This is a commonly touched-upon topic, but though I think about it often, I've never really talked to anyone about it...
Well, today I made a sacrifice for my artistic integrity, and I'm proud of myself for it. Probably I shouldn't be...it was only decent of me...but I did give up something, so I reserve the right to my pride as a consolation prize.
I read something on the Etsy forums (fora...) recently, an artist's confession that she had accidentally stolen some other people's designs. She said that she got a custom order request, and the woman requesting claimed that she had designed the images herself, and wanted them put on the seller's wares. The customer was a dear friend of the artist, apparently, and the artist thought that her friend's images were so cute that she asked, in exchange for a discount on the custom order, for permission from the customer to reproduce the images in her shop. The customer gave her permission, got her discount, and got her items.
The seller reproduced the images on her wares, and apparently received many very angry messages that she was a plagiarist, a copyright-violator, a business-thief, etc.. She was reported to Etsy admin several times, I don't know if anyone pressed copyright violation charges or anything, but she was humiliated, abused, threatened and reprimanded, all because the customer, her FRIEND, had lied and said that she had created the images herself...and then let her friend take the fall for an unknowing but illegal action in exchange for a discount. She sold her friend out for a discount from her...talk about reprehensible. The least she could have done was said that she planned to sell the images herself and saved her face AND her friend, and not taken the discount.
Since the friend knew that she had not created the images and said that she had, clearly this is a case of knowingly defrauding other artists.
Well, today, I received a custom order request for a ring "similar to" one that I had in my shop...the only real similarity was that they both involved a heart shape. She attached a picture of the ring she wanted made. It was a real ring, and had been made by someone else.
The customer probably didn't know that the techniques involved in making my ring and the ring she wanted were completely different, and she may not even have known that my knowingly reproducing a work that someone else designed - even if it was as iconic a shape as a heart put on something as normal as a ring - is illegal and considered plagiarism. But I do.
As an artist who is just-starting-out in the slowest and most preoccupied way, EVERY sale is a big deal to me. Every custom order, especially, because those, at least in theory, make people the most happy that you exist to make them jewelry, and therefore the most likely to brag to other people about it: oh yes, I had it custom made for me by this artist on Etsy, oh yes, she's fantastic, she makes the most adorable things, I just had to get one that was just for me, more personal, you know - the more they talk you up, the better they are likely to feel about having bought from you, and so it makes everybody happy, including the people they're talking to, who may go on to order from this so-esteemed artist. Custom orders are a big deal.
But, you know. I'm not like that. And because it's an object, not just an image, I know she didn't make it or have claim to it...if she could make it, she wouldn't be asking me to do it. And I do realize that, unlike the woman who lied to her friend and claimed that she made the images herself, this customer probably didn't realize that it would be a problem for me if I were caught making what she wanted. She was probably just hoping I would make it cheaper than whoever made it first, and she didn't try to claim anything about the legality of it to me, or falsify anything. So I don't blame her. But it still rubbed a bit of salt in my wounds to know that not only did I not get the order, but I was the one who had to decline it, like saying "No, thanks, I won't take your money and buy new beads with it." I don't have the money, I didn't make the piece for her, I didn't satisfy her want, and it's MY FAULT. Though it isn't really, it just stings a bit to have had to write back to her myself that I must decline.
And what REALLY stings is, I directed her to look at other Etsy shops who make similar things, hoping she'd just break down and buy what she wanted from the original seller or get a similar one from someone who actually created a design in the same vein that she wanted...and hopefully my pointing out that that would be plagiarism and illegal will be enough to convince her not to put other people in the same position as she put me. It's very possible that she didn't intend at all to steal business from someone and just hadn't thought about it. But I have no guarantee, none whatsoever, that she won't just send the same message to someone else, and that that person will be as scrupulous. And I'll have my dignity, and my artistic integrity, and no money to buy more beads. And the unscrupulous person will have her money instead. Why is that allowed to win?
Luckily, I just bought more beads, so I'm happy for a while. Lucky stones! And in the end, I feel better for having chosen integrity over money, when the choice was offered. Someone may still get plagiarized, and I will be able to sympathize, and consider myself to have more integrity than whoever did it, and if I am ever plagiarized I will be angry, and I will not be a hypocrite for it. Thank you, mom, for raising me that way.
But seriously! New focal beads! LUCKY LUCKY LUCKY! And one of them is just for MEEEEE.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
A Research Blog
I've lately realized that, while I follow a lot of other jewelry-makers' blogs for techniques, inspiration and tips...that stuff is only interesting to me because I am also a jewelry-maker. And even then, the more interesting blogs have other stuff thrown in, too. Someone's scruffy husband being a dear and fixing the car on the dramatic road trip to the bead show. Someone's apple-cheeked kid spilling ice cream on himself. I'm a sucker for that stuff, and it makes them seem more like real people as opposed to just really-awesome-jewelry machines. I love jewelry, but I will never be a machine. Someone I can relate to is much more interesting.
And I, like every other jewelry-maker and -seller, also have to realize that my target audience is not, in fact, other jewelry-makers; it’s jewelry-buyers, or people who will tell other people about my jewelry. And I can only assume that a string of neat-looking stuff will not hold their attention as much as a real person’s life, because the same is true of me even though jewelry is one of my favorite things. Bottom line, it wouldn’t kill me to show some personality on this thing. Hence my “cooking for absolute idiots” posts showcasing what an absolute idiot I am about cooking. If anyone’s listening, stir-fry is NOT THAT HARD, I SWEAR.
Well, I don’t have a scruffy husband or an apple-cheeked kid...and dear, camera-shy Boyfriend of Mine would probably object to me putting his picture online...but I do have a life besides jewelry. In fact, it’s been taking up all of my time lately. When I said “It would take me 3 pieces a week to catch up” I didn’t mean that I would actually manage that. I knew it wouldn’t happen when I said it, at least not soon, and just recently I started my analyses in earnest, so it definitely won’t. But it is interesting nonetheless. (THOUGH I DID MAKE TWO PIECES TODAY, YES TWO. PICTURES UP SOON.)
So, prepare for a long, laughing, overdramatized account of my adventures in...(dun dun dun) LABELING SOUND FILES!
For anyone who doesn’t know (which is most of the internet) I’m a linguist by major, and my research for this summer has been studying intonation patterns in a production study. Basically I get people to talk into a microphone and then figure out how getting them to say certain things rather than others affects their pitch. It’s the kind of stuff that’s fascinating if you’re a linguist, and if you’re not, you don’t have any opinion about it, so how ‘bout that weather?
But I’m learning a lot of stuff that bears thinking about even if you’re not into intonation, phonetics or any sort of linguistics at all. General research stuff, like: How do you decide when something is an error and when it’s a data point? But back to that in a moment.
