i really truly hate how user-unfriendly Etsy is. i just spent an HOUR changing tags for 40ish items so that i can run a free shipping sale, when Etsy could just MAKE ONE BUTTON TO CLICK to achieve the same goal. but instead of them investing time, effort and $$$, they just tell everyone to add tags to everything, and naturally we all jump through the hoop.

i swear, if that site didn't have the traffic it does, i wouldn't use it. but my artfire account has sold absolutely nothing in the last month, whereas at least things sometimes sell on etsy.

le sigh.

in other news, my grandma gave me an ENTIRE punkin pie today. that's why my grammy is awesome. the end.

i have decided that Narwhals are going to be the next trend, like owls and fawns are now. this is because i really, really like narwhals.

so start telling everyone how awesome narwhals are. kay thanks.

sometimes, i wish i was an artist.

i'm kinda debating putting a few of my smaller, more mass-produceable items on amazon.com (yes, you can do that). the trouble is, amazon wants $40 a month + 20% commission to do it. i really would only need to sell three things a month to break even, but i just don't even know if i'd sell that many, since it's such a HUGE retailer. if i weren't unemployed right now, i'd definitely do it, but at the moment $40 sounds like a lot.

hmm.

sooooo going back to my winning-the-lottery scheme.

so, i lied -- all my updates relating to sustainable living are gonna be over here: http://metalsmitten.blogspot.com/

that's because blogspot is way easier to upload photos to. and i'm lazy. so nyah.

BUT i'll still use this as my normal, non-pseudo-farm journal :)

So, as our first foray into the world of mini farming, we decided to get a single pair of geese. Geese are supposedly one of the easier types of poultry to raise, as they tend to be very weather hardy, disease resistant, good foragers, and self-protective. Plus they have a reputation for being kinda mean, which means I am less likely to fall in love with them as pets instead of simply keeping them as farm animals.

We spent a day or two preparing a site on our property to house the birds. We picked the area directly behind one of our outbuildings (an older wooden garage), so that their free-range pen can be easily linked to the garage (which we now call the mini barn) to give them shelter from the elements, predators, etc. Most of their pen is essentially open grassy meadow, bordering on the edge of our forest to give them shade in the summer and let them play in the scrub. They have a little swimming pool, and we built them an outdoor shelter as well as giving them open access to the mini barn. We also put up a three-foot high fence, as per the internet's recommendation.

Then we brought home some geese! We've had them three days now and already the experience has been invaluable. They teach us as we go. We have one white goose, of the Embden variety, and one brown gander which is a Chinese Brown. The white goose looks pretty typical of what you think a goose would look like, but the brown goose is really interesting looking, with wild-ancestor type coloration and a strange knob above his beak that I have no idea what it's for.






More photos of the geese are at my Flickr site. Yes, yes I am too lazy to upload them in more than one place. Sorry. :)

So I'm in Indiana now! Goodbye suburbia and hello rural country. I can't believe how much moving here has immediately affected me: I'm already so much happier. The air is so much healthier and I can see the stars at night and leave my doors unlocked. It's wonderful.

I have three long-term goals now, here:
1) Devote myself to turning my home into a homestead, using only sustainable, organic agriculture methods and living as much off the grid as possible.
2) Become more successful with my online tiny business to better support myself financially without relying as heavily on day jobs.
3) Go back to school for a Master's degree in Art Education, so that I can help little kids know that art is still important.

In the vein of goal #2, I'm doing an experiment, and giving another online handmade arts website a chance. My new shop is located at http://www.artfire.com/users/metalsmitten ... I like Artfire's site better than Etsy, but there doesn't seem to be nearly as much traffic there yet. I'll probably keep both shops up through the holiday season at least, and then judge from there if the hassle of maintaining two shops is worth the effort. Artfire doesn't make potential customers sign up for an account with them, which is pretty nice.

