A Burden Shared...

It is hard to see anyone that you care about suffer and not be able to do much about it. Now that I am a parent, I understand how much my own parents sometimes set limits to keep me from being hurt. At the time, I thought they were being unfair. It is hard to watch a loved one battle a disease or illness and not be able to make them better somehow. It is hard to watch a friend go through trials and tribulations that make your teeth grind in anger and your heart ache. It is almost harder to watch another person’s pain than it is to experience it yourself... almost.

The creative person inside me always wants to try to find a solution or way of helping to make the problem better. The reality is that sometimes, the only way to help is in other small, indirect ways. A note, a hug, a word of support, an offer to share a meal. Tonight I may not be able to carry any of my friends’ burdens, but at least I can let them know that I am here. The perception that a burden is shared often helps to make it feel lighter, even if you know that you are still the one carrying it. I must go and reread that poem Footprints in the Sand...

Web Site Updated At Last!!

It was a busy but productive weekend. I had a chance to speak to the Youth Forum of the Maritime Conference of the United Church in Sackville yesterday about “Living the Call”. I shared with them how there are many ways to use the gifts you have been given without necessarily being a minister. There were lots of other guests including a songwriter, so maybe we gave the young people who heard us some career ideas. I shared that you never know when you will be led down paths that you didn’t expect. Designing cross stitch was certainly never anything that I had ever dreamed about... and yet I couldn’t imagine my life right now without that, especially when a stitcher sends an e-mail sharing how much a certain design has touched their lives. I don’t think that will ever cease to amaze me. (I still keep thinking that I should be thanking them for stitching the crazy stuff my imagination comes up with!!)

Getting the website updated is also a MAJOR weight off my shoulders and wouldn’t have been possible without my girls playing so well together or Nick handling the dishes etc. Sometimes writing that HTML code from scratch can be really hard on my brain, but it gives me the results that I want and saves the money of paying someone else to do it!!

One of the reasons that the updates were so late is that I wasn’t sure what the final line up for COLUMBUS was going to be. A book deal deadline that got pushed back meant that one adorable release (the sequel to Winter Wonder called “To Trim A Tree”) will have to be pushed back until the fall. Having a huge order to fill for one distributor also meant that cash flow got messed up enough to prevent me from sending two other pieces out to model stitchers. When I looked at the logistics of paying them, framing costs and printing costs to release them for Columbus, it simply wasn’t possible to put them out now.

Luckily, Nick IS a faster stitcher than I am and got the first in our newest series “NO LATE KNIGHT SNACKING” ready in time. Many experts are saying that cross stitch is in a decline right now compared to other hobbies. The one thing I hope to do with this latest series that will be released as a single page leaflet to needlework stores or in kit format with lots of clear instructions and diagrams, is to reach fantasy people who may not be stitching yet and introduce them to this wonderful hobby I’ve gotten so addicted to. Each one in the series is designed to fit within a standard 5 x 7 inch fame, so hopefully they will be zany projects that are challenging enough to be addictive and yet not too complicated for beginning stitchers. We shall see!

Now that all the files are sent over to the website, I had best surface from my basement cavern and read some bedtime stories!!

Two Weeks To Go!

A cold, wet day here that certainly does not feel like the end of May and no hope of sunshine in the forecast for the weekend. Hmmmmph! I got one large tote of models shipped off to a wonderful shop/designer near Columbus so that they will be waiting for me when I arrive on the 10th of June. I am still very nervous about this show because it is a new city and a new venue for me, but that excitement/terror can also be fun. Why else would someone have invented roller coasters??

I am finishing up one of the painted canvas samples into an adorable little door hanger so that I can get stitchers’ imaginations going. I’ve also decided the lineup for the show in terms of what models will be ready in time. It certainly is leaner that I hoped, but I am happy with what I DO have ready. Will I remember to pack everything this time??

Now I must put the finishing touches on the special chart that I am handing out to shops that place an order at the show. The Morning Wizard is the “companion” piece to the Night Wizard from Nashville and I hope it will put as much of a smile on people’s faces as the last one did....

One Vehicle Side Benefits...

