This barrette is 4 inches long.  The flower and leaf are hand-sewn and all ribbon components are attached to the metal backing by hand.  The ribbon and metal backing are production-manufactured.

Item Cost: $3 or 2 for $5

Domestic Shipping: USPS First Class, $3 for up to 2, 50 cents each additional

International/Expedited Shipping: Contact me for a quote

Color variations available upon request–prices may vary due to cost of ribbon.

People who know me well know that I’m a bit broke lately. I haven’t mentioned this, but for a while, I’ve been fighting the idea of putting ads up on this blog. (I don’t want to. Mindless advertising covering the internet annoys me.)

Well…I’m not going to cave and do that, or at least not yet, but I find it necessary to do something.  So, starting this Monday, I’ll be “blogging” about craft items I make and taking orders.  In consideration of the holiday season, gift wrapping will be available for a modest added charge.  I don’t have an expedited shipping arrangement but I’m willing to research it if anyone needs it.

If you know someone who’s shopping online this year, please send them my way.

When we were all teenagers, four of us–me, my sister, our cousin Teresa, and her friend Julie–agreed on one thing in particular: we were definitely not going to “grow up.”

Well, it seems like Julie did, possibly something to do with having three kids (she’s only a year older than I am…yikes…). Rianna’s on the edge. And Teresa and I…it’s not easy, but we’re fighting back, and trying to “rescue” the other two by dragging them along with us. Most notably we’re working on WARP again; see Teresa’s post for more details on that.

Is it a little bit silly? Well…yeah…no sillier than the idea of paying someone to talk to you for an hour about how crazy you are though. The thing is, all this responsible adult crap pretty much sucks…I like teaching, I’d do it for free if I didn’t have bills, but having to be anywhere and do anything on someone else’s schedule, well, let’s face it, no one feels like it every day. So, I figure, I can either have a full-on “is this really the dream I signed up to chase OMG get me a freaking refund immediately with sprinkles” quarterlife crisis, or I can trade my Responsible Adult character sheet in for an elvish mage or something now and then.

Inspired by our special friends at 89.202.239.9:

eipdswfry khilw

qtwoj xagfuonvw
fwgz pmknqc
qvcjrn
tjxinsghk wqrt

The first thing I don’t need: A throat or sinus infection, something like that, anyway it’s resulted in crazy congestion in the general area of my vocal cords. My voice is in and out. Oddly enough, I feel almost normal (headaches and tiredness; situation normal).

The other thing I don’t need: A new hobby/addiction. A friend mentioned Worth1000.com, so I started poking around. And then found a beginner contest that looked interesting, signed up, threw together an entry…found another one…stayed up a little too late last night outlining puzzle pieces and putting light and shadows on things to make this…which would be fine, over summer 2008 when I’ll have critical choices to make like “mountains or beach,” but less than a month before I have to have everything ready for oral exams, way less than a month before my second work sample is due, and when I still need to do some paperwork so that I’ll have the job next year (and maybe even get ahold of that apartment I was looking at)…yeah…a new timewaster is the LAST thing I need right now. And yet.

I still haven’t gotten back The Acceptance Letter yet…but I’ve got the next poem ready to go just as soon as I get it. Thanks to our latest two contributors, 60.50.251.61 and 82.178.134.63.

gdorexswm ivunegmz ymxao uqesmlrx

mqghxb
yhtusvd qgwlxckpa
axofjt qknlyzgj
mlijbpsg xjcduqnkm
zsgb
jbkpx awuiqyepm sywj
mrzjdp wgzlfuhkj
hirzxmc

An announcement:

I’m declaring an indefinite period of anmesty on a certain kind of spam. Because I’m launching a project to use the random-character spam to create Poetry.com poems and eventually a PublishAmerica sting manuscript, I find that I need that kind of spam.

So, those spammers who can restrain themselves from posting pharmaceutical ads and porn, and just keep it to random nonsense words, you’re welcome to help out. Oh, you still won’t get actually onto my site, but I won’t IP ban you either and you’ll get contributor credit on this project’s page. And the warm fuzzy feeling of knowing that you’re accidentally helping do something good.

I had the idea last night while BSing with Teresa about writing and literary scams like PublishAmerica and Poetry.com [links go to exposes, not the actual organizations' sites, because I refuse to promote garbage]…random nonsense spam as an entry to see if they’ll take it.

At 7:37 AM Pacific Daylight Time (GMT -07:00 if anyone cares), this (without the line breaks I added “for poetry’s sake”) got caught by Akismet. Just now, I submitted it to Poetry.com. And used a spamgourmet e-mail address for it, of course.

buwdiz nryfs

sgdtxi mvut meztvbj
miognfvx
kapnqh msyoidapz wcdjtfq

So…let’s see how this goes. I’m also going to see if I can gather enough for a PA sting manuscript, ’cause why not?

The template has been figured out, the new index format has been rolled out, and the new versions of pages are beaming in. Enjoy the new look!

So I’m not doing true “backward design” or whatever the frick that was called on a few things in this work sample. So I’m working from my own goals and seeing how they fit into CCGs, even if that means looking at the objectives under the goals and seeing how those objectives link up to the standards and grabbing the related CCGs from those. So I’m wielding the standards instead of being a total slave to them.

So sue me.