My analysis work so far has mostly been prepping things for computers to pull data out of them. I go through sound files and label certain parts, like high points in the pitch and where the vowel starts. Sounds easy, right? Until you realize that I went through a three-day stretch where all I saw was this:
Which by the way, zooms out to this:
Which is fine except it zooms out to this:
And a couple more times, to this:
Which is not quite as large as the whole thing:
Those are 1) the level I work at, 2) zoomed out twice from there, 3) zoomed out twice again 4) zoomed out 4 times from THAT point, and then 5) zoomed out a whole three more times because that’s all of it. Yeah. Eleven zoom-outs total. Notice the way the pitch track disappeared after the first one? That’s because if I have it calculate all of that even if I’m zoomed in to like 2 seconds, it slows down my computer. I have to zoom into ONE SECOND to actually see what I'm analyzing...and the file is ten minutes long. Long story short, I spent 22 hours straight staring at a screen that looks very much like 1) up there, got 8 hours of sleep and then went back to it for another 16. And I only got to halfway through subject 5 before I burned out. There are 6 subjects...I’m taking a break and doing some data-pulling, thanks.
Doing stuff like that really starts to mess with your head after a while. Somewhere in the middle of figuring out where the d ends and the m begins in this squiggly line:
(Hint: The cursor’s on it. Couldn’t tell? That’s okay, it means you’re sane!)
I realized that in trying to label the end of the consonant, I could not remember what consonant “consonant” started with. At one point I freaked out wondering, “Where’s the consonant at the end of ‘be’?? I can’t find it anywhere!” Only to remember that it is, and always will be, in the hammer space.
After several hours of each, I started to get thoroughly sick of nearly everyone’s voice (Okay, just the nasally ones...subject 2 was actually rather adorable). And of course, each and every subject came up with a special individual problem that I had to figure out how to deal with...one subject inexplicably changed all his Ds to Ns – don’t ask me, he doesn’t do it in person – another had a mysterious extra pitch peak that made her samples all look like little hearts, which was cute and all, but I have to label one of those peaks, which one? WHICH ONE? - another subject had weird lilts at the beginnings of the parts that I was labeling that made it impossible sometimes to make an accurate label...and even when it was possible, it was nerve-wracking because every time, I could be wrong. Here I was labeling important parts of the intonation contour, and suddenly this bizarre thing happens and I have no idea what to do...and then each subject proceeded to make his own individual weird thing happen like EVERY OTHER TIME. And since my mentor was on a two-week vacation and is absolutely terrible at answering emails even at the best of times, let alone while hiking with his kids...Yeah. Bad news. Some freaking out happened. When I got too crazy to label anymore, I ended up labeling a lot of them “m” for “help Me please” even when in my normal state they seemed totally fine. And that was for the ones that are totally fine.
Which brings me, by the way, to my previously-mentioned dilemma. How do you tell when something is an error, some outlier to be not counted with the rest...or a data point, a piece of useful information? How do you know when it’s important? For instance:
This is what the contour I was working with looks like:
So what do I do when all of a sudden it looks like this instead?
And there were a lot that were less obviously software problems. Do I assume “That can’t be right, it doesn’t look like the rest of them” or do I have to say, "Well...that’s the way he made it, I have to take that into account.”? Most of the time, it’s the first one...the software I’m using is notoriously unreliable when it comes to tracking pitch and is known to change its mind on what’s what pitch depending on things like how far you’re zoomed in, how far left you are of the pitch in question, and what settings you’ve chosen to display the pitch at. It’s usually reasonable, if something looks bizarre, to assume “That’s an error.” Especially the cases where you can see a normal contour under that, looking all groovy, and there’s just a few artifacts screwing it up. Or, if not by virtue of the software, it’s entirely plausibly throw-out-able just because the person got tired and said it wrong. A lot of them switched into listing mode, for instance, when we wanted a pitch contour that sounded like a standalone statement.
But then there are the brain-stirring errors that completely change everything and you have no choice but to just go with it against your will even though you know the sentence doesn’t sound like it looks like that and why is that bump there, but it’s too big to just be an artifact, what’s going on? MOM?!
My “m” labels go through tides of desperation with my sleep cycle...near the end of my “functional” periods there are lots of notes like, “That has to be an error, why would it look like that?”, “Should I be worried about this?” and “This one's high in a really awkward place, much like a stoner at a funeral.” Part of my way to keep myself sane was to think up a new emoticon denoting devastation whenever someone said it in a way that we’d have to throw out, like using the wrong contour, or coughing in the middle. If my mentor ever actually reads those (unlikely), I think he’ll get a new perspective on the art of iconography. They included upside-down, upside-right, backwards and to either side.
Halfway through Subject 4, I got the idea that I’d blog about it afterward...and that kept me going through another half or two of data set, stopping every once in a while to take screenshots. Every annoyance or delay was like “BOO-YAH. ANOTHER INTERESTING SENTENCE. I CAN TOTALLY HYPERBOLIZE THAT.”...including that one.
I still burned out.
Not to complain, though...it was just a strange time not many of anyone who’s going to read this will ever experience...and it’s probably the easiest job I could have that would still be intellectually stimulating, and the schedule is lax enough for me to still be awake at 5:00 am (now)...and if I had left myself more time to do it before it was necessary to get crackin’, then I wouldn’t have had such crazy days, but actually, it was rather fun. I’ll try not to do it again, but if I could go back and have the chance to do it once, I’d still do it the first time. I feel like that’s an experience I ought to have had, doing almost-grad work the summer after my sophomore year. And I’m learning a ton! Pretty soon everyone (who works in intonation theory) will start hearing about Tonal Center of Gravity – and if anyone asks, that’s my mentor’s idea, oh yeah. I know that guy. I could get you an autograph...if you’re nice.
Oh and also, Boyfriend and I had a second anniversary. That was fun. More rain than expected. Less being outside than expected. Therefore, more cozy than expected, so it's all good.
And I, like every other jewelry-maker and -seller, also have to realize that my target audience is not, in fact, other jewelry-makers; it’s jewelry-buyers, or people who will tell other people about my jewelry. And I can only assume that a string of neat-looking stuff will not hold their attention as much as a real person’s life, because the same is true of me even though jewelry is one of my favorite things. Bottom line, it wouldn’t kill me to show some personality on this thing. Hence my “cooking for absolute idiots” posts showcasing what an absolute idiot I am about cooking. If anyone’s listening, stir-fry is NOT THAT HARD, I SWEAR.