Wednesday morning are usually when Bethany and I spend time together. The day normally begins with my swimming lessons and Bethany has a chance to play with the other kids at St. Pat’s (a wonderful lady named Brenda provides care for preschool kids in the mornings while parents get a workout in!) then it is off to do groceries. Then the rest of the day is ours to spend together until Erin gets home. While it often means that she has to come along for mail runs or bank deposits, Bethany also gets to corner me for games of Go Fish and 20 questions etc.

This morning, Nick having the van made his day so much easier. The kids also had a 4 day weekend because Monday was a National Holiday and yesterday was NBTA meetings. Tomorrow is also Kindergarten Orientation morning, so Bethany was already set to be at daycare today. While part of me misses being in the pool this morning, it is also very nice to have the morning in a quiet house (at last!) to get stuff done. There are models to pack for pre-shipping to Columbus, one chart to finalize and one more canvas design to paint. Then there is the dreadfully out of date website to update... so I don’t think there will be any lack of things to keep me busy. Factor in the insurance costs and the soaring price of gas to the fact that I’ll get stuff done at home today and I’m actually glad we only have one vehicle!

Bonds That Don’t Change...

What a fun long weekend!! Yesterday, we piled into the van and drove to Fredericton (about an hour and a half away) to see some friends that had moved there almost 2 months ago. We even experimented with setting the cruise control to a slightly lower speed than we might have driven before gas prices soared through the roof. We had lost of cars sail past us going well over the posted speed limit, but we still got there in the usual amount of time and used only a quarter of a tank of gas. - YAY!

The day was fun. Our kids all played together as if they had never been apart and it was such fun to catch up on all the news. It is also nice to spend time with friends who have been through so many of life’s major events with you... you have that whole common history and you can just be yourselves. It was wonderfully relaxing and I even finished the backstitching on one piece that Nick had stitched as well as most of my little painted canvas piece!

Today, we met up with another great friend and her son to go see Shrek 2. The kids liked it a lot, but it was the adults in the theater who killed themselves at the “inside”/pop culture jokes and not so subtle digs at Disney. Luckily, someone had also told me not to leave before the end of the credits, so I didn’t miss out on the scene with the dragon!

The best part of bonds like friendship, or even a hobby that you like such as stitching, is that they can restore and recharge something deep inside you which you might not have realized needed tending to. This close to the trade show in Columbus, I could have just spent the whole weekend working (especially since my website is in desperate need of updating) but I needed to have that time with my family as well. Life is sometimes more about balance than anything else.

Beginnings, Endings and Possibilities In-Between

Fridays are always something I look forward to. The beginning of a holiday weekend (Victoria Day is celebrated here in Canada on Monday) is even more special because there is that sense of freedom from having an extra day to “relax”. Nick and I are both feeling the need to curl up and slow down a bit tonight after such a hectic week. Nick bravely faced each crisis at school this week from grief counseling to Grade 4 students wearing “sex bracelets” (jelly bracelets that have a colour code for sexual favours to be granted by the wearer) capped off by two sudden deaths in the family of one staff member last night and today. I had a week of trying to finalize my lineup of designs for the Columbus show and ship out orders with Erin home sick two days this week and now on antibiotics. We rented a movie to watch tonight, but I needed to sneak down here and blog.

Today was also the last day of the pilot 6 week pre-kindergarten literacy program that my friend across the street and I created for Queen Elizabeth school where Erin attends and Bethany will start Kindergarten in the fall. It was fun to get sticky hugs from all of the children as they said goodbye to us today after we had our Teddy Bear’s Picnic.

On the way to pick up Nick this afternoon, Erin and I got into a wonderful discussion about why life doesn’t last forever. Trust a 9 year old to bring up the heavy topic stuff while you are driving!! It did, however, get me thinking about how I used to perceive grownups and how I think about life now that I am one. I used to think grownups never did anymore growing UP and therefore just grew old but didn’t really learn new stuff. Considering that my mother had the courage to start a second career while I was in high school, that was a pretty silly idea to have. I think by then I had started to think differently.

Now I embrace the fact that there is always some new trail to explore, some new thing to learn, a new place to visit, a new food to taste and new skills to acquire. There will always be new things I want to learn and try. I think that is one of the best things about doing crafts. There are always new colours to play with, new fibers to incorporate into designs, new combinations to put together, new stitches to try. It is probably the same for music, writing and so many other things.... the possibilities of what lies just around the corner is what makes each day so exciting.

