesome. I nabbed allherglory, we met up with wingedrivers and her friend, and we hit the Artists' Alley--and pretty much camped out. Tekko's people outdid themselves this year. The new convention center was great, the artists' alley was chilly at times but well-lit and huge, and I made the equivalent of two weeks' pay even after paying for parking, noms, a cutie dragon for zen_of_nihilism, a silly hat with fuzzy ears, and so on. You know--the necessities.

Seriously, this con rocked. The people? Awesome. The boys playing yaoi chicken? Lollarious. The co-worker's other half putting on a giant Ed head and strutting about Artists' Alley? Traumatizing, but still lollarious. The multiple live bands? Pretty darn cool. The multiple dances? Pretty sweet. Greg Ayres's mixing at Saturday's I-won't-call-it-a-rave dance? Surprisingly awesome. I got smashed on Midori and danced the alcohol out of my system my silly heart out. What can I say? Ayres spun Propane Nightmares, and I've been futzing about with a choreography for that since I first heard the song.

Consequently, I collected a few admiring types, one of which had to be ten years younger than me. There's no way to politely go "OMG! Dirty! Dirty! I need an . . . Oh shit, I am the adult!", so I might've shoved my ring finger almost into his eyeball before retreating. :P


Speaking of dancing: Dancing guy. This guy was quite possibly the utmost highlight of the con. And he just did not stop.

(You can hear me at the end of that first vid for a few seconds. My zaghareet has improved immensely.)

But yeah, I really hope they keep with this convention center for next year. I'm seeing some people grouch about the center's food policy--prices, people bitching at congoers bringing in outside food--but for this place and this atmosphere, I'd be more than willing to walk for food.




Now to start stocking up for the psychic fair on Thursday, the handcrafted eco-friendly fair in two weeks, and ACEN. D:

I got my new and nifty Fire Mountain Gems order in today, complete with some little anodized aluminum rings, and I promptly murdered them with my pliers. Seems they're an extremely soft temper and not very well matched to someone who's spent the day giving herself god-awful calluses making a maille skirt.

~~

A few flu-addled days of using nyquil to get to sleep means I can no longer get to sleep on my own. If I were tired, this would suck. Instead I'm feeling strangely productive.



I still can't get inverted aura right, but that's okay.

(You see that squished jump ring at the top of the pic? That's what happened when I grabbed the pliers and decided to see just how soft this aluminum was.)

~~

RaceFail '09 continues, prompting Scalzi rage, retraction of Scalzi rage, random fandom outings, and ranty posts about how outing people by real name is bad. In the shadows of all this, purplepopple tells me she's trying to get her full name taken off the site of those great Internet Little Guy champions, the OTW. Seems it's not working too well.

Way to grudgewank, OTW. You just stay classy.

~~

I have two belt commissions to do and a metal skirt thingy to finish and my fingers hurt. :P