Well, I don’t have a scruffy husband or an apple-cheeked kid...and dear, camera-shy Boyfriend of Mine would probably object to me putting his picture online...but I do have a life besides jewelry. In fact, it’s been taking up all of my time lately. When I said “It would take me 3 pieces a week to catch up” I didn’t mean that I would actually manage that. I knew it wouldn’t happen when I said it, at least not soon, and just recently I started my analyses in earnest, so it definitely won’t. But it is interesting nonetheless. (THOUGH I DID MAKE TWO PIECES TODAY, YES TWO. PICTURES UP SOON.)
So, prepare for a long, laughing, overdramatized account of my adventures in...(dun dun dun) LABELING SOUND FILES!
For anyone who doesn’t know (which is most of the internet) I’m a linguist by major, and my research for this summer has been studying intonation patterns in a production study. Basically I get people to talk into a microphone and then figure out how getting them to say certain things rather than others affects their pitch. It’s the kind of stuff that’s fascinating if you’re a linguist, and if you’re not, you don’t have any opinion about it, so how ‘bout that weather?
But I’m learning a lot of stuff that bears thinking about even if you’re not into intonation, phonetics or any sort of linguistics at all. General research stuff, like: How do you decide when something is an error and when it’s a data point? But back to that in a moment.
My analysis work so far has mostly been prepping things for computers to pull data out of them. I go through sound files and label certain parts, like high points in the pitch and where the vowel starts. Sounds easy, right? Until you realize that I went through a three-day stretch where all I saw was this:
Which by the way, zooms out to this:
Which is fine except it zooms out to this:
And a couple more times, to this:
Which is not quite as large as the whole thing:
Those are 1) the level I work at, 2) zoomed out twice from there, 3) zoomed out twice again 4) zoomed out 4 times from THAT point, and then 5) zoomed out a whole three more times because that’s all of it. Yeah. Eleven zoom-outs total. Notice the way the pitch track disappeared after the first one? That’s because if I have it calculate all of that even if I’m zoomed in to like 2 seconds, it slows down my computer. I have to zoom into ONE SECOND to actually see what I'm analyzing...and the file is ten minutes long. Long story short, I spent 22 hours straight staring at a screen that looks very much like 1) up there, got 8 hours of sleep and then went back to it for another 16. And I only got to halfway through subject 5 before I burned out. There are 6 subjects...I’m taking a break and doing some data-pulling, thanks.
Doing stuff like that really starts to mess with your head after a while. Somewhere in the middle of figuring out where the d ends and the m begins in this squiggly line:
(Hint: The cursor’s on it. Couldn’t tell? That’s okay, it means you’re sane!)
I realized that in trying to label the end of the consonant, I could not remember what consonant “consonant” started with. At one point I freaked out wondering, “Where’s the consonant at the end of ‘be’?? I can’t find it anywhere!” Only to remember that it is, and always will be, in the hammer space.
After several hours of each, I started to get thoroughly sick of nearly everyone’s voice (Okay, just the nasally ones...subject 2 was actually rather adorable). And of course, each and every subject came up with a special individual problem that I had to figure out how to deal with...one subject inexplicably changed all his Ds to Ns – don’t ask me, he doesn’t do it in person – another had a mysterious extra pitch peak that made her samples all look like little hearts, which was cute and all, but I have to label one of those peaks, which one? WHICH ONE? - another subject had weird lilts at the beginnings of the parts that I was labeling that made it impossible sometimes to make an accurate label...and even when it was possible, it was nerve-wracking because every time, I could be wrong. Here I was labeling important parts of the intonation contour, and suddenly this bizarre thing happens and I have no idea what to do...and then each subject proceeded to make his own individual weird thing happen like EVERY OTHER TIME. And since my mentor was on a two-week vacation and is absolutely terrible at answering emails even at the best of times, let alone while hiking with his kids...Yeah. Bad news. Some freaking out happened. When I got too crazy to label anymore, I ended up labeling a lot of them “m” for “help Me please” even when in my normal state they seemed totally fine. And that was for the ones that are totally fine.
Which brings me, by the way, to my previously-mentioned dilemma. How do you tell when something is an error, some outlier to be not counted with the rest...or a data point, a piece of useful information? How do you know when it’s important? For instance:
This is what the contour I was working with looks like:
So what do I do when all of a sudden it looks like this instead?
And there were a lot that were less obviously software problems. Do I assume “That can’t be right, it doesn’t look like the rest of them” or do I have to say, "Well...that’s the way he made it, I have to take that into account.”? Most of the time, it’s the first one...the software I’m using is notoriously unreliable when it comes to tracking pitch and is known to change its mind on what’s what pitch depending on things like how far you’re zoomed in, how far left you are of the pitch in question, and what settings you’ve chosen to display the pitch at. It’s usually reasonable, if something looks bizarre, to assume “That’s an error.” Especially the cases where you can see a normal contour under that, looking all groovy, and there’s just a few artifacts screwing it up. Or, if not by virtue of the software, it’s entirely plausibly throw-out-able just because the person got tired and said it wrong. A lot of them switched into listing mode, for instance, when we wanted a pitch contour that sounded like a standalone statement.
But then there are the brain-stirring errors that completely change everything and you have no choice but to just go with it against your will even though you know the sentence doesn’t sound like it looks like that and why is that bump there, but it’s too big to just be an artifact, what’s going on? MOM?!
My “m” labels go through tides of desperation with my sleep cycle...near the end of my “functional” periods there are lots of notes like, “That has to be an error, why would it look like that?”, “Should I be worried about this?” and “This one's high in a really awkward place, much like a stoner at a funeral.” Part of my way to keep myself sane was to think up a new emoticon denoting devastation whenever someone said it in a way that we’d have to throw out, like using the wrong contour, or coughing in the middle. If my mentor ever actually reads those (unlikely), I think he’ll get a new perspective on the art of iconography. They included upside-down, upside-right, backwards and to either side.
Halfway through Subject 4, I got the idea that I’d blog about it afterward...and that kept me going through another half or two of data set, stopping every once in a while to take screenshots. Every annoyance or delay was like “BOO-YAH. ANOTHER INTERESTING SENTENCE. I CAN TOTALLY HYPERBOLIZE THAT.”...including that one.
I still burned out.
Not to complain, though...it was just a strange time not many of anyone who’s going to read this will ever experience...and it’s probably the easiest job I could have that would still be intellectually stimulating, and the schedule is lax enough for me to still be awake at 5:00 am (now)...and if I had left myself more time to do it before it was necessary to get crackin’, then I wouldn’t have had such crazy days, but actually, it was rather fun. I’ll try not to do it again, but if I could go back and have the chance to do it once, I’d still do it the first time. I feel like that’s an experience I ought to have had, doing almost-grad work the summer after my sophomore year. And I’m learning a ton! Pretty soon everyone (who works in intonation theory) will start hearing about Tonal Center of Gravity – and if anyone asks, that’s my mentor’s idea, oh yeah. I know that guy. I could get you an autograph...if you’re nice.