& I know I've said this before, but I really am going to be attempting to be keeping this blog more updated from now on. My misadventures in self-taught sustainable mini farming should be entertaining enough... wish me luck!

i am horrible at updating this. maybe that's because there's only but so many ways to creatively say "i have no life" before it becomes apparent that i, in fact, have no life.

regardless, as a careful reader may have noticed, i feel like i have no life. this feeling leads to depression, leads to stagnation, leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy and thereby endless cycle of no-life-ness.

so i've kinda decided to try to go to grad school as a solution to all this madness.

the objective of going to grad school does many things, such as giving me motivation back in my life, giving me a worthwhile goal to persue, turning my dead-end retail job back into the temporary deal it was supposed to be instead of looking like The Rest of My Life, giving me some hope that maybe armed with an MFA i could possibly get a Real Job, and giving me the chance of escaping this stupid town that i was led into.

i don't want to do grad school in seattle. i don't like the mindset here, and that's a bitch of a commute.

i'm looking instead at indiana university, which is ironically the school that i've spent the last decade of my life telling my parents (alumni of said school) that i would never go to. they seem to have a pretty nice set-up, and a possibility of financial aid exists, and since my parents are moving back to indiana in three years, i might actually get to see them on a semi-regular basis again.

grad school requires a portfolio. i don't have one. it also requires three teacher recommendations. i don't have any. getting a recommendation requires tracking down my former teachers, and then most likely needing to send them a copy of my portfolio because they probably won't remember me otherwise, which leads us back to point A of needing a portfolio.

therefore, i need to make some art.

i haven't had a reason to make art since i left vcu.

hello, purpose in life.

if nothing else, going back to school for three years is three fewer years of fruitless job searching that i have to do in my lifetime. a nice, socially-smiled-upon distraction from the craptitude of the real world.

and who knows, maybe i'll even make a friend. that would be fun.

hmm.

i want to start taking photographs again.

maybe if i'm consciously looking for it, i'll find the beauty again.

stupid groundhog. i don't believe your lies.

been feeling rather uninspired lately. sometimes i feel like my whole life is going to be retail. college degrees are meaningless.

anyway. the girlfriend just went to bed so i think i'll join her. maybe i'll feel better in the morning.

I want to take up photography again. I miss it.

Supposedly, there is some gorgeous scenery in this state. If you know where to find it. And if it's not raining/flooding/snowing/fogged up so bad there's a health alert in effect/did I mention raining?

Oh people who have lived in WA longer than a year -- where is pretty around these parts?

it is currently 32F outside.

perfect time to walk the dog!

okay, who here knows of any fun little boutique-ish shops in your area that may be interested in carrying handmade jewelry or do already? this does not have to be a jewelry specific store, just a store that might carry some.

i can stalk research the shops local to me, but i only remember one or two places from VA (and only in richmond) and i've never really lived anywhere else long enough to know of anyone to contact.

specifically, i am seriously toying with the idea of doing wholesale or consignment for my little enamel pendants. any suggestions would be highly appreciated!

i feel like i've hit a wall.

poverty is dumb.

I just sawed into my finger. I'm starting to think I should have a $50 surcharge for any custom piece I make which ends up causing me to bleed. Hmmm...

Also: I have recently discovered two new super-foods which I'm super pleased with. Amaranth and Quinoa. You should eat them. They're incredibly nutritious and also pretty tasty. I'll never understand why our culture chose to focus on grains like rice and wheat, which aren't nearly as nutritionally complete and are much more difficult to grow. I think next spring, I'm going to try planting some in the backyard.

Yay!

I drilled a hole in a rock. This is exciting to me. The end.

once again, i remind you that free dogs are never really free.





bastian had an accident :(

our best guess is that he was trying to get behind the shed in the back yard and there must be something sharp back there. it was too dark to tell by the time we got home from the emergency vet, so we're going to have to check tomorrow and see if we can figure it out. he cut his foot up pretty bad - a really deep laceration that just barely missed a tendon. he had to have minor surgery to suture it up.

my baby dog :(

i just bought a ginormous chunk of dino bone. i have no idea what i'm going to do with it, as it's far too big for jewelry really, but i couldn't resist....

...part of me really wants to make a ring out of it anyway.

hee.

Sigh...

It took me a freaking hour and a half to drive the 15 miles home tonight. I wanted to stab myself in the eye. It's like I can't win - there's always some huge flaw with what otherwise would be a perfect job. It's not like there was even an accident or anything, no, it's just insane traffic.

Top it all off with the Land of Eternal Rain and No Sun and I've been feeling pretty down recently.

WA is not my friend.