Pisces Moon Studio

We lost power at 9:30 last night and it’s still not back on. I’m on the laptop, on a dialup line, but need to conserve battery power.

No major damage here. Just tree limbs and debris down as far as I can see. No damage to the house.

So we are safe and I’ll be back when I can.

Something very strange happened this morning. I woke up and the windows were not fogged over on the outside.

On the outside, you ask? Well, yes. This summer has been one of the most humid ever, even in an area of the country known for summer humidity. I’ve seen dew points of 78 and 79 this year, and that’s something I have never seen in my half-century in this same valley in Alabama. Not even during hurricanes.

This much moisture in the air means that it condenses on any surface cooler than the dewpoint. Even though we have double-hung storm windows and keep the air conditioner somewhere around 75°, the windows will fog over on the outside when dew points are higher than the temperature of the glass, so I’ve lived inside a sweaty glass of iced tea all summer. I’ve had to buy a second dehumidifier for the upstairs area, and the two are sucking approximately 15 gallons of water out of the air every day. With the AC running 24/7!

But this morning the windows were unfogged. For some unexplained reason, the dewpoint has dropped to 66 and we even have a bit of a breeze. Stepping outside on the deck was actually bearable — even pleasant.

And I was reminded that it’s almost Killer Acorn Season again.

We have an ancient chestnut oak right behind the house, with many spreading limbs that extend over the roof. We moved into this house in September, 11 years ago, and the first night we thought we were in the midst of an artillery barrage. We’ve gotten used to it over the years and the dropping acorns no longer keep us awake (although there are a couple of “Huh? What was that?” moments late each summer when it begins again).

So this morning, the weather is a tiny bit more pleasant and the acorns are ripening; both are hopeful signs that perhaps there will be an end sometime soon to the sticky misery that is summer in the South.

Continuing with yesterday’s theme…

I got an email this morning from Zappo’s .

——–
Dear C L Newbill,

One year ago, you ordered the following product from Zappos.com:

Saucony Grid Instep 3 – White/White – 10/W

We wanted to let you know that right now, your size is still available
from Zappos.com. You can order the same product again by visiting:

(link and some other let-us-know-how-we-can-help stuff omitted)

———

This reminded me, in the friendliest possible way, that I am still wearing year-old walking shoes despite knowing that I’m supposed to change them out every six months. Did it encourage me to go to the Zappos web site and buy another pair? You bet it did! And it didn’t put my hackles up, which is a minor miracle all by itself.

So how can we turn this idea to our advantage in marketing our own work?

In July of 2004, I did a major overhaul of my Pisces Moon website, to include a number of things that I’ve since stripped away. There were books, doll quilts, and patterns that I had designed; my reasoning being that I couldn’t sell these things if no one knew about them. Right?

One of the things I did was offer a free pattern to download, a rather insipid little angel Christmas ornament (right). The instructions were simple and short, the subject appealed to a number of traditional quilters, and I expected that this would whet a potential buyer’s appetite to go to my other Christmas angel ornament patterns and part with a few piastres.

Didn’t work. Zero pattern sales from July of 2004 until June of 2005.

So in the most recent streamlining, I removed all the patterns and non-art-quilt stuff. I just checked my website statistics (strenuously forcing myself to take a sick day leaves me needing some sort of amusement), and found something interesting.

Apparently there are sites that collect links to free quilt patterns. There are sites devoted to angel patterns. There are others that emphasize quilted Christmas ornaments. Still others are for free blocks, or anything generally quilt-related. That angel ornament of mine is listed on ten of these link farms. The links go directly to the free page, bypassing everything else.

I took the page down in July, and so far in August, calls directly to that one free pattern page have accounted for more than half of the visits to my website. More than 98% of the visitors click on the link from the “free patterns” link farm, download the pattern (now they just get the 404 Page Not Found), and close the page without ever bothering to explore what else might be there to see.

You know, I teach quilting. I strongly believe in sharing knowledge. But this leaves me feeling rather used, and makes me wonder if it isn’t a mistake to put things out there for anonymous people to take without offering anything — even curiosity or appreciation — in return.

Thoughts?

Cute and ready to take on the weekend!

Yikes! It’s been more than a week since I’ve written. I’m having one of those periods that are simultaneously extremely busy and yet contain no occurrences worth noting.

The show and sale last Thursday occurred on schedule. There were no sales. There were no lookers, even. The seminar on “The Business of Art” was… well, I’ll just call it a disappointment and leave it at that.

DH has been home on vacation this week, and we’ve been working on some of the never-ending things that need doing in a house nearing a half-century in age. I’ve done a little sewing, finished up a couple more small matted pieces, and updated my website, but haven’t accomplished much of note.

Today the accumulated stress of the last month, plus a reaction to a new prescription, has caught up with me. I’m obviously not dyin’ here, since I’m writing this blog, but it’s time to take to the bed for a day or two and decompress, detox, and de-ulcerate. Green tea, chicken broth, and plain white rice for a while and I’ll be back at it early next week.

How fortunate that I made a pot of chicken stock just yesterday, and that DH is home in case I need to be waited on hand and foot.

Isn’t it funny how these things work out?

… and of course I am not ready. However, time has a way of passing whether or not it’s used in the most productive way, so I’ll show up with the dozen small pieces I’ve finished instead of the 30 I planned on.

And just so you won’t think I’ve forgotten about her this summer:

It’s getting more and more difficult to get a good shot of Our Lady in the Window because of all the late summer vegetation in front of the house.

In case you can’t see it well, she is carrying a large shopping bag in her right hand. Hitting all those “back to school” sales, no doubt.

Margarita Time!
6″ x 8″ (irr), on 8″ x 10″ mat boardClick on image for larger version (60 KB).

Don’t I have pretty feet?

In her post yesterday, Gabrielle Swain said this:

I’ve been somewhat dissatisfied with my work this year. Not all of it, and not all the time, but it has seemed to me as though a lot of what I’ve done is just… okay. I’ve mentioned it several times here on the blog, saying that a piece had gone sticky or I wasn’t happy with it. I’ve cut up one big piece and made postcards out of it already this year.

So I read her entry yesterday. And while I was continuing to mess about with the little piece that I stubbornly insisted on finishing, I started to connect the dots. This one didn’t have a lot of “me” in it. I was trying to work semi-realistically (not my usual style) because an authoritative writer said in a marketing article that most people prefer realism to abstraction; I was trying to get another thing finished for a show; I was trying to second-guess what would appeal to a hypothetical buyer.

And most damning of all, I was reduced to listening to a book on tape just to keep my mind occupied enough to make me sit at the machine and get the thing finished.

At that point I shut off the tape player and stood up from the machine. I prowled around the studio for a while. I even went and scrubbed the kitchen counters, thinking furiously all the while. Then I went back to the studio, added three beads, tacked the thing to the mat board, and said “It’s done.”

There. That’s out of the way. Today I’m going to get back in there and do something that is “me,” something that engages my mind and keeps me excited while I am doing the picky work of putting it together.

Thanks, Gabrielle.