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!!

The Magic of Retreats...

I’m back from a truly wonderful weekend up at Camp Wildwood with the most amazing bunch of ladies. This was the 28th retreat (they are held twice a year) and though our numbers were smaller than the fall version, 57 of us still had lots of giggles, stitching and fun!

Friday’s weather was horrible with snow and sleet. It certainly wasn’t as bad as anything the brave gang heading to Myrtle Beach this year faced, but since the fresh snow was covering up some of the muddy areas, a few cars got stuck on the camp roads or getting to the cabins.

The main lodge was toasty warm with a fire going by the time we all got our chairs, tables and lights set up in our little circles. My friend Sue and I were up on the stage again this time. It’s a fun place to site because you can look down and have a great view of what people are working on. It’s only about 8 inches higher than the floor...but I’ve always known that a few inches can make a BIG difference!

The food was fabulous again and WAY too tempting! One of the best parts about being away at this retreat is that the meals are all prepared for you, so you can just concentrate on stitching, napping, relaxing, going for a walk, chatting, reading or all of these whenever you feel like it.

I often get a chance to sit at one of the picnic tables and do some designing. This retreat was no exception. When I design up at retreat, it hardly feels like work because I am surrounded by such creativity and laughter. Many of the ladies had fun peeking at what ornament will appear in this year’s JCS Ornament Issue ahead of time. I also finished one of the designs that I plan to launch in Columbus, so that needs to get off to a model stitcher as soon as I transfer it into the computer! It was also wonderful to see how far one of the ladies has gone with her own dream. Tracey had some marvelous button embellishments for the little craft sale we had at the fall retreat and has since gone on to not only produce buttons to sell to shops, she has even designed two amazing patterns that feature her products. I’m sure that stitchers outside the Maritimes will be hearing about Fiddlestitch Cottage as she continues to build her dream. Now if I can just get Debbie to put her gorgeous cross stitch bags on Ebay....

Saturday and Sunday were gorgeous weather. The sun and warm temperatures melted the new snow and I got out for an hour long power walk. Saturday nights are fun because we all try to stay up as late as possible to get stuff done before the “last day”. That’s when we do all our door prize draws and get into silly things like glow-in-the-dark glasses or bad jokes. Sunday mornings are bittersweet. We share a time of fellowship and stitch almost frantically, knowing that after lunch we will all pack up and head home. Just before lunch we do a gift exchange and it is always amazing to see how creative stitchers can be. The fall retreat is an ornament exchange, but in the spring, it is a stitched item, so we had everything from pillows and bookmarks to scissor fobs and candle wraps. We even raffled off a stitched bag that many of us had worked on to raise almost $200 for Cancer research.

It was such a restoring and recharging weekend. It is almost impossible to describe a retreat experience to someone who has never been to one, but I know that I always come back feeling more in love with stitching than when I left, more inspired than rested and more thrilled that this is actually part of what I do for a living! If only it weren’t 6 months until the next one!!!

Off to Retreat!!

What a busy week!! Erin is presenting her science fair project that she did with her friend across the street today, so our home has been a whirlwind of magnets, printouts and helping glue the backdrop together for their Electromagnetic Crane. Bethany had pajama day at daycare and then Dr. Seuss day with lots of great books read. I started to learn how to do Butterfly in swimming and boy is it hard!!

Now I am off to retreat tonight to meet up with 60 - 70 women for a wonderful weekend of stitching and fellowship. The fact that there will be a nice fire going in the main lodge as we set up our stitching circles will help counter the fact that it was HAILING this morning!! It has now turned to snow... and I think this will be one of those weird Maritime springs that only lasts 2 weeks. We’ll go right from winter to the high 70s in just a few weeks and “poof” it will be summer.

Bethany is feeling sick this morning. If she’d eaten breakfast, I would have suspected that it was just a case of “I’d rather stay with Nanny and Grr here than go to daycare...” but her throat seems to hurt too much to swallow, so I’ll try to have her seen by our doctor before I head off late this afternoon. Nick still gets jumpy about me going away and kids getting sick since he dealt with chicken pox alone last fall while I was in Toronto. It’s wonderful to know that Mum and John will be here to help this weekend.

I was trying to explain to Bethany WHY I needed to go away when she said it wasn’t for work. There is something totally selfish about taking time just for me, but I need this retreat twice a year to recharge those “me” batteries so that I can be a better person, wife and mommy. It is just so wonderful to have no fixed schedule, no interruptions, no meals to cook or laundry to do and even no e-mail to answer (though it does pile up!). Time to just sit and chat with other strong women, time to indulge in the sheer creative PLAY of stitching or doodling new designs for as long as I want is sheer heaven.