Oh and also, Boyfriend and I had a second anniversary. That was fun. More rain than expected. Less being outside than expected. Therefore, more cozy than expected, so it's all good.
Monday, August 1, 2011
Well, that was a PayPal adventure...
Today, my business account got hacked.
I check my email very often, and when I opened it up not an hour ago, I saw "Receipt for your payment to match.com."
Some jerk had used my account to spend over $40 on a month's subscription to match.com, with authorization for automatic renewals. Now, I have nothing against match.com, but that was NOT me. I have a boyfriend, and furthermore, that account is nothing but business. All the money that goes into it is from sales of jewelry. All the money that goes out of it goes toward Etsy fees, supplies, tools and similar things like business cards. That money IS my business. I did NOT want it hacked.
I did a few things. I changed my password and security questions (though there are not many people who both know the name of my childhood best friend AND the name of my first roommate - except my boyfriend and I'm pretty sure he wasn't signing up for match.com - I still changed them just to be safe) and I opened a dispute claim with PayPal. PayPal seems to handle such things with cold ruthless efficiency, which is great in most cases except it didn't inspire in me a lot of confidence that they would believe me. I mean, when you click on the Pay with PayPal button, you log in and then who knows, you know? Nobody can tell if it's the right person or not...and my name is Leo in my PayPal account, not my full first name, so the person could have found that information in my PayPal account, put my name on his picture and still looked plausible to PayPal, and then what would PayPal think?
So, this claim was opened and I had this feeling of impending doom...I mean, after the dispute was officially under way, it said "funds will not be available" - I've heard so many horror stories about trying to get money out of PayPal when something is up with your account on either your end or a buyer's end, and I sort of despaired either of ever seeing my money OR of ever being able to use the account, or the rest of the money that was in it, again.
Well, I called match.com, too. And they handled it much less ruthlessly, efficiently OR coldly. I talked to a very nice man whose name was either Rico or Ricardo - the signal was low and I didn't quite catch it - who said he'd never come across such a thing before, he'd see what he could do. I gave him my details, my PayPal email address, my transaction numbers and what have you...and after a couple brief holds while he talked to his superiors, a cheery lady named Stacy came on and told me all was well. Not only had I been refunded, but my PayPal account and credit card number had been blocked from match.com's systems...so even if I've got some sort of keylogger and the guy has my new password as well, at least he can't use it on THAT anymore...and maybe if he tries it again and I catch him again he'll give up trying to use my account for things - too much effort, I hope.
And the best part of having called match.com is knowing that the guy had his account blocked. I don't know if they'd bother with any sort of investigation into someone using someone else's PayPal account, but you have to admit...for some sort of hacker with at least enough skill to get my username and password together in the same login box, he's kind of an idiot...not only did he not change my passwords or anything, or try to hack my email account as well to prevent me from getting the receipt of payment (lesson learned, by the way - from now on my PayPal email and PayPal account have different passwords), but the thing he bought was something that could be cancelled at any time by the provider...not like if he'd had a TV shipped to him or something...and it was also connected to his name and pictures of him, at least in theory. What was this guy DOING?
Anyway, PayPal immediately closed my case as soon as it detected that the transaction had been refunded, so my account is unlocked and all is right with the world except that there are identity thieves in it. Full day.
Also I may have been bitten by ticks. We'll see how this goes.
I check my email very often, and when I opened it up not an hour ago, I saw "Receipt for your payment to match.com."
Some jerk had used my account to spend over $40 on a month's subscription to match.com, with authorization for automatic renewals. Now, I have nothing against match.com, but that was NOT me. I have a boyfriend, and furthermore, that account is nothing but business. All the money that goes into it is from sales of jewelry. All the money that goes out of it goes toward Etsy fees, supplies, tools and similar things like business cards. That money IS my business. I did NOT want it hacked.
I did a few things. I changed my password and security questions (though there are not many people who both know the name of my childhood best friend AND the name of my first roommate - except my boyfriend and I'm pretty sure he wasn't signing up for match.com - I still changed them just to be safe) and I opened a dispute claim with PayPal. PayPal seems to handle such things with cold ruthless efficiency, which is great in most cases except it didn't inspire in me a lot of confidence that they would believe me. I mean, when you click on the Pay with PayPal button, you log in and then who knows, you know? Nobody can tell if it's the right person or not...and my name is Leo in my PayPal account, not my full first name, so the person could have found that information in my PayPal account, put my name on his picture and still looked plausible to PayPal, and then what would PayPal think?
So, this claim was opened and I had this feeling of impending doom...I mean, after the dispute was officially under way, it said "funds will not be available" - I've heard so many horror stories about trying to get money out of PayPal when something is up with your account on either your end or a buyer's end, and I sort of despaired either of ever seeing my money OR of ever being able to use the account, or the rest of the money that was in it, again.
Well, I called match.com, too. And they handled it much less ruthlessly, efficiently OR coldly. I talked to a very nice man whose name was either Rico or Ricardo - the signal was low and I didn't quite catch it - who said he'd never come across such a thing before, he'd see what he could do. I gave him my details, my PayPal email address, my transaction numbers and what have you...and after a couple brief holds while he talked to his superiors, a cheery lady named Stacy came on and told me all was well. Not only had I been refunded, but my PayPal account and credit card number had been blocked from match.com's systems...so even if I've got some sort of keylogger and the guy has my new password as well, at least he can't use it on THAT anymore...and maybe if he tries it again and I catch him again he'll give up trying to use my account for things - too much effort, I hope.
And the best part of having called match.com is knowing that the guy had his account blocked. I don't know if they'd bother with any sort of investigation into someone using someone else's PayPal account, but you have to admit...for some sort of hacker with at least enough skill to get my username and password together in the same login box, he's kind of an idiot...not only did he not change my passwords or anything, or try to hack my email account as well to prevent me from getting the receipt of payment (lesson learned, by the way - from now on my PayPal email and PayPal account have different passwords), but the thing he bought was something that could be cancelled at any time by the provider...not like if he'd had a TV shipped to him or something...and it was also connected to his name and pictures of him, at least in theory. What was this guy DOING?
Anyway, PayPal immediately closed my case as soon as it detected that the transaction had been refunded, so my account is unlocked and all is right with the world except that there are identity thieves in it. Full day.
Also I may have been bitten by ticks. We'll see how this goes.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Kitchen Adventures Part 2!