Falling In Love All Over Again....

Sometimes you just need to fall in love all over again. I have been doing that a lot lately. Despite the blackflies, the bunk beds that were too short , the giggles and the snoring, Brownie Camp was a lot of fun. While I had enjoyed my time in the Girl Guide movement immensely when I was young, I did drift away from it until Erin became involved. Watching the experience through 14 pairs of young eyes, making crafts and s’mores, meeting the wonderful woman who will be Erin’s Guider when she flies up to Guides, using your new tea lights in punched hole tin cans because it was too dry to light a real fire or smiling when each of the girls had to introduce “Flossie” (can I pick my nickname or what!!) to her parents during pickup made me fall in love with the Guiding movement all over again.

I’ve also been falling in love with needlework all over again, partly because I have been having such fun stitching up one of the painted canvas designs I will be showing off in Columbus. It has been such fun to play with some of the thicker, funkier fibers that you just can use in cross stitch! I still wish I had been able to finish up some of the cross stitch designs I was trying to get done for Columbus, but I can always release them later on in the summer or early fall!

This past weekend also brought home how important it is to “fall in love all over again” with the people in your life that you care about. While I was up at Brownie Camp with Erin, Nick received word that one of the parent volunteers at his school has died suddenly at the age of 37. Because all 3 of her children attend the school and she was such a visible presence, this triggered the crisis protocols. Nick had to spend time calling staff and arranging things for when the counseling team came in Monday morning. He called me up at camp just to hear my voice. Moments like this are always reminders not to take anyone we love for granted, even when we are ready to scream at things they do ( I think that’s why kids look so cute when they fall asleep... so that you can forget/forgive some of the things they did when they were awake!!)

I’ve also fallen in love with having a sense of humour. Moncton is a small enough town that I heard via a very roundabout grapevine about the woman I had spoken to in Staples about making illegal photocopies. It seems that she has recently purchased her own copier so that she can continue to make copies in the privacy of her own home without anyone pointing out that such behaviour is still illegal. I wonder how many “expensive” patterns she could have bought legally for the cost of that copier?? I hope still feels this dragon’s shadow looming over her every time she hits the copy button!!

Of Rupert, Pigeons and Brownie Camp...

A few weeks ago, I woke up in the middle of the night with two ideas for painted canvas designs. I’d been looking at canvas work stitches to incorporate them into a sampler design for this fall and instead found myself thinking about how pretty some of those patterns would be if worked up in Fantasy pieces instead... I have only tried painting canvas one other time, and I didn’t like it that much, but suddenly my fingers were itching to try these two designs. Thank Goodness Tink Boord-Dill was only a phone call away!! She answered most of this pesky dragon’s questions.

So last night, I had a great time painting away while the Survivor show was on in the background. I was thrilled that I could actually vote for something this time. Watching American Idol and not being able to vote has been SO frustrating!!! I was just thrilled when Rupert won the million dollars. I wondered if Dani was shouting with glee too.

This morning, as we all tried to get out the door in the rain because I need the van to go teach the pre-K literacy program at Erin’s school in an hour, we had a lot of unexpected excitement. There on our driveway were two pigeons. One seemed to be fluffing its wings rather pathetically while the other huddled close and of course my girls erupted into fits of “Oooooh! The poor thing!! What are we going to do??” Since the birds were right in the path of our van, backing around them wouldn’t work and backing over them certainly wasn’t an option even if most people around here refer to them as “flying rats”.

As everyone continued to get ready, I put on my rain gear and donned my bright yellow rubber gloves. I figured that I could lift the injured pigeon over to the lawn, get everyone where they needed to be and call someone if the bird was still there when I came home.
I marched out onto the driveway, hood up against the rain.... only to have the two lovebirds take off!! I guess they’d been doing some post aerial nookie cuddling on our driveway!!
Off came the gloves and away we raced.

I had to come home to check the tracking numbers for our shipment to be sure everything id going smoothly, so I thought I would blog now. Erin and I are off to Brownie Camp for the weekend, so there won’t be any blogging until Sunday. We’ll be in a big cabin, so the fact that it should be freakishly warm tomorrow with thundershowers won’t be as scary as in a tent. Bethany was a little miffed about staying behind with Nick until I pointed out that when it is her turn to go to Brownie Camp, Erin won’t be able to come!!!

