MORE NEW PEEPS

The Seeding Our Future Garden Tour and Art Show is coming up this coming weekend, at Tigard High School. I've been kind of scrambling to get things made, as I've sold more than usual, and didn't get as much as I should have done over the winter.

As part of that push, I created a little group of the Tea Kettle Characters, so of course I'm putting them in here!

A little guy I'm calling Blue Boy, at least for now:

A simple sort of fellow known as Ed:



Owen, with his lop-sided smile:



And April:

MY DREAM CAR

I have found it. My dream car. Look at it. Isn't it cute? This is a small version. They have sedans that seat five, too, but this is the one I want. Tata motors will be producing them, and they're slated to hit the market this year. Unfortunately, it appears that I'd have to go to India to get one, but it might be worth it. The least expensive model they're planning is only $4,800, a two-seater, which would be good as a run-around in town. With the cost of fuel what it is, I'd save the cost of the car, the vacation in a foreign land, and shipping it to the states, in about two years.



The OneCat

Appearance aside, since that's always been a secondary issue for me, with reliability and mileage being at the top of my priorities list, this car doesn't use gas at all. Zip. Nada. It uses almost no electricity. Fill its tanks with air (you heard me right) and you're good for about 500 miles, at speeds of up to 68 mph.

Air. The car runs on air! It does it by having a small electric motor that releases a spurt of compressed air into the piston chambers (there are 2, 4, and 6 cylinder versions) to turn the drive shaft, at the same time compressing some air back into the tanks. It can be refilled at gas stations, or plugged in at home, to fill itself with the built-in air compressor.

This is a car to love. Completely.

And think about parking. It appears to be about the same size as a Smart Car, which means you could park it at right angles to the curb, and it would fit that way, in about the space you'd need for opening the back hatch of a full-sized SUV.

Or heck, just tuck it into your purse and carry it into the store with you!

TWO SHIPPING TIPS

There are things I love, like creating my art, and the little thrill when someone else likes it enough to buy it.

Some things I don't love so much, like holding my breath, waiting to see if my packing job was good enough. Shipping glass...ooh, the tension, the worry.

I wrap everything in layers of bubble wrap, put styrofoam chunks between what I'm mailing and the wall of the box, slide my hands down the insides of the carton on all sides, making sure there's plenty of padding--anything, whatever it takes to make sure it arrives safely.

But I'm also aware that bubble wrap isn't exactly free, and that it's not exactly friendly to the environment. A friend who used to work in the shipping department of a china company once told me there was nothing as good as old clothes for wrapping dishes in to mail, but I've hesitated to use it. What would people think, finding their purchase wrapped in my old sweatshirt? Hmm.

I wrapped four Mega Blossoms to mail yesterday, and after they were bundled into the bubble wrap and put in the box, I was faced with a substantial amount of empty. What was I going to fill that with? I didn't want to use up all my bubble wrap, but nothing was more important than a safe trip for the Blossoms.

Isn't it great when a good idea lights up your brain? I have new packing material, free, and recycled.

Start with a stack of newspaper, and the plastic sleeve it came in. (That's for if you live in places like this, where it rains so much wrapping a morning-delivery paper in plastic is pretty much mandatory.) If you don't have those plastic sleeves, any airtight plastic bag will do, such as a produce bag from the grocery store.


The materials



Crumpled and stuffed

Crumple sheets of newspaper and stuff them into the bags. Tie a knot in the bag, which will trap air. Now you have newpaper that isn't going to shift around in the box, and won't get compressed because you've basically got a newspaper-stuffed balloon now.


Packed

I'll still wrap whatever article I'm shipping in bubble wrap to begin with, but I'm happy to know there's a cheap, green, way to provide the additional padding it needs.

The other tip isn't visual.

When I sell a China or Mega Blossom, a stem goes with it. I charge $8 to ship one Blossom and stem, which isn't as much as it actually costs. I'm afraid if I had to charge as much as it cost, nobody would even order one! Best case scenario for me is when someone orders more than one. I discount the second shipping to $5, and the combined shipping is now almost as much as what I'll pay, if you don't count the box and/or bubble wrap.

One of the reasons it's been so expensive is that the USPS nails you with a $4 surcharge for any package longer than 34 inches, and the stems are 35-36".

One day recently, the term "square the hypotenuse" popped into my head. (Lol, I love saying that, "Square the hypotenuse!") Yes, but what did that mean? Oh! Oh! Put the stems on a flat rectangle of cardboard, on the diagonal! How wide would the cardboard need to be, to bring the length of the package under that 34" limit?