Made my first pizza last night...REALLY easy, and I didn't even have access to all the *optimal* things that I ought to have had, like flour and a good work space. I ended up just stretching the dough into a rough rectangle on a cookie sheet. I didn't oil the cookie sheet enough, though, that was my only major mistake. But anyway! EASY AS PIE (no pun intended):
Trader Joe's pre-made wheat pizza dough
One sliced tomato
(At least) 3 leaves fresh basil, cut into strips
(Part of) one can of pre-made pizza sauce
Little fresh mozzarella balls, cut into little round slices - as many as you like
Shredded mozzarella cheese
I put the pizza sauce on, then the toppings, and then the shredded cheese, but that's just personal preference. EASY. There are baking instructions on the package of dough so it wasn't even difficult to figure out...it worked exactly as it said. So basically, a really good and reasonably authentic pizza for minimal effort. Bam.
Trader Joe's pre-made wheat pizza dough
One sliced tomato
(At least) 3 leaves fresh basil, cut into strips
(Part of) one can of pre-made pizza sauce
Little fresh mozzarella balls, cut into little round slices - as many as you like
Shredded mozzarella cheese
I put the pizza sauce on, then the toppings, and then the shredded cheese, but that's just personal preference. EASY. There are baking instructions on the package of dough so it wasn't even difficult to figure out...it worked exactly as it said. So basically, a really good and reasonably authentic pizza for minimal effort. Bam.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Progress!
Some long-awaited progress: I have three pieces for you. I was in a rush on the way to the post office when I remembered I needed to take a picture of these, so the picture is pretty terrible. Oh, well. This was a custom piece. I like the colors but I might have actually preferred to make one in the zigzag form, because as it was I had no idea what order to put them in. I think I made a good choice, though, and hopefully she’ll like them! 
This was a gift for a professor's wife (Yes, when I give gifts to men, they tend to be gifts for them to give to other people) because he helped me upgrade my computer. Clean lines, simple aesthetic, for a woman who prefers the red-brown sort of color scheme but is allergic to some metals (silver should be ok, but I can’t use copper as I normally would for that color palette) and so rarely wears earrings or any jewelry at all...reportedly she does have pierced ears, though. I considered making her something else, but a bracelet would be too much silver for me to give away, I don’t know her ring size and I’m not confident in my ability to make an adjustable one yet, and I try not to make my first insecure attempts in silver...and I’m best at earrings, anyway. I think they came out well, and I think that I managed to make silver and red go together! The lighter red is coral, the darker is brecciated jasper. Mission accomplished, now let’s hope that she likes them. I’ve never met her so I don’t have the friend advantage there. 
The last one is one I’m rather proud of that spontaneously combusted out of my head in a 5-hour session of trying all new things. A double-wrap on one piece, a new spontaneously-devised caging method, structural improvising. I’d never even made a cuff bracelet before, but what I tried worked, and the “mistakes” I made ended up being the best parts. Here's another view: 
These two cabs begged not to be put in earrings. Honestly I don’t really like when twin cabs are put in earrings because it looks like they’re supposed to be the same, the artist wants them to be the same, they’re trying REALLY HARD to be the same when nature never intended them to be that way. These ones are unique – one is more red and one is more green, they both like copper and they’d like to hang out together, thank you very much. At least, that’s what I think they were saying. Anyway, I’m really happy with how this turned out because almost nothing on it is anything I’ve tried before. The method of caging is such that it requires every wire I put on it to be where it is, and because the wires brace against the stones, the stones keep the wires secure as well as the other way around. If I took out one of the stones, the other would not be secure anymore either. I think it’s poetic, for twins.
I’ll go ahead and call this a success. I think it’s the first cuff bracelet I’ve ever made. I especially like how I made up for my own insecurity – in trying out this caging method, I didn’t cut enough of the four cage wires to make a whole bracelet, just to try out the cage – so when it worked and turned out to be secure, I flared the ends (I added…flair. :] ) and added the rest of the bracelet not only for the usual old cuff structure but also for interest. Because I wasn’t sure of myself, the bracelet is more awesome. That’s my favorite thing about making jewelry, I think…don’t be sure of yourself, just do things anyway, and they’ll end up like that. If you’re too confident, you’ll fall into a rut of doing what always works, and if you’re too afraid, you won’t do anything…but be both, and your work will be unique and spontaneous. Score.
It’s also adjustable, I overlap the ends side-by-side for my tiny wrists, but for larger wrists it still stays on (even on me) when they point at each other. It’s structurally sound and comfortable. I’m really happy with how it came out.
Pricing:
Pricing is always a problem. There are lots of online “pointers” and “tutorials” and lots of advice on “how long did it take you? how much did it cost to make? how difficult was it?” These are all questions to which I don’t really have the answers. I have no idea how much wire went into that bracelet, for instance. And I spent more time sketching it out and miming wire shapes with my fingers than actually wrapping it. And then there’s the problem of, well, this took so much more effort than those silver earrings, I should charge a lot more for it, but then again the materials are less expensive and what if people won’t buy it?
A lot of advice is “test your market” - put your price where you want it, if the item doesn’t move, lower it, or move it to a better place in your shop, or raise your other prices to make it look less expensive by comparison...there are plenty of strategies and none of them are really helpful for me because “if it doesn’t move” is not really the exception to the rule, yet. Even my most popular things can go through a four-month Etsy posted cycle without “moving.” Testing my market takes more time than I know how to use, because most of my stuff still “doesn’t move” for a while. Does that mean that I need to be better at advertising, or does it mean that I need to fix my prices, my shop order, etc. for ALL of my stuff? ......*sigh* probably.
Pricing is the biggest reason I split my shop into two. Because comparing that bracelet to a pair of origami earrings is difficult when they’re “upcycled” - they take almost as long as that bracelet did, maybe even longer, but I sure can’t charge as much if they’re right next to them. Every time I’m faced with pricing another fine-jewelry item I’m reminded that I need to get my upcycled stuff out of that shop...but I’m reluctant to do it because it’s getting the most publicity and those are my most popular things. I’ll have to figure it out SOON, before review/giveaways start pointing customers at Letterbox Lion and The Winged Lion goes unnoticed, and people wonder where the cool upcycled earrings went.
Anyway, I have no idea how much ask for that bracelet. Rarr!
P.S., my Year of Jewelry posts for these pieces (okay, you've pretty much read them already but oh well) can be found here, here and here, respectively.
Friday, July 22, 2011
Cooking adventures! Part One
Part One, that is, because I'll probably have more. It's the first one I've posted, but not actually the first one that's actually happened.
(The last was a delicious pasta dish I proceeded not to improve on the next three times I made it because it was so good, and the first was a delicious stir fry which I only got up the confidence to make after I asked someone (Asian, no less) if he knew how to make stir-fry, and he looked at me like I was insane and told me that was like asking him if he knew how to dance or write. The answer was obviously yes because he was physically capable of holding a pencil and not crippled in the legs. Boyfriend of mine, lovely man that he is, confirmed to me that it was delicious, but I have trouble justifying making it because it requires so many different kinds of VEGGIES. I love veggies, but they are pricey and go bad...Tangent over, sorry. It's 6 am and I've yet to sleep. On to adventures!)