Time to dig out my camp blanket with all my badges on it, my Girl Guide camp hat with all my trophies and buttons... and hope that SOMEONE there will know the melody for the song “Barges”. I love to sing harmony on that one, but nobody down here seems to know it!!

Holy Shipping Nightmares, Batman!!

Today was one of those days when I needed a knight in shining armor to ride to my rescue... and Nick did just that when he came home... but let me back up a bit.

We spent most of the Mother’s Day weekend packaging up this huge order to go out to one of our US distributors that deals with chain stores. Since I was dealing with a larger volume than usual this time, I had asked Purolator about shipping one palette instead of many, many boxes. “No problem!” they replied. “Just sending your dimensions of the skid once it is ready so that we can arrange everything.” So Monday, I hired the daughter of our LNS owner who is home from University and not yet employed for the summer to help batch the last of the chartpacks. Another friend helped me get half of the shipment over to our printer, who had kindly volunteered the use of their loading dock, a palette and to shrink-wrap all the boxes on it for us. When Nick got home, we took the last half over, called in all of the dimensions to Purolator and were told that I’d be contacted the next day (today) to arrange the last details.

By 2pm, when I still hadn’t heard anything, I called them back to check the status. Their computers had been down the day before, so they reentered the information and put URGENT on the file. “You’ll get a call before 3pm!!” I was told.

At 3:10 pm, I picked up the phone and went through some managers this time, thanks to a very nice Purolator person (who sounded like she was a stitcher because she knew who I was!) When I started to discuss the arrangements with the Logistics person, it quickly became apparent that I was... how shall we say it... in deep doo-doo. The only way they could guarantee delivery by the date I needed was to send it AIR, since they hadn’t contacted me that morning to arrange pickup today! This is when I discovered that the “special shipment” department isn’t really Purolator either...

I then called my printer and told them to stop shrink-wrapping the palette because I was coming down to pick up all the boxes again!! Nick loaded the girls back into the van and we drove across town to pick them all up. We then made a pit stop at Staples to pick up some photocopy paper boxes to help hold all these individual cardboard boxes that get split up for the chain store shipments. Nick backed the van into the driveway and I began to pack them into the bigger boxes while he cooked supper for the girls and made sure that Erin got into her brownie uniform. Luckily it wasn’t our turn to car pool tonight.

Once the boxes were packed up and I had all the dimensions, I fired up the computer to do a multiple shipment which the last Purolator person I had talked to insisted I could to on-line. After 40 minutes of entering all the information, the program refused to go any further due to memory errors!!

Off we went to the airport terminal after another phone call to Purolator assured me that I could get a manifest form there to do all the boxes on ONE waybill.... but once we arrived there, it turned out that was only for Canada!! Bethany sat down in one corner with my gameboy while Nick and I commandeered the photocopier and main room breaking the shipment back down for 3 waybills, even though all my customs documentation was written up for one shipment... and everything made it out on the plane to Toronto by the 8 o’clock deadline. We also made it home about 10 minutes before Erin was driven home from Brownies!!

Now, having relaxed a bit while watching American Idol, I am more philosophical about the whole thing. I have learned that it really is more affordable to do things the more difficult way sometimes (many shipments instead of one) and that when you are working for yourself, you will do those crazy things that are above and beyond... I feel like I have run a Marathon or taken part in some extreme sport where I had to push myself to the limit today and not freak out under pressure.

I am also so lucky to have a true partner that will put up with this kind of chaos and unpredictability. He jokes that this falls under the “for Worse” part of the wedding vows... and I am not sure he isn’t right. It is truly one of the more challenging parts about being the whole company and why I get so angry when people scan my stuff.

The highlight of the day was finding out that my brother’s contact was able to get all of our designs removed from the site! I’ve also been getting a bit of information on some of the offenders, so perhaps I’ll be able to track down a real person this time and take some legal action!

I sure hope tomorrow is calmer!! Boring is so HIGHLY UNDERRATED!!

Pancakes...Presents...Packing Charts to Great Music and Films...

