Good News Good News Good News!
#1. I’m feeling so much better. I’m able to sit up for extended periods of time and I’m down to a single nap a day. Yay!
#2. Sewing cradles are BACK! I’ve recruited my Dad to make them instead of my brother. Dad is a little older and a lot more responsible than my brother so you can expect that they will ship within a day or 2 of your order.  They will be shipped from Jonesboro, ME via priority mail. Very exciting. You can get them here!

So the really great news is that I’m back to making books, I have energy and I’m not wiped out anymore. Who knew the flu was so bad? I haven’t been so sick since I was a little kid. I’ve been in a frenzy of making jotters the last few days. I scored a ton of great posters from work right before I was sick and I chopped them all down to jotter size, so I’ve got a ton of covers. I had listed something like 9 sets of books before I was sick and I just finished another 9 sets, this time with graph paper and sketchbook paper filling them up. I’m pretty happy with how they turned out. I’ll be listing them across this coming week.

Check out the website of this artist and check out his Youtube videos… Very nice.

Normally I work on the content for the blog on my weekends when I have time off from my DayJob. This weekend, I had big things planned, some photos, a new video and some links to other blogs. But, I’ve been sick. Not like run down blowig nose sick, but fever of 103, a trip to the ER and medication sick.

I have…..
Drumroll please…..
The flu.

Yeah. Holy &*^^&%%#$$#@ Sh!T this stuff sucks. I’m never that sick. I haven’t had a fever since I was in high school, and I’ve only had a bad enough cold to have missed work a couple of times, but this me, let me tell you, is completely kicking my ass. Usual course of my cold: Feel minorly sick for a day, treat it with Vitamin C etc…, Come home for weekend, sleep, and then get up Sunday and feel sniffly but otherwise okay and back to work on Monday.

This time, feel sick on Thursday, treat it with Vit C, Go to work Friday feel like ass, Get sent home early by boss, come home and promptly fall asleep on couch. Feel feverish, sweating and alternating with chills. Head to Walgreens, pick up $80 in OTC medication (thank god for the bene card), go home, take OTC meds. Pass out again. C gets home, packs me off to bed. C’s Dad comes to visit next AM. I am still asleep. I think I’ve been to the bathroom a couple of times but I can’t be sure. I awake at noon. (let that sink in- NOON. I’m normally up by 8 or 9 on weekends.) I wander about the house, and then lay down on the couch where I pass out again.

At this point I’m aware I have a temperature, so I grab the thermometer out of the cabinet. It tastes funny and won’t read my temp. I think I’m on crack, but thank god it’s mercury free; the bulb is broken. So I pass out again. C comes home, feels my head and is convinced I have a fever, I say I’m fine and she goes out to purchase a thermometer. C knows the way to my heart and buys a digital one- a sure way to get me to use anything I don’t want is to make it a gadget. I use it. First reading 103.6, no wonder I’m flushed and I feel like butt. Between bouts of being passed out and sort of conciousness I take my temp (see gadgetry works) and it hovers between 101.6 and 103 all evening.

The next day C goes to work, I stay asleep until, again noon, at which point I’m feeling better, still sniffly but not feverish. I take my temp- 99.2 when I take it again a few hours later i’m in the normal range. I’m still hacking and sniffling but over all a lot better. I know I’m not making the party I’m supposed to go to that night but at least I’m not sweating anymore.

Only wait, 3pm rolls around and I feel cold and the sweating starts up again. Fevers back. It hovers around 100 and 101 for a few hours I let C rest for a bit then I wake her and tell her were going to the ER. After an hour and a half we leave, having been diagnosed with the flu, given a back up script of antibiotics, told to use afrin and tylenol. I ask for a note for Monday, DR looks at me funny and says,"Just one day?" I reply sure, I’ll be fine. He kind of smiles and walks off. Clearly he knew something I didn’t, here it is Tuesday AM and I still feel like hammered dog butt. I had planned on making it in to work but it ain’t going to happen. So now I’m waiting to call my boss and inform her of my status.

So after that involved story you now know why I haven’t updated anything on this blog, added any new books, made anything new or done anything, I’ve been passed out on my couch for, well, 3 days. I’ve been telling myself that my immune system has been given a hearty work out and that the next bug that comes around will have it’s ass kicked like Tito Ortiz in the ring with Chuck Lidell. Right after I wake up from my next nap.

(On the plus side if there is one, I caught up on 2 seasons of No Reservations; saw many episodes of  Law & Order and 2 season’s of another show that is escaping me now.)

Here’s another Vlog from youtube this time it’s from MIllande. IT’s a 10 minute long time lapse of the youtuber working on a art journal page. In this video, layers, paint and watercolor crayons are used. It’s a longer video but interesting throughout it’s entire length.

Armand, over at Notebookism has given me a feature for  my jotters. If you are at all interested in paper things, like notebooks and pens along with the various goods that goes along with them checkout Notebookism, it’s one of my daily reads.

Also if your looking for more pictures of my jotters, it’s the next entry down, but if you’re impatient here’s a link to my etsy page where you can peruse all of the new packs.

I made a stack of jotters this past weekend and have listed several packages on etsy. You can find them here.

I scored a really large stack of posters from work about a week ago, there were a lot of fun colors and photos. Instead of pairing them with off white or cream thread I used olive colored thread.

I’ve made a decision that I’m not going to sell my books on eBay anymore. I will if they lower this recent fee percentage, but I see that as a long term question for eBay to answer than something that is going to happen anytime soon. I suspect that eBay will never lower that fee, but my thought is that they could have increased their middle tier fee by a full percent and reaped as much if not more dollars to their bottom line than they could have with the increase to the initial FVF. But I digress this post isn’t about eBay and my analysis of what I think they could have done better, I could write a whole blog every day of every week for the next 20 years and never run out of material on that topic.

This is about my choice to not sell on eBay and only on Etsy. I have already removed my link on the left of this page for eBay and replace it with a link to my Etsy page. As a part time artist, I have made the decision that all of my art endeavors need to be self supporting. I don’t strive to make a lot of money on my art but as a former manager and buyer for a larger corporation it irks me when a company attempts to take advantage of what little I make on my work. I put a lot of time and energy into my work. I do it because I love it. I love to make books and art. I sell it to buy more materials and occasionally do something that I enjoy outside of the studio. It’s part of my rules- arts and crafts must self sustain. When eBay raised it’s prices it cuts into that small fraction of what I make, that little portion of money that my books bring home to me. I found it frustrating and irritating that a giant corporation chose it’s bottom line over me.

Granted I know that the bottom line is always what it’s all about but I work for a company in the Fortune 500 whose ethos state that the employee and customer come first and that the bottom line will follow. I have to say that as I’ve  seen it, it works when you place value on people, the people who work hard for you, they  make the company what it is. There is a reason that people stay working for the company I work for, it’s not glamorous work, but the fact remains that in all but a few circumstances they value the human element of their company and that value allows people to excel. When you allow people to excel your company grows and expands with those people.

That’s what eBay forgot- that its nothing with out its sellers. The current CEO might see his company as a "flee market" but those of us who were selling way back in 2000 and have been around, tried things out, grew with the company  are the people who are the backbone of the company. Buyers/customers will always be around but sellers, we’re the spine of eBay and without those of us who are tried eBay is a boring place to buy knock off designer bags and cheap electronics.

A scam is a scam no matter what you dress it in, gucci or not.