This is why it's an adventure: I'm terrible at cooking, and right now I'm being guided by a mother who only ever made bland food around me (she told me years later that it was because it was all my brother would eat, and he'd smother it in soy sauce, but I regret that I never got to experience the full range of her cooking potential) and my best friend, you know who you are, who is an AMAZING and not-at-all-bland cook, who kindly typed out for me a bunch of recipes in small words like "fry" instead of the many ways to say "fry" that would freak me out, like "pan-sear". What a sweet-heart that girl is. I'm also living in a spare room in a house that happens to have anything you could possibly need in a kitchen, if you're willing to hunt for it and hopefully what you're looking for isn't perishable.
But it's giving me confidence, and, as we know, necessity is the mother of invention. I invented good chicken today.
The problem was, I didn't think ahead, so I didn't get any ingredients for anything SPECIFIC...nor did I leave my pre-cut chicken breasts to defrost all day. This led to a hard frozen chunk of multiple chicken strips with separator sheets embedded in it that I only vaguely knew how to defrost using a microwave. I did that, and I think it was reasonably successful. The only problem was that apparently there was still a lot of moisture in it, so when I tried to "pan-sear" it, it all melted into puddles and just sort of boiled my chicken. It wasn't pan-fried, it was boiled chicken.
Have you ever had boiled chicken? It's about the most bland thing in the world. And I hate bland food. It's not that I can't stomach it, necessarily, but I have trouble making it REACH the point of my stomach. The effort of stuffing it into my mouth, going through the motions of chewing it while allowing it in all its awfulness to come in contact with my tongue, is almost too much for me to bear. As you can see, I didn't have fun eating my mother's food, since while my brother only wanted bland food, that was something that I could barely get myself to live on...and when I had to eat something as bland as boiled chicken, my solution was to SMOTHER it with Laurie's Seasoned Salt - known in my family as Magic Seasoning and rightfully so. In fact, that was my solution with bland veggies, eggs...pretty much anything that didn't have enough flavor for me, which was all of my mother's cooking. Magic Seasoning was to me what soy sauce was to my brother, I suppose, except it's not that I liked the taste as much as it was better than the alternative. But enough of that.
I smelled that boiled chicken as it boiled in my pan, and I knew I couldn't eat it. I would try and try and kick myself for it but I would eat it a piece at a time until it would go bad, grimacing the whole time and then I would just expect it to be so awful that I wouldn't notice when it went bad and then it would make me sick and it would kill me, and therefore I would not win this torturous battle. I already knew I would lose a confrontation with bland food. Drastic measures became necessary, before it was too late!
It's worthwhile to note that of all seasonings, Magic Seasoning is the ONE we don't seem to have in this house. Honestly I don't know that I could even think of another one that isn't here, and a lot of the ones that are here, I hadn't heard of before I took a spice inventory. So, my drastic measures ended up being: open jars and sniff everything, and add whatever smells like what you intend for this meal. And however good it smells, Leo, don't add chili powder because you WILL regret it (I can't handle spices/the sandwich I was making was intended to be Italian-style).
Which ended up being liberal amounts each of garlic powder, coriander (what the heck is coriander?) and - wait for it - chardonnay.
Yes, I live in a house with a bunch of grad students. Yes, there is liquor on the liquor shelf, but there is also wine in the fridge and it is ACTUALLY for cooking. It makes me want to never go back to living with undergrads.
Garlic powder, coriander and chardonnay. One of those things I hadn't even HEARD of before I put it in my meal. I'm secretly hoping that not knowing what I'm doing will give me some advantage, like Denna's music in the Kingkiller Chronicles (READ IT), it will make me really creative because I can trample over all sorts of established boundaries and be the Queen of Something for adding coriander and chardonnay and garlic simultaneously to chicken.
Sorry if I sound a little melodramatic, I've been reading too much hyperbole and a half.
The problem with this theory, of course, is that "established boundaries" in cooking, I'm pretty sure, are made up just to be broken. If you've ever watched a cooking show you know that established traditions are not exactly in vogue. So until I start making my own green-onion-flavored ice cream in pretentious little not-nearly-enough-ice-cream-balls, I'm still out of my league.
But, despite getting burned (again!) by hot oil, I didn't end up with any large welts this time! That's definitely an improvement.
So I guess for the time being, along with my posts about jewelry trials and tribulations (I made something awesome! Pictures up soon!) I'll succumb to that temptation that bloggers seemingly all run up against, the temptation to post recipes. My excuse is that since I'm so terrible at cooking, anything I post will be helpful to other people who are terrible at cooking, and who are as afraid as I am before each and every one of these cooking ventures...rest assured, my friends, you can be completely incompetent and still make this stuff.
And a note on the pepper: Like I said, I didn't buy ingredients for anything specific. Realizing that I like Italian food more than anything, I bought a bunch of things that could easily be used in some meal or another, like pesto, pasta, and a couple of pricier things like sundried tomatoes and fresh mozzarella that I proceeded not to regret at all because I rarely much enjoy eating and they make getting sustenance a lot more fun...after I learned to roast peppers, I put red peppers on my list of things to buy, even though they're veggies and go bad, because I've discovered that if I make Italian food at least once a week (and I am likely to) I can probably find somewhere to put roasted red peppers, and you can keep them and put them in a sandwich with practically anything whether meat or veggie or tuna salad, so there's no disadvantage in keeping them around. That's why I had a red pepper, though it may seem like a strange thing to have.
Today's meal: Italian Chicken Pesto Sandwich...so good I ate one and a half, and only another half because we ran out of bread.
Chicken strips, A single red pepper, pesto, bread, fresh mozzarella cheese (my splurge and vice)
Take some chicken. Defrost it. Cut it up into chunks the size of which you'd want to eat in a sandwich. Put it in a hot pan with oil in it and let it turn white and knobby and rubbery and weird. Poke it a little.
Put whatever you can find in this chicken that doesn't say "Mexican Blend" on it and doesn't smell like lobster bisque. In my case, sprinkle garlic powder and coriander on it - not too much but enough that you can see it on the chicken. Stir it around lots, especially if the water's all evaporated. Add a decent splash of chardonnay and if you can't smell it after stirring that in, add some more.
Stir it around until the water is all gone, and you've got a little yellow crusting on the outside of your chicken, (that's how I know it's done, at least...and if you break a piece open with a spatula or something it should look like chicken and not like raw meat, and separate cleanly) and then turn off the heat.