I know I need a piece of that right now!!

Spring Cleaning And Spring Sunshine...

The Aries Birthday Season is finally over in our household and I have thrown the last of the cake and ice cream into the garbage. Those are both “trigger” foods for me, and while I hate to waste food in a world where many still go hungry, if it lingers around the house, I am the only one who will eat it. One of the ways I have kept my weight off since losing it two years ago is to not set myself up for failure, even if it means throwing stuff out. This is why I also ask the Easter Bunny to bring more shiny dimes that chocolates for the girls to hunt...

Sunday was a wonderful day of fellowship and family. Nick’s Mum and “Second Dad” came here for the Easter meal and I had a wonderful chat with my Dad on the phone. My sister called and I also got to speak to my Mom later that night, so I felt very connected to everyone.

Today was a glorious Spring holiday Monday. We were able to get outside for bike rides and chalk drawing wearing only light jackets. It felt glorious!! We also spent the morning sorting and organizing toys for the girls. Now that they are the “advanced age” of 9 and 5, there were toys around the house that just weren’t getting played with anymore. Today, I lovingly gathered all of the pieces for each Fisher-Price Little People set that we had (farm, garage, town, school bus and circus train) then bagged them up in plastic to take to our self store until that day MANY years from now when I become a grandmother. We also sorted out Barbies and Polly Pockets to get the tangle of toys so often hastily shoved under beds and into drawers all sorted out and back in the proper containers.

I must admit that it was with great satisfaction that I tossed a few extra bags of garbage onto the heap tonight and packed a huge bag into the van for our church rummage sale. We really do live in a society that accumulates STUFF at an alarming rate. Every time I de-clutter, I find it so much easier to find things and so much less stressful. I wonder why we feel this need to have so many THINGS in our lives to help us feel fulfilled???

Finding Inspiration In My Daughters’ Eyes...

One of the things that I love most about being a parent is that I get to be exposed to creatures that are infinitely more aware of the world than I am... my children. As we grow, we learn to put all these filtered lenses on our perceptions of reality that take us far away from everyday wonder... even those of us who try hard not to “grow up”.

Both Erin and Bethany are still caught up in that wonder and magic of make believe and exploration, so some of my best soul recharging moments come from when I am pretending something with them, listening to them tell as story out loud as they draw it, getting lost in a wonderful book with them, talking in silly voices or answering one of their infinitely challenging questions that always seem to start with WHY??

Yet, as Erin grows closer and closer to her double digits and then teens, I find I have an incredible sense of watching something precious slip through my fingers, like mist or stardust or sparkly tears. I do not want to be the one to break all of her bubbles, because I still make wishes upon stars... but it will be hard when magical things like tooth fairies, Easter Bunnies, fairies and Santa Claus are no longer part of their lives. I hope that I can still keep some of that wonder alive so that they still reach for the wisps of dreams and are not afraid to entertain angels unaware.

The other night Erin cried about not wanting to grow up. Such a hard thing for a “little girl” in a tall girl body. I remember that ache when everyone treated me as so much older than I really was. We talked for a long time about breaking the worry and panic into manageable pieces... how we would always be there for her... no one ever gets to know what tomorrow holds and must journey into it with grace and faith...

Now as I try to capture these thoughts in my blog, I know that I still feel that bafflement sometimes about not wanting to be the grown up or the parent or the responsible one. But I am also glad that I still retain the sense of wonder and “impracticality” that allows me to imagine a dragon hoarding chocolate, having tea with a wizard or being tamed by a mermaid. May none of us ever grow up TOO much!!

Back On-Line After Computer Woes At Last!!


This year the April Fool’s Joke was on me a few days early!! Last Monday, my computer began acting funny and making strange noises before it dissolved into nothing more than a box of plastic and wires that wouldn’t even acknowledge it had a hard drive!

Of course I handled this as any sensible, computer-dependent graphic designer with deadlines would.... I totally freaked out!! I did manage to find out about a wonderful company in Fredericton (about an hour and a half away) that handled Macs, so off my poor computer went by courier. I always do my back-ups at the end of the month, but I may just go to bimonthly after this last episode!! As it turned out to be the hard drive itself getting old, they transferred most of the information over to a new, larger hard drive and put in more RAM while they had the case open, so now I have my machine back and am slowly returning to the world of the wired.

It was a very STRANGE feeling to be so cut off from the Internet, e-mail, computer programs to design with. I did still put pencil to paper on a few projects (which is how I always start my designs) but it still felt strange...

I’m glad to be back blogging and have finally got the website updates over to the server, but that’s about all the energy I have for tonight. Erin had her first slumber party this weekend and I am still catching up on sleep... but that is another story for another blog!!