Today started VERY early for a Saturday in our household. The alarm went off at the usual time and we bundled the girls into the van under blankets still in their jammies to get Nick to church to cook the famous Mount Royal Happy Face Pancakes for their Pancake Breakfast. I can’t reveal the secret here, but it does involve a turkey baster...

We came back home without him, but the cold air had done nothing but wake my two princesses up completely, so we played until it was time to go get our own turn at eating the pancakes. Then, while Nick was still working on cleanup, we girls went to the Farmer’s Market, picked up the new covers for the designs we have to batch this weekend and bought the supplies I need from our local needlework shop to try my hand at one canvas design for release in Columbus .

I was given one of my Mother’s Day presents a bit earlier in the week when things were going a bit hectic. Nick had found some lovely “sparklies” for my ears and then today, he tracked down the Josh Groban CD I’d been trying to find with the song “You Lift Me Up”. Not only does the man have the most glorious tenor voice, I truly love the lyrics of that song and may very well wear out that track on the CD should such a thing be possible.

Tonight, after the girls went to bed, Terri came over to help us pack up part of our order while we watched Calendar Girls in the background. It was a wonderful movie and I felt very “well fed” in the movie department having thoroughly enjoyed seeing Time Burton’s Big Fish the night before.

Both movies made me realize that we just never know all the ways in which each one of us touch other people’s lives. We may never see the ripples we cause or the seeds we plant bear fruit, but we all have such an ability to create real differences in the lives of others around us. It was also a reminder of how something that seems like such a simple idea... can sometimes grow!

Princess Day Tomorrow...

Well, we finally have our van back now that they managed to discover what the problem was... the alternator (at least I think that is how it is spelled!) but we won’t need it tomorrow!! Whenever there is a “professional development day”, we let Nick go off to work, then the girls and I lounge about in our PJs and watch DVDs or play games, do crafts, bake things etc. It can be a wonderful break and down time with my girls... or it can be a masterful feat of juggling so that they feel like they are being spoiled and having Mommy spend time with them, but I still sneak down when they are watching movies to check e-mail etc.

Tomorrow we are also inviting two princesses from up the street and that Mommy for an afternoon Tea Party... so it should be a bit more chaos, merriment and juggling than usual.

With the large order I received from one distributor, I took the plunge and decided to have the cover sheets for A Dragon’s Tea Party, Of Woods and Wilderness as well as Dani the Stitching Dragon printed up my local printer rather than run my dependable little Epson 740 into the ground, so I stopped by to sign off on the Iris proof this morning so that the job can go to press first thing in the morning and I will have all the covers by Saturday at noon. Then I am calling in some favours because many hands make light work and we shall have a batching party to get everything ready to ship.

Now it’s time to run up and tuck my oldest Princess in bed....

Pedometers are addictive!

Once I finally got my stride properly programmed into my pedometer, I was hooked! It is such fun to see how many steps you actually take in a day or week when you make a conscious effort to move more! I’ve even started making two trips up and down the stairs sometimes instead of risking the trail with overly full arms.

I’ve had to run a few errands to places within a 5 or 10 minute walk and am gleefully leaving the van in the driveway to do it... or looking for parking spaces in the middle of two points I need to visit. It may not seem that much at the time, but all those little steps really do add up. Considering that I need to sit to stitch or to be on the computer, making an effort to move more often during the day should keep this dragon’s butt from getting any bigger.

I need to get the web site updates done... but I just have no energy tonight after a very hectic day... so I am going to goof off tonight and finish knitting a scarf I started weeks ago. Sigh! It’s hard to ignore that little voice that screams of deadlines and pushing the limits... but I shall just duct tape it’s mouth shut for tonight!

Pack, Stuff, Ship, Fax, Phone......

It was one of those days with so much to do and get out... and it didn’t help that our van was in the shop to try and figure out why the battery keeps draining too fast. Nick also had things to pick up for school and get ready for a staff meeting. Moncton is one of those cities where there really isn’t a viable public transit system unless you can handle waiting an hour between buses on the same route, so the dealership was at least cooperative enough to give us a demonstrator for the day.

