Old Dogs, New Tricks

It was just over a year ago that I opened my online shop at etsy.com. I was convinced to do so at the urging of a wonderful friend who has played a huge role in pushing me in the right direction over the past few years. She had opened a store for her marvelous purses, and felt I would find a market for my jewelry there as well. While I've sold more jewelry since then outside of my etsy store than through it, I have no regrets. Opening that store has propelled me into the internet and its many wonders in ways I find astonishing.

My entire relationship with the internet was considerably delayed compared to other Americans. When Americans were just beginning to flex their "surfing" muscles, I was living in Burma, a country so repressed and dictatorial that, in one instance, mere possession of a fax machine led to the death in prison of a wonderful man we knew there. Rather than joining the large crowds whose morning ritual included a computerized voice insisting "You have mail" along with coffee and the paper, we moved to Cuba. Allowing connection to an unfettered source of information was too threatening to Fidel and his minions, so another two years passed before we moved to Peru, where connection was limited only by the vagaries of electrical power, and the internet's many wonders began to open for me like the petals of a flower.

Yet, for the following six years while I lived in Peru and Costa Rica, I was busy painting, mothering, befriending, exploring, entertaining, and the like, so I used it mainly for connecting with far flung friends and family, finding facts for my elementary school-aged child, researching medical symptoms, and the like. I was way behind the learning curve in chatroom lingo and other signs of internet competence.

After I opened the shop at etsy, I began reading the forums there, and was amazed at how computer-literate many people were, and I realized that I was not only behind the curve because of where I had lived, but there was also a generational thing going on. If there were a forum post involving computer code issues, for example, I found I couldn't understand a word people wrote, and there were many like me, "of a certain age", who felt completely lost in that world.

I'm the impatient, I-can-figure-it-out-on-my-own kind of person who ignores instructions while assembling furniture or operating equipment. That attitude, however, only gets you so far in terms of gaining internet knowledge. So, while researching what such things as ROFL, and IMO and the like meant, I also began learning about blogs, and realizing how they can assist in promoting one's etsy shop. So, one day recently, on the spur of the moment, I started this blog. I have learned about linking posts, cutting and pasting html code, pinging, and all sorts of things which wouldn't have made a bit of sense to me a year ago. So, for all of those internet-challenged or -fearful folks out there, I'm a perfect example of how old dogs can indeed learn new tricks! Woof woof! ROFL!

Sunday Lunch

I love the custom in parts of Europe and Latin America (and probably elsewhere as well, although I haven't experienced it personally) of spending Sunday afternoons with friends, relaxing outside, eating, drinking, talking. This Sunday, my family and I went out to the beautiful, forested Virginia countryside to experience such a lunch in the new home of some dear friends. Those gathered included Americans, a lovely Thai woman, and an interesting man from Alsace. The food, as always, was excellent. My Thai friend excels in cooking everything from Thai food to Italian to, well, you name it and she can cook it.

She began cooking when she was a young girl growing up in the mountains of northern Thailand. Her parents had a small farm, and they needed someone to cook the daily meal provided to the laborers. Cooking the daily meal in Thailand is, of course, quite a different exercise than cooking here in the U.S. Every morning she would go to the market, buy what she needed, come home and start chopping and dicing and sauteing. In spite of what others would consider to be daily drudgery, she grew to love cooking because she had an instinctive talent for it and she loved making people happy. She still makes people happy with her cooking.

Recently, she underwent some hardships, with the loss of her 13-year-old boxer "baby", and then moving away from a large circle of close friends in another country. She was sad. Wanting to help her, I offered to show her how to make a necklace, and she agreed. Immediately, she took to it, went to a bead store and never looked back. I think it provides for her the same thing her cooking does: she has an instinctive talent for it, and she makes her friends happy with the lovely creations she gives to them.

The blue gill above was caught by my son in my Thai friend's pond.

Miracles of Modern Technology

A long time ago at the well-known Georgetown fleamarket here in Washington, D.C., I fell in love with an antique dress form with a bosomy shape and little cast iron claw feet. I wasn't that I was much of a seamstress, but I just had to have it. I used it over the years to hang interesting clothes and hats on, but then it sat in storage for more than thirteen years. When I retrieved it, I found that had it remained the same, but I had changed a lot, and I discovered a wonderful new use for it: photographing necklaces. To my mind, photographing a necklace on a flat surface, while perhaps giving useful information about the detail and the construction, is insufficient. One has to see how the necklace hangs. I suppose I could use myself as a photographer's dummy, but that seemed awkward, and this old dressmaker's form seemed just the thing.

And I was happy with it "as is" for quite a while. Then one day, a dear friend mentioned how she uses the "cloning" tool on her photo software to "disappear" the hooks upon which she hangs her bags in order to photograph them. The hooks, she felt, were distracting. A little lightbulb switched on over my head, as I realized how unsightly the division lines on the movable plates on the form were. Aha!, I thought, I can "disappear" them as well, and so I did. I find it to be a strangely enjoyable, almost meditative, and certainly miraculous process, as if I were "stitching" the plates on the form together. I thought about the women who had used the form in the past, and how utterly astonished they would be at all of this: online shops; digital photographs; cloning. It is good to keep in mind those small miracles of modern technology. Given the difference between the two photos, I think it is pretty amazing! Hmmm....now if only I could use the cloning tool to "iron" the tshirt!

Here is a link to more great tips on taking photographs:http://enthral-enthral.blogspot.com/2007/05/photography-tips-for-posting-on-etsy.html

A Half Century

On the eve of turning 50, I signed up for a basic metalworking class. I have been working with metal as I develop my skills as a jewelry artisan, but I want an expert to teach me things that otherwise might take a long time to learn on my own.

I have been a painter for many years, and am mostly self-taught. While I believe there is great merit in learning through trial and error -- especially if one is as stubborn as I am -- I also know that simple skills learned from an expert can save valuable time. Perhaps it is because I am nearing a half century that I am particularly aware of the passage of time.

One of the skills I have learned in the past year since I began selling my jewelry (as opposed to keeping it for myself or giving it away to friends and family members) is how to photograph jewelry and work with photo software to create the best images possible for my online store, mebdesigns.etsy.com. The other skill is learning how to navigate the internet and use it as best as possible to promote my shop.

I love the fact that this past year has involved a lot of learning. With the new metalworking class, I hope my 50th year will involve even more growth, learning and development.