Turns out you can get it down to 32" with a piece of cardboard 16" wide, and not only do you save the $4 surcharge, you can now send it Priority Mail for about what Parcel Post now costs. Before, not only could it not be sent Priority, but, a clerk at the post office confided, because it was an unusual size, it took even longer than the usual Parcel Post, up to ten days. Whoo-hoo! Two days instead of ten is GREAT.

Well, okay. My second tip probably isn't of much use to anyone but me, but I'm still very, very happy (and feel amazingly intelligent, lol) for having thought of it.

Time to get busy. My uncle is having brain surgery today. We've lost my dad, two friends, and a beloved aunt since mid-December. Mama is practically frantic, and is coming into town to spend the night, so we can visit Uncle Darrell in the hospital this evening and tomorrow. (I'm just repeating the mantra: He'll be okay. He'll be okay.) I have some serious housecleaning to do before Mama gets here. Culture shock is my neatnik Mama dropping in on an unprepared me!

WHY IS IT THAT...?

No matter how old I get, or how many houses with porches I've been in, there is something about sweeping a porch, especially the steps, that makes me feel like a little girl playing house. I sing, like Cinderella in a Disney film. So far, though, my songs have not included, "Someday my prince will come, someday I'll find my love..."

AWWW...DOG MEETS KITTY

Ceili, our little Wheaton Scotty, just loves to go back and visit Connie, our neighbor across the back fence. She's one of our tenants, so her yard connects with ours, with a gate in-between.

Yesterday afternoon, Ceili was just kind of moping around (she misses DH a lot). She went from moping to whining, and I just couldn't figure out what was going on. She didn't want food. She didn't appear to need to go out. Finally, I said, "Do you want to go see Connie?" and she just about went nuts, jumping up and down, and racing from me to the door and back. So we went over.

Connie's brother was there with his kitten. The kitten, Ricky, is no fan of dogs, to put it mildly. She sat on Connie's lap and hissed and snarled her miniature fear and animosity while Ceili looked back with calm, curious, friendliness. Connie restrained the kitten, firmly, and reassured me. I was nervous. I didn't know if Ceili would bite the Ricky, but I was afraid the kitten would take a swipe at Ceili's nose. I needn't have worried.

Within a few minutes, Ceili had joined Ricky in Connie's lap. I got video:

The Tea Fairy and The Ladybug Lady

Two new Tea Kettle Characters are done. I'm well pleased with both of them, and surprised and thrilled to see that they've already been featured on two webpages, after listing them in my etsy store last night. (Thanks to Always Amy and Cuteable! The articles they wrote are well worth reading, too. Visit them and learn good stuff you'll use.)

Anyway, here are The Tea Fairy, and Ladybug Lady:

Well, there's a floor to wax in the rental house, it's raining, so I'm off the hook for weeding the flower beds for now, need to go to the hardware store for drip pans for the rental's range, and drive over to Halsey to pick up the rents there. Haven't done a lick of housework yet, and I want to build a Coffee Pot Person today. oof. Time to get off my...uhm...stand myself up and get busy!

I WON SOMETHING!

Sunday was the Craft: Magazine release party, which was great fun, especially since I got to see Sister Diane ( DIY Alert, Crafty Pod), and work at one of several craft stations, and just generally soak up all the crafty energy in the room. (I do love creative people. sigh.)

AND they had several drawings for door prizes, and drew my name for one!

Let me see...the last time I won anything was, oh, twenty-five years ago. There was a sweepstakes in a magazine. Didn't figure there was any chance at all I'd win a top prize, but they said they were giving away 3,000 sun visors, and I thought it would be fun to win one for the kids, so I entered. I won a year's supply of Orange Crush soda pop! Imagine my bliss. Cases of a drink I never bought, and didn't much care for, bottles and bottles of a beverage too sweet and full of empty calories to give to my kids, except on very rare, very special occasions. Oh, goody. (Actually, I was pretty thrilled to have won one of the big ones, and we did eventually drink each and every bottle of the stuff.)

But the prize I won Sunday was a lot better than that. Here's what I won:

What a haul!


Here's a list of my happy-making take:

• A hank of hand-painted, handspun yarn (Traveling Rhinos)
• Six Jumble Bug pins (Jumble Bugs)
• A bracelet and a pair of earring from Anna Perrone Designs
• A felt pin from Perishable Productions
• The first card in the Collaborative Prints series, from Home of the Sampler, by Axel Honey
• An "I Craft:" button from Craft:

Folks, I feel like I made out like a bandit. Got all my goodies spread out on the dining table now, and just smile when I see them there.