I also discovered a form on my desk that should have been faxed out on Friday, so off that went while I sorted through e-mail... only to discover that May somehow crept up on me before I knew it. Yikes!!! I’d best get my website updates done before even more e-mail comes in asking about what is new for this month!!

I have meetings tonight and tomorrow morning, so I guess it will have to wait until tomorrow afternoon. I sometimes wish I could clone myself.... but then I’d probably fight with myself all the time who was going to have to do the ickier tasks.

At least it feels good to know that most of my packages for the last batch of orders has gone out and that Just Cross Stitch received my ornament this morning. Now I just have to finalize my Columbus lineup and get ready to pre-ship stuff. Five weeks is plenty of time... right??

Sunshine, Songs and Bubbles...

I try to always keep Sunday as a family day. It doesn’t always end up being a day of “rest” and certainly a far cry from the times my grandmother used to tell me about when they had to sit quietly all afternoon and not play with their toys!

Today is the second, glorious, sunny, hot day in a row we’ve enjoyed here. A very FAR cry from the snow last Sunday!! Several of us in the choir loft found it almost too warm under the gowns by the end of our special Anniversary service, but the two anthems we got to sing were just too much fun.

Since lunch I have found time to putter in the garden while I watched Erin and Bethany enjoy the first soap bubble bonanza of the year and listen to their giggles as they raced around the backyard to try to pop each other’s biggest bubbles.

Now they are out with Nick washing the van and “helping Daddy”, so I thought I would grab a few minutes to blog as my second printer chugs out the cover sheets for another batching session tonight.

Packing charts on a Summer evening...

It’s only May Day, but it sure felt like summer today! The sun was shining and the temperature soared into the high 20s (about 78 degrees) which was a welcome and very far cry from the 1/2 inch of snow we woke to last Sunday morning.

A very good friend of ours came over tonight to help package up leaflets and chartpacks for a few orders that needed to go out and to make some headway on the huge order that came in on Thursday. It almost felt like a warm summer evening and since Erin still has her heavy blankets on the bed, she kept coming down to complain that she couldn’t sleep. I think hearing grown-ups laugh and chat had something to do with it as well.

Even though the actual batching of charts is somewhat of an assembly line process, it is fun to do when you either have something good to watch on television (I often use batching as a way to justify what little TV I watch) or to have good company to chat with. Burdens shared don’t always come up with answers or solutions, but sometimes I think it helps to just be able to talk to other people. We had the chance to both share and listen tonight and it made getting through the piles more bearable. My Nanny was right - Many Hands DO Make Light Work!!

Angst and Affirmation...

It’s been a VERY long day. I once vowed to myself (and to Nick who has to put up with listening to me rant) that when I started to only have negative things to say about the cross stitch industry that I would just get out.

Today, I came very close to hanging up my needle and just walking away from everything.

Supply teaching with a local license for $100.00 a day was looking very appealing as Nick struggled to find supply teachers who could speak French. At one point today, running away to another country to raise pygmy goats was looking far less stressful and more rewarding that being a cross stitch designer that people could steal from. Being informed about a foreign site that was hosting over 20 of our patterns illegally was not something I really wanted to face less than 48 hours after listening to someone tell me why she couldn’t afford the “pricey patterns”.

I never wanted this blog (or my career as a designer for that matter) to be an extended pity party... just the chance to give a more honest look into what it really means to try to do what you love as your career. At one point, after more than 2 hours of trying to sift through sites seen through translator programs (when I really needed to be proofing my article and instructions to go with my Just Cross Stitch ornament, I could actually feel my blood pressure spiking and took a break for lunch.

“That’s it!” I thought as I took my frustration out on the breakfast and lunch dishes. “I work too hard at what I do to have it be so easy for people to steal what I create!” Bubbles flew, pots gleamed and I even tore a hole in my rubber glove. “I am SO tired of sounding negative! I just want to go back to earning a regular paycheque!” Even a phone call from a very dear friend didn’t quite dispel the frustration (though it did make me feel cared about!)

Nick was a sweetheart about cooking supper so that I could fax a more complete list of class selections to the Creative Sewing and Needlework Festival for their show this fall before their office closed in Toronto. We had a great supper, but my stomach was still a bit in knots over the days events. I joked about everything from learning how to be a short order cook (Nick knows I can’t handle the smell of grease cooking very well and am a bit of a spaz with sharp objects when I am in a hurry) to running off to some remote corner of the planet where there are no computers.... but I was having serious doubts about continuing to design.

