A New Craft Selling Site

Okay, today I was pointed to a new site for selling hand-crafted items. I went over to it to check things out and ended up signing up for it and listing three of my necklaces for sale. There are no insertion fees to list items (at least, not at this time) and only a 3% of the selling price fee once you sell something. The site is Crobbies.com (stands for Crafts and Hobbies). Unlike Etsy, there are not a whole lot of items listed currently, so the stuff I posted today is still up on the feature page. When I posted on Etsy, by the time I finished listing eight pieces, they had all been moved off of the first page and were buried among a group of approximately 1200 jewelry pieces that had been listed during the same time that I was listing. It took me 30 minutes to finally find my stuff in the general sales area! Of course, they were all readily available on my home page, but no one knew that address yet, so hardly anyone saw my things during the three months that they were there.

Oh, you say that items on Etsy are supposed to be on for four months? Correct, but my credit card info needed to be updated and since I was moving, but the time I got back to Etsy to give them the updated info, they had removed my items from the website and even after I gave them the correct info, they wouldn't put them back up. They wanted me to re-list them and pay the insertion fees again! So, no more Etsy for me. I have been selling some of my collectibles on eBay with success, but I just cannot bring myself to list my handcrafted jewelry pieces for auction for $.99 or $1.99. If they were to sell for an opening bid, I would be losing a lot of money as those bids would not even cover the cost of my materials. So, I will continue to take my things to the local craft shows, and now I have Crobbies.com, too.

If you read about this site, I hope you'll click on the link and check out all of the beautiful handcrafted items there. Thanks for reading!

Craft Show Season Has Arrived!

Wow, it's finally time for my craft shows to start. Actually, I did a show the first weekend in September, so that counts as my first show of the year. It was at the Aroma Park Two Rivers Festival, an outdoor event that's held in Riggs Grove right at the junction of the the Kankakee and Iroquois rivers. The show time was set for 10am to 6pm, with set up beginning at 8am. It was a long, long day.

I got there about 8:30 and was able to drive up to my spot to unload everything. Since it's an outdoor show, I had to bring my own table and chair as well as all of my crafts. Once the car was unloaded, I parked the car over in the designated area and went back to set up my display. I had brought my sweater coat with me that morning 'cause it was a little chilly that early. I was sure that I would soon shed it, and I did while I was setting up. I got everything set up in about 45 minutes and went to get my free coffee and donut, but there wasn't anyone manning the concession stand. This guy who was starting up the grills behind the stand got my breakfast for me and I asked him where everyone was. After all, they had made an announcement to the vendors that the coffee and donuts were there for us. He told me that everyone had headed downtown for the parade.

The parade. It started at 11am in downtown Aroma Park, about 1/2 mile from the festival site. And even though all of the vendors had to be set up for the 10am start, it looked like there were not going to be any customers until after the parade - about noon. So, we all just wandered around checking out everyone else's stuff. There were a couple of other people who were selling jewelry, several home decor vendors, a lady selling the cutest jeans bags and kids clothes as well as a few folks who had typical farmers market and flea market stuff. All in all, a pretty good mix of crafts and junk.

We could tell when the parade was over, because it ended right outside the festival site. The band led the way and the customers followed. We have a pretty steady stream of folks for the rest of the afternoon. The organizers had set up a kid's games area just beyond the vendor area and we had good traffic all day long. I had a lot of folks stopping to admire my work. I actually sold one of my expensive Swarovski component bracelets, as well as a few other things. I ended the day selling about $50 over my table cost, and that's what I like. (Any show that I make table fee times two or three is a really good show.) Oh, and that sweater coat that I brought - I put it back on about 2:30. You see, we were in a totally shady area under these towering aspen trees and there was a pretty stiff breeze off the rivers, so it was pretty cool out there. Glad I brought the sweater coat.

At about 5:15, I started putting my jewelry back in its little bags, but left the bags on the table. We were supposed to stay until 6, but I didn't want to wait until then to start packing up. I was afraid it would get too