Is Ignorance Bliss?

In the battle against copyright abuse, I so often hear the excuse “I didn’t know I was doing anything wrong” that I have to wonder which sandbox people have been hiding their head in. Sometimes, there are small victories, like a wonderful letter from a Russian site saying that they are going to add reminders to their rules so that people don’t post copyright materials. I know that they cannot moderate everything, but they were very prompt at shutting down the sites that were reported. When an ISP is cooperative like this, it helps make it at least a tiny bit tedious for the infringer, leaves a link that people may be sharing in groups as a dead end and acts as a wake-up call for people who really didn’t know any better.

Take auctions on Ebay as another example. Far to often, thanks to the miracles of modern technology such as charting programs and scanners, people just put an image of a cartoon, illustration or drawing that they like and create a chart to stitch from. Any random search can let you find lots of Disney and other cartoon characters or even wonderful Fantasy artwork scanned in without the permission of the copyright holder being sold in auctions. This week there was even one seller who tried to explain to a designer asking questions that “she just sold the stuff” and that the person she was selling for was the one who was producing the charts, some of which she had permission for but which ones, the seller wasn’t really sure. Hmmmmmm.

One of the first things I decided when I first started to design was that I would always make up my own verses or text so that I didn’t have to worry about tracking down who might hold the copyrights to quotes I liked. I also firmly believe that each designer has to find his or her unique voice to share with the world rather than copying a style or theme which might be trendy at the time.

Yes, you can “make money” by producing a chart from an image that you didn’t have to create. Yes, you don’t have to worry about actually stitching up a model of the piece because there is always someone out there who is looking for a Winnie the Pooh chart or unicorn etc. and they probably won’t really care how easy to read the chart really is. There is always FAST money to be made in this world and fools to part it from... but that doesn’t make it right.

Maybe it is harder to keep your eyes open.. to ask questions if something seems to good to be true... to save up for something you like instead of finding someone to just “make one copy for you”

Ignorance may be bliss.... but it does not make what a copyright infringer is doing any less illegal.

A Wonderful Princess Day...

I’m not even sure how they first came to be named “Princess Day” in our household.... but today was another one of them. Princess Day can only occur when there are school holidays and Nick still has to leave the house. It then falls upon us girls to lounge about in our jammies for most of the day and do silly stuff, games, crafts, baking etc.

On a Princess Day, Mommy only takes phone calls and leaves her computer off unless there is an unforeseen emergency with a client, so it is a change of pace for me as well. Sometimes, though not this morning, they even sleep in. This morning, Bethany had a nightmare about people trying to steal her, so she crept into our bed as soon as she heard Nick’s alarm go off.

Once Nick was out the door, we made low-fat blue berry muffins with enough extra frozen blueberries in them to turn the batter purple. We lounged about and played for a bit then tried out the new Harvest Moon “It’s a Wonderful Life” for the Game Cube. The girls had fun naming the puppy and cow as we started out to build our farm and the graphics are spectacular, but right now they are very much hooked by the action and danger involved in the Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time. It wasn’t long before they were pleading with me to switch games and we had great fun learning how to soar off a cliff using a chicken as our glider! The only hard part is that neither of them are interested in mastering the controls yet... so guess who has to be doing the actions? The only problem is that whenever I make mistakes (as you sometimes do with video games) I get this chorus of “Oh MOM!!” in stereo!! At one point in a tunnel, Erin was screaming “no... go right... go RIGHT!” so loudly in my ear when I got turned around that I made them turn off the game for a break. Since it was close to lunch, I taught them how to make their own mini pizzas using English Muffins while I made myself some tuna melts. Bethany discovered that she loves tuna fish (which Erin cannot abide) and took great delight in telling Erin how much she loved it... but it set them both off on a round of quoting the Lilo and Stitch movie. “Do you know what tuna is? It’s fish!! If I gave Pudge a Tuna Fish sandwich, I’d be an abomination!!” (Try to picture an almost 5 year old with no front teeth say the word abomination! My sides still hurt!)

The only mishap of the day was Bethany chewing a hole in her jammies during a scary part of the Zelda game, so we are ending Princess Day with a run to the store to buy some new jammies for the smallest princess. Luckily we ran out of time and Nick came home before we got to the part where they styled my hair with all the little hair clips they own!!

Growing Pains...

I’ve been sifting through piles of paperwork again today and hating every moment. I have finally come to the conclusion that it is time to pick some of the tasks that take me the longest to do (ie. accounting, inventory etc.) and contract some of it out or delegate. Erin will be 9 in a few weeks and I am sure that once a month, she could sit there and check the stock that I have made up or start to help with batching orders for distributors. I have a few leads on accountants in the area that know small business needs... but will they understand mine? It is hard to find someone to work with that way, but it is time!

Everyone in the house seemed grumpy today for some reason. I think we are all still tired from the weekend’s chaos. I’ve been trying to get my work done earlier in the week because there is no school on Thursday or Friday. We’ve just had report cards come out, so tomorrow after school and Thursday are parent/teacher interviews and then Friday is a professional development day. Since Nick will need the car, I have decided to send Bethany to daycare tomorrow and keep her home on Friday. We girls will stay in our jammies and have a “princess day” while Dad is working. This time that means snacks, crafts, drawing sessions and playing our new Harvest Moon “It’s a Wonderful Life” on the Game Cube. Dare I hope that they will sleep in a bit?

Spring... Hah!

We celebrated the first full day of spring yesterday with 10 cm of new, white, fluffy snow. It was actually the kind that in December makes you want to skip around and sing carols... because it fell in soft, white, whirling flakes and clung to every branch and twig.

But now that it is the end of March, I have had a taste of warmer weather and I am hearing from people further to the south who are already gardening... I think I am ready for the lovely white stuff to melt away.

We had our big goodbye party/birthday celebration yesterday as well. It was bittersweet as any parting is. I suppose the true test of any friendship or relationship is whether or not you are willing to invest the time and energy to keep it going.

Today I also got down to the business of tidying my office and cleaning up e-mail, trying yet again to get a response on two Russian sites that are hosting my patterns illegally. I did manage to get one of them closed down... but I don’t know if they have just moved it or realized that they were doing something wrong. The second site is being more stubborn. I suspect that this is someone who KNOWS they are breaking the law and just doesn’t care. I have been writing to the people who run the site, but they are far harder to deal with that Yahoo or MSN.... possibly because of the language barrier. Sigh! Those were hours I’d much rather have been designing. Thank goodness for stitchers who can surf around and let me know about sites like this. If I was trying to police my own stuff out there, I’d never have time to design another piece!

Sifting Through Memories...

This is going to be a wonderful weekend... and a very hard one.

We started it off in grand style by taking Nick out to a local restaurant called “Jungle Jim’s” that has lots of stuff to look at around the room (jungle theme, tiny plastic animals hidden in the fake plants, strings of lights in the shapes of peppers or parrots etc.) The girls proudly announced that it was their Daddy’s Birthday Dinner and so the whole staff (two of whom are former students and almost all of whom remember the 40th Birthday embarrassment last year) came out to sing the wonderful “I don’t know but I’ve been told.... someone here is getting OLD! I don’t know but it’s been said.... someone’s face is going red.... Happy Birthday... Happy Birthday to YOU!” chant that my girls just love. Since Nick is allergic to chocolate, we just ordered a piece of cheesecake to stick the sparkler into rather than the free chocolate cake. I’d like to have him around for 42!!

Tomorrow is the last session of swimming and gymnastics for the girls and a fairly quiet afternoon finishing off presents for Sunday. Sunday morning is Nick’s actual birthday, so I expect the girls may pounce on him instead of letting him sleep in. Erin is singing in church as part of the Sunbeam youth choir and there is a special soup luncheon afterwards. We’ll head home after that and get ready for the special party/celebration/goodbye event at our house that night.

Nine years ago, 6 other teachers on staff with Nick were pregnant during the same time as I was. Everyone joked that there was something in the water cooler that boosted fertility. Nick and I started the mini baby boom off with Erin’s birth in April and the last baby was born the following October... but it made for lots of baby jokes and we even started having some “Moms & Tots” parties after the kids were born. From that larger circle, two other families stayed really close with ours and our kids have all grown up like cousins to each other. We have shared joys and tears, life events and lots of giggles. When one of the families moved out West for almost 2 years, it felt like forever until they were home again. Now the other family is moving 1 1/2 hours away to Fredericton. It will be hard to say “goodbye”, but at least this is close enough that we can still plan some of our special get togethers and yearly traditions like visits to the apple orchard and making Gingerbread Houses together!!

I put together an album of some of my favourite photos of “our gang” to send with Clan Tremblay (Twins took their family from 4 to 6 last year, so I think they deserve clan status) and while it was fun to relive some of those wonderful memories, it was also hard... because I know that I will miss them. I wonder if this is how my parents felt when so many of their friends left Quebec in the mass exodus after Bill 101 when many companies relocated offices to Toronto or elsewhere in Canada?

Life is all about change and growth.... but I don’t think any kind of goodbye is ever easy!