Nick went down to check his e-mail and play a few games on my computer, when suddenly he came bounding up the stairs. The fax had beeped and there was a huge order from one of our distributors which will have us scrambling for the week to batch up. A kitting company I had contacted called back with the details I needed to submit my project idea to them, a store called with an order and there were two more waiting on the e-mail for me tonight.

Coincidence or affirmation?? It feels more like affirmation to me... and a reminder that you have to have both sun and shadow in your life’s design. There are far worse shadows that could have fallen in my life right now. As hurt as I felt by the fact that these posters seem to want to ignore the fact that there is a PERSON behind the designs they are scanning, that is nothing compared to the pain that so many people around this world are facing right now.

“Count your blessings instead of your burdens!” I think to myself as I wrap this up before heading off to bed. “That way you won’t sound like you’re whining!!”

Beating Your Head Against the Copyright Wall...

I am SO mad right now, I had to come home and put it all down in a blog while the anger, frustration and almost tears are fresh. I’’ve been having “pre-show jitters” already, even though Columbus is just over 5 weeks away. Then my show release lineup had to change yesterday because one of the designs I had planned to release has to wait longer until after the publication it will appear in (long story). So... maybe I am not as objective as I should be.

I walked into the local Staples store to drop off my master patterns for 3 orders that just came in and as I stood and the counter I noticed a woman with a stack of over 40 cross stitch patterns and books making copies at the self-serve copier. The store was really busy and I am not generally one to like making a scene... but this was just such a HUGE amount of copies being made, methodically, one of each page, that I would have hated myself if I had stayed silent.

I politely introduced myself and explained what I did for a living and then asked her if she knew that what she was doing was illegal. The woman got quite defensive and replied that patterns cost too much money, so she had no choice but to copy them... and besides... everyone was allowed to make ONE copy. I explained about the concept of working copies and how that was different from making your own copies and then handing the pile back to “her bowling buddy” who had lent them. I asked her if she had thought of just borrowing the originals from her friend a few at a time and making her working copies while she had them in her possession and was actually stitching them. “But I want to do them all and I got not enough money to buy them!” she insisted. “My friend said I could make my ONE copy!” I explained that it was her choice, but that making copies was as illegal as downloading music without paying for it or taking that pattern from a store and then left before I started to either foam at the mouth or cry.

The whole way home, all I could think of was how much money I was investing in myself during the next 60 days in terms of airfare, hotel, display unit to be shipped ahead from Canada because that was still less than renting it onsite, pre-shipping models because I am going alone and will only have 2 suitcases, model stitchers, framing costs, table rental, Sample Spree, meals etc. in order to produce patterns that SOME people feel they are justified in copying because they are “too expensive”!

Sometimes it really feels like we are beating our heads against a copyright brick wall. I have no idea if that woman will ever change her mind about what she was doing, but I know that at least I have said my piece as politely as possible. (Maybe I should have had an ultimate Dragon hissy-fit and made the whole store aware of what was going on, been hauled away for disturbing the peace and appeared on the 11 o’clock news..... that would have gotten a lot of media attention for copyright issues!)

Then I remember the Barry Manillow song from last week’s American Idol... “One Voice” and hope that will be true eventually.

Of Snow, Trios, Attitudes and Bounty Hunting Cows....

Ok.... Spring can come ANY time now.... Just when Nick and I thought that we could put away all the winter coats, hats and boots, it snows!! Of course, Moncton didn’t get the wallop that poor Newfoundland got. They were supposed to get over a foot in the middle of a strike with no one to plow the roads!! We were watching TV last night as the rain poured down when all of a sudden, it got very quiet. I looked out the window and there was a mini-blizzard of swirling, white flakes coating our lawns, bushes and roads. YUCK!!
The year I was married, it actually snowed here on May 8th, just 2 months before I was due to be wed and I was convinced that spring would never arrive. What I have learned now it that there are some years when we go right from Winter to Summer in just 3 weeks... so this may be one of those years.... sigh!