I only know how to do this part with a gas stove, so bear with me - but if you don't have one of those, google how to roast red peppers and there's some other versions I believe. If it's gas, just turn it on and put the pepper on the cooktop right above the flame. Turn it when the skin turns black. When it's black all over, take it off, put it in a tupperware container or bag for five minutes to let it "sweat" (don't ask me what that does, I just follow wikihow) and then take it out and cut it up. The skin comes right off. I messed this up the first time I did it, so learn from my mistake and wait until it's ALL black. Only the black parts are roasted, and only there will the skin come off easily. If you stop it too early you have parts of a pepper that aren't roasted and that's no fun because the skin doesn't want to separate and ugh fresh pepper taste and blah. Just give it enough time. Chop it up and now you've got your roasted red peppers.
Spread your pesto on both slices of your bread. Assemble sandwich from those components you've assembled. It should be delicious and if it's not, well, it's on you, because mine sure was.
Anyway, perhaps that will help someone out someday. Soon maybe I'll post the components of that awesome pasta recipe. The stir-fry was pretty uneventful except, uhh, marinade your chicken and tofu for a little while and you won't regret it. I also recommend Trader Joe's Island Soyaki sauce because Trader Joe's is the closest store to my house and it does well. I can't speak for any other kind of sauce.
Also: pro-tip for getting enough protein when you don't even eat enough in the first place and don't eat red meat: add chicken sausage to everything. They sell lots of kinds at Trader Joe's and they've got lots of protein and it makes you feel slightly better about your diet because now it has something meaty in it, even if you're not a meat person (I'm not either). But recently I added "smoked apple chardonnay" chicken sausage to an Italian dish, and then shortly thereafter, mango chicken sausage to a cheese-and-broccoli dish, and they both were excellent and not too overpowering and fit surprisingly well. So that's my advice.
Wish me luck on my grand adventures of life-without-dining-hall. And I hope this makes someone look back with nostalgia on her first "place", and think...I remember when stir fry was intimidating. Ahh, those days.
(The last was a delicious pasta dish I proceeded not to improve on the next three times I made it because it was so good, and the first was a delicious stir fry which I only got up the confidence to make after I asked someone (Asian, no less) if he knew how to make stir-fry, and he looked at me like I was insane and told me that was like asking him if he knew how to dance or write. The answer was obviously yes because he was physically capable of holding a pencil and not crippled in the legs. Boyfriend of mine, lovely man that he is, confirmed to me that it was delicious, but I have trouble justifying making it because it requires so many different kinds of VEGGIES. I love veggies, but they are pricey and go bad...Tangent over, sorry. It's 6 am and I've yet to sleep. On to adventures!)
This is why it's an adventure: I'm terrible at cooking, and right now I'm being guided by a mother who only ever made bland food around me (she told me years later that it was because it was all my brother would eat, and he'd smother it in soy sauce, but I regret that I never got to experience the full range of her cooking potential) and my best friend, you know who you are, who is an AMAZING and not-at-all-bland cook, who kindly typed out for me a bunch of recipes in small words like "fry" instead of the many ways to say "fry" that would freak me out, like "pan-sear". What a sweet-heart that girl is. I'm also living in a spare room in a house that happens to have anything you could possibly need in a kitchen, if you're willing to hunt for it and hopefully what you're looking for isn't perishable.
But it's giving me confidence, and, as we know, necessity is the mother of invention. I invented good chicken today.
The problem was, I didn't think ahead, so I didn't get any ingredients for anything SPECIFIC...nor did I leave my pre-cut chicken breasts to defrost all day. This led to a hard frozen chunk of multiple chicken strips with separator sheets embedded in it that I only vaguely knew how to defrost using a microwave. I did that, and I think it was reasonably successful. The only problem was that apparently there was still a lot of moisture in it, so when I tried to "pan-sear" it, it all melted into puddles and just sort of boiled my chicken. It wasn't pan-fried, it was boiled chicken.
Have you ever had boiled chicken? It's about the most bland thing in the world. And I hate bland food. It's not that I can't stomach it, necessarily, but I have trouble making it REACH the point of my stomach. The effort of stuffing it into my mouth, going through the motions of chewing it while allowing it in all its awfulness to come in contact with my tongue, is almost too much for me to bear. As you can see, I didn't have fun eating my mother's food, since while my brother only wanted bland food, that was something that I could barely get myself to live on...and when I had to eat something as bland as boiled chicken, my solution was to SMOTHER it with Laurie's Seasoned Salt - known in my family as Magic Seasoning and rightfully so. In fact, that was my solution with bland veggies, eggs...pretty much anything that didn't have enough flavor for me, which was all of my mother's cooking. Magic Seasoning was to me what soy sauce was to my brother, I suppose, except it's not that I liked the taste as much as it was better than the alternative. But enough of that.
I smelled that boiled chicken as it boiled in my pan, and I knew I couldn't eat it. I would try and try and kick myself for it but I would eat it a piece at a time until it would go bad, grimacing the whole time and then I would just expect it to be so awful that I wouldn't notice when it went bad and then it would make me sick and it would kill me, and therefore I would not win this torturous battle. I already knew I would lose a confrontation with bland food. Drastic measures became necessary, before it was too late!
It's worthwhile to note that of all seasonings, Magic Seasoning is the ONE we don't seem to have in this house. Honestly I don't know that I could even think of another one that isn't here, and a lot of the ones that are here, I hadn't heard of before I took a spice inventory. So, my drastic measures ended up being: open jars and sniff everything, and add whatever smells like what you intend for this meal. And however good it smells, Leo, don't add chili powder because you WILL regret it (I can't handle spices/the sandwich I was making was intended to be Italian-style).
Which ended up being liberal amounts each of garlic powder, coriander (what the heck is coriander?) and - wait for it - chardonnay.
Yes, I live in a house with a bunch of grad students. Yes, there is liquor on the liquor shelf, but there is also wine in the fridge and it is ACTUALLY for cooking. It makes me want to never go back to living with undergrads.
Garlic powder, coriander and chardonnay. One of those things I hadn't even HEARD of before I put it in my meal. I'm secretly hoping that not knowing what I'm doing will give me some advantage, like Denna's music in the Kingkiller Chronicles (READ IT), it will make me really creative because I can trample over all sorts of established boundaries and be the Queen of Something for adding coriander and chardonnay and garlic simultaneously to chicken.
Sorry if I sound a little melodramatic, I've been reading too much hyperbole and a half.
The problem with this theory, of course, is that "established boundaries" in cooking, I'm pretty sure, are made up just to be broken. If you've ever watched a cooking show you know that established traditions are not exactly in vogue. So until I start making my own green-onion-flavored ice cream in pretentious little not-nearly-enough-ice-cream-balls, I'm still out of my league.
But, despite getting burned (again!) by hot oil, I didn't end up with any large welts this time! That's definitely an improvement.
