My First

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The economy sucks. There I said it.

This weekend's show isn't going as well as I'd hoped. I blame it on 3 factors.

1. The economy sucks and is predicted to get worse. I don't sell necessities. And I don't blame people for not wanting to spend money.

2. This show is always held the weekend before Easter which makes it incredibly early this year. Sometimes it falls a month from now. In ain't spring in upstate NY yet. (The organizer holds the show at an empty farm market that always opens the Monday before Easter, is why.)

3. Some of Sharon's shows allow buy/resell product and this is one of them. I worked the register yesterday morning and saw more cheap plastic made in China crap flow through than handcrafted originals. I don't know if that's literally true but enough to make me feel that way. In my head I've tried to downplay the significance of participating in shows that allow buy/resell product. I think my efforts would yield greater rewards elsewhere. I have ideas.

And as I've said, I don't want to add buy/resell items to my repertoire. Most artists that do, add items that go along with what they make. I know one artist, I can hardly tell what she buys from what she paints, the style matches so closely. Then again, I want to make things so unique that I couldn't buy like-items anywhere anyway.

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Then I went see Bad Dates at Geva Theatre with my friends Lynn & Linda. The play is a one woman show, a comedy mostly. I was kind of looking forward to it but I found it a little disappointing, to be honest. I'm usually all for talky-talk and no action in movies and plays but this thing could have used a plot. It was a monologue, well done, good actress. I don't know. It was good, it wasn't great but I can't put my finger on why. We always go out to dinner afterwards, never been to the same restaurant twice, always independent restaurants, never a chain - Lynn is very anti-chains. We were discussing the fact that while the plays sometimes disappoint, the meals are always good.

The good news in sales being down this year, is that it's spurring me to think up new stuff. New venues, new opportunities, new products. One of the things I've been wanting to do for a couple of years is design my own patterns. I've always felt I didn't have time but the spirit moved me last night. I still plan on using my Electric Quilt software but for this first time I felt compelled to use good old fashioned paper folding, a compass and a ruler.

I started stitching it, just to see. It's not radically different from other Erica Fortgens patterns I've been using but I think it's a great starting point. As I was working on this I was thinking, by very definition, after this first one, the rest will be progressively easier and more fun. The first of anything feels a little weird.
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