This morning, I sang the very low notes (Tenor) with two other wonderful ladies at church and we had SUCH fun!! It was one of those toe-tapping gospel style numbers and it was hard not to boogie too much while I was singing. As nervous as I was before hand (I’ve only sung one other time with a microphone and BOY does your voice sound MUCH louder to your own ears!!) it went off very well, so that felt rather satisfying.

Erin and Bethany were both having those kinds of “unconditional love” days... the ones where parents have to constantly override the urge to mail their children to the other side of the world in a box with lots of air holes and enough broccoli to sustain them on the journey...
We’ve been having lots of reminders about treating people the way you wish to be treated... or speaking politely instead of rudely, but I am just now getting a taste of how much attitude both my headstrong little girls are capable of. I know that I don’t want doormats and obedient, timid little things for daughters, but I do want to work on everyone at least being civil! Still lots of time to work on this before they are both in their teens!
Maybe I will get some grey hairs after all!!

We also went to see Disney’s Home on the Range this afternoon and both girls have been quoting favourite passages ever since. How can they remember things so clearly when I have to pause to remember where my car keys are??

As much as I love my whole family, I also love the quiet of retreating down to my office and getting things done once they are asleep or off at school/work. Quiet is highly underrated!!

Of Harmony and Discord...

Choir practice ran late last night at church, so there wasn’t time to really jump on and blog. I am going to be singing the very low notes of a trio piece on Sunday and it was great fun to hear my voice blending with 2 other women, but whenever one of us would hit a sour note (as does happen now and then) I was far more obvious of how discordant it sounded than when I was singing with the whole choir. There were also moments when all three voices blended so well it was a pleasure that gave me goose bumps.

Funny how little things like that get the gerbils in your head going (you know... the ones on the squeaky wheels that are always churning ideas around back there even when you are trying to fall asleep?) I found myself thinking about how stitching projects can be like that... moments when everything flows so well and you see a design really coming to life that you get all caught up in the magic of it... or times when there is a mistake to unpick/frog, something goes wrong or an accident happens to the piece (grape juice, pet accident etc.) and what had been a symphony of colour and design feels more like a howling chaos or noise and notes.

Designing can be like that too. There are some moments when a design jumps to life as if it was meant to be and others that require far more work to be birthed into the world. I am working on some fun ones right now, lost in the harmony of watching new things come to life, but it doesn’t help when one of my favourite authors drops a captivating tidbit in my lap to distract me!!!

I devoured my way through Mercedes Lackey’s JOUST in the past 48 hours, moments snatched while e-mail was downloading, files were saving, bank lineups were moving like molasses etc. This book made me fall in love with taming dragons in a way that hasn’t happened since I first discovered the Pern books by Anne McCaffrey. Since most of my collection is in paperback, I’ll have the frustration of having to wait for the second novel to finish its time as hardcover... but I know it will be worth the wait. What fun to wander into a world of someone’s imagination and see all the detail they have come up with.

Now back to creating things from my own imagination!

Stitching to Barry Manilow....

OK... I have a confession to make. Sometimes I love the fact that I can “work” while watching a favourite show, such as American Idol, and still feel like I am accomplishing something. One of the reasons that I think I ended up being such a crafty person (as in making things... not as in sneaky) is that I loved to have something to show for any time spent in front of the television. From drawing and quilling to macramé, beading, stitching or knitting, I need to be able to see that what select time I do spend watching television still has something tangible accomplished.

Tonight’s theme was the music of Barry Manilow which I have always loved, despite sometimes being teased royally by friends in high school and later in Fine Arts. One sitcom back then even featured a stern English butler muttering the line “There are two things in this world I cannot stand... a woman’s tears and Barry Manilow!”

I considered myself LUCKY to see him in concert at the Montreal Forum in my late teens and still remember what a great show he put on. Hearing the new spin put on some of his classics tonight ranged from thrilling to painful (depending on who was singing) and a real nostalgia trip.

Hmmmmm... I guess since my old cassette tapes are getting pretty worn out, it will be time to hunt down some CDs of his music to add to our collection so that I can introduce Bethany and Erin to his timeless music. One thing I know for sure... I will NOT go on-line to download any of those classics, because I respect the man and his musical gifts enough to want to make sure that I don’t cheat him out of any money he has rightfully earned!!