New card in the shop! It’s from one of the early Ladybird readers, which has beautiful chalky pastel colours, and such evocative illustrations.
I love so much about this image…Peter’s sandals for one, as I remember having something very similar myself, the vice and huge, very sharp, saw lying on the bench, the ‘we have made these’ sign in the background… but mainly the expression on the little girl’s face:
Maybe it’s that I’m just getting back into all the routines of school and house and toddlerdom or maybe it’s due to the piles of nonsense covering my sewing room (although we did manage to take out the Christmas wrapping paper last night) but I am in a real crafting funk. I haven’t listed anything new for a while in the shop and I’m slightly uncertain about what direction I’m going in; I like the bags so maybe I should widen the range of those, but, on the other hand, they’re pretty labour-intensive and well, I’m not sure how well they sell overall. Then there’s the notebooks and stationery side – I like them a lot and they seem quite well-received so maybe I should introduce a bigger variety there. Then there’s the as-yet unmade clothing range – the kids and grown up stuff which in my head is cute, colourful and cool, with a retro twist but in reality is just a pile of fabric in a cupboard. Oh, yeah, and I’ve started learning to crochet (uh-huh) and there’s that art metal clay stuff that looks really interesting and of course, I want to get back to writing my novel and why don’t I try and sell some short stories and… aaaaaargh
Do you see where I’m going with this? My head is totally buzzing but in an unfocussed, feckless kind of way. I know i need to settle on one thing at a time and put some serious hours in, but I can’t decide which. I think it’s the idea that I couldn’t do all the other stuff, or that the other stuff is somehow better and if I’m not doing it then someone else will, with great success.
I’m also wondering whether this flitting from one discipline to another is making my folksy shop more of a mish-mash than it should be and if that has the result of turning off potential shoppers.
Anyway, in other news, my tooth is much better and it’s not actually raining just now. So perhaps things are on the up.
Ow. Ow ow ow ow. Really, OW.
There is nothing as bad as toothache, and I talk as someone who’s been through labour without painkillers. With muscle pain you can do visualisation and hot baths, with bones, you can rest and generally they won’t bother you, but toothache resonates in your head like a gong and there’s very little you can do about it. My jaw is achy and numb at the same time, my ear is throbbing and my molar is just sore. I’m feeling very sorry for myself.
That said, I’m so pleased I live in the UK where we have a National Health Service – Britain’s finest achievement, I’d say. So I’ve seen the dentist, been given drugs and have a return appointment on Monday (I could tell you exactly how many hours and minutes to go) where I will not get out of the chair until he’s drained the tooth and done root canal. And I don’t have to worry about whether I can afford it or not.
Flu, toothache and ceaseless rain… come on, 2009, you can do better than this!