So I guess for the time being, along with my posts about jewelry trials and tribulations (I made something awesome! Pictures up soon!) I'll succumb to that temptation that bloggers seemingly all run up against, the temptation to post recipes. My excuse is that since I'm so terrible at cooking, anything I post will be helpful to other people who are terrible at cooking, and who are as afraid as I am before each and every one of these cooking ventures...rest assured, my friends, you can be completely incompetent and still make this stuff.
And a note on the pepper: Like I said, I didn't buy ingredients for anything specific. Realizing that I like Italian food more than anything, I bought a bunch of things that could easily be used in some meal or another, like pesto, pasta, and a couple of pricier things like sundried tomatoes and fresh mozzarella that I proceeded not to regret at all because I rarely much enjoy eating and they make getting sustenance a lot more fun...after I learned to roast peppers, I put red peppers on my list of things to buy, even though they're veggies and go bad, because I've discovered that if I make Italian food at least once a week (and I am likely to) I can probably find somewhere to put roasted red peppers, and you can keep them and put them in a sandwich with practically anything whether meat or veggie or tuna salad, so there's no disadvantage in keeping them around. That's why I had a red pepper, though it may seem like a strange thing to have.
Today's meal: Italian Chicken Pesto Sandwich...so good I ate one and a half, and only another half because we ran out of bread.
Chicken strips, A single red pepper, pesto, bread, fresh mozzarella cheese (my splurge and vice)
Take some chicken. Defrost it. Cut it up into chunks the size of which you'd want to eat in a sandwich. Put it in a hot pan with oil in it and let it turn white and knobby and rubbery and weird. Poke it a little.
Put whatever you can find in this chicken that doesn't say "Mexican Blend" on it and doesn't smell like lobster bisque. In my case, sprinkle garlic powder and coriander on it - not too much but enough that you can see it on the chicken. Stir it around lots, especially if the water's all evaporated. Add a decent splash of chardonnay and if you can't smell it after stirring that in, add some more.
Stir it around until the water is all gone, and you've got a little yellow crusting on the outside of your chicken, (that's how I know it's done, at least...and if you break a piece open with a spatula or something it should look like chicken and not like raw meat, and separate cleanly) and then turn off the heat.
I only know how to do this part with a gas stove, so bear with me - but if you don't have one of those, google how to roast red peppers and there's some other versions I believe. If it's gas, just turn it on and put the pepper on the cooktop right above the flame. Turn it when the skin turns black. When it's black all over, take it off, put it in a tupperware container or bag for five minutes to let it "sweat" (don't ask me what that does, I just follow wikihow) and then take it out and cut it up. The skin comes right off. I messed this up the first time I did it, so learn from my mistake and wait until it's ALL black. Only the black parts are roasted, and only there will the skin come off easily. If you stop it too early you have parts of a pepper that aren't roasted and that's no fun because the skin doesn't want to separate and ugh fresh pepper taste and blah. Just give it enough time. Chop it up and now you've got your roasted red peppers.
Spread your pesto on both slices of your bread. Assemble sandwich from those components you've assembled. It should be delicious and if it's not, well, it's on you, because mine sure was.
Anyway, perhaps that will help someone out someday. Soon maybe I'll post the components of that awesome pasta recipe. The stir-fry was pretty uneventful except, uhh, marinade your chicken and tofu for a little while and you won't regret it. I also recommend Trader Joe's Island Soyaki sauce because Trader Joe's is the closest store to my house and it does well. I can't speak for any other kind of sauce.
Also: pro-tip for getting enough protein when you don't even eat enough in the first place and don't eat red meat: add chicken sausage to everything. They sell lots of kinds at Trader Joe's and they've got lots of protein and it makes you feel slightly better about your diet because now it has something meaty in it, even if you're not a meat person (I'm not either). But recently I added "smoked apple chardonnay" chicken sausage to an Italian dish, and then shortly thereafter, mango chicken sausage to a cheese-and-broccoli dish, and they both were excellent and not too overpowering and fit surprisingly well. So that's my advice.
Wish me luck on my grand adventures of life-without-dining-hall. And I hope this makes someone look back with nostalgia on her first "place", and think...I remember when stir fry was intimidating. Ahh, those days.
Monday, July 18, 2011
Martfire and Oo.
So here's some annoying news: Artfire is phasing out their free basic accounts. I had planned on stocking my shop there more fully over the next few months, and if I got enough sales to justify it, possibly subscribing. I wish they hadn't chosen to do it this way - if anything they could limit the number of items a free seller could have, like a lot of other sites do...but instead they're phasing them out, and I'm not hardwired to spring for something like that when I haven't had any luck with it yet at all. It's probably entirely my fault that I haven't had luck with it, since I never kept up with that shop, but it WAS my plan for the summer to get that shop running. Oh, well. It's a shame. Less work for me, less exposure too. That's how it goes. I can't afford a monthly subscription right now even if I don't limit myself to the money I've made from selling jewelry. I'm pretty broke. It's a shame, Artfire no longer wants to make that better for me. *siiigh*
In better news, I'm ordering some business cards. Right now, all my advertising consists of sitting in public places making tiny paper cranes and waiting for people to ask me what I'm doing so intently with my hands surrounded by all those starburst wrappers. It's actually surprisingly effective, and I get a lot of people asking me where to find my site, but I don't have anything to give them yet to make them remember where it is. Soon I will! And a card holder to protect them.
Here's an unpaid endorsement for you: moo.com has some awesome business cards, I've gotten their free trials already and I've been poking holes in them and using them as earring holders...they say you should send a reminder of your company in your package. I was skeptical because I always throw them out, but I always keep the original earring holders...if those earring holders include a link to my website, and that link stays around in customers' houses attached to the earrings they like...well, I think this is a good strategy. But I still need things to give to people who just ask.
Hull, MA has a beautiful beach, even when it's covered with people.
This is very probably the best summer I have ever had. Life is beautiful.
In better news, I'm ordering some business cards. Right now, all my advertising consists of sitting in public places making tiny paper cranes and waiting for people to ask me what I'm doing so intently with my hands surrounded by all those starburst wrappers. It's actually surprisingly effective, and I get a lot of people asking me where to find my site, but I don't have anything to give them yet to make them remember where it is. Soon I will! And a card holder to protect them.
Here's an unpaid endorsement for you: moo.com has some awesome business cards, I've gotten their free trials already and I've been poking holes in them and using them as earring holders...they say you should send a reminder of your company in your package. I was skeptical because I always throw them out, but I always keep the original earring holders...if those earring holders include a link to my website, and that link stays around in customers' houses attached to the earrings they like...well, I think this is a good strategy. But I still need things to give to people who just ask.
Hull, MA has a beautiful beach, even when it's covered with people.
This is very probably the best summer I have ever had. Life is beautiful.
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