Quotedium Update 31.11.vii.g

In other news (what??) I reopened my Etsy shop after someone contacted me through my email trying to find out how to buy notecards. What’s cool about that (besides the obvious) is that he found me through the information on the back of a card someone had sent him. It was the Sandhill Crane Walking among Willow Saplings. I ordered some for him and sent them along at a small financial loss for me. NOT the greatest business model but goodwill is worth a lot to a small business such as myself.

After I sold six more packs through Etsy, and I saw that a market exists, I looked into ordering more and realized (again) it’s not cost effective for me. I don’t know what their idea was raising prices as much as they have. I did more experimenting on printing at home, thinking, “People want these and the Crane Festival is coming up. I promised to donate some to Friends of the Refuge to sell at the festival. HFS, Batman. I have to do something.” So as one does when one can, I got better at it…

I experimented and got a very very nice product. Better than I was getting from the commercial printer, and now it’s possible for me to do custom orders — assortments and personalization and all that. It’s not like ink and paper don’t cost me anything, but it’s a far better deal for me AND customers. I print the ink drawings on textured card stock, and they look just like the drawings do in real life on the watercolor paper I used. The colored cards are printed on plain card stock, perfect.

I put more cards up on Etsy. Etsy is seriously flawed and annoying, but it’s simple for people to use. I have also decided to take custom orders through Facebook and here. That is an advertisement, I guess. My Etsy shop is linked below, but you can contact me through my Gravatar and order directly from me.

https://www.etsy.com/shop/MarthaAnnKennedy

In other news, Bear and I headed out yesterday to see what’s going on in the Big Empty. Teddy and I went out Thursday, and Teddy has learned that he has a lot of freedom with the Halti. He also discovered how much fun it is to head into the deep snow and search for smells. Yesterday Bear found his little hunting efforts and checked to see what Teddy was after. The Refuge has filled the ponds and ditches because the waterbirds are on their way north — I saw and heard one Canada goose yesterday. It struck me as odd because you never see one goose. I thought about the single Sandhill Crane I saw last week, which was odd, too. I laughed to myself thinking maybe the birds have their own Natty Bumpo types in the flock who scout ahead for possibilities for the whole population.

There’s not much snow out there — we got more in town and Alamosa got even more (and record cold — -24 F/-31 C) but it has drifted into beautiful whipped cream shapes along the fences and reeds. Bear loves the deep snow.

Among other things I saw tracks where it seemed a fox had gotten dinner. Other tracks further on seemed at first to be elk tracks mostly because of their size and the location — a spot where the elk hang out, but now I think they’re Jack Rabbit tracks just because they’re missing features of elk tracks and they are really crazy. Jack Rabbits are BIG.

“gotcha!”

Elk or Jack-Rabbit?

The featured photo is a filter from a well-used Bialetti.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2023/02/18/rdp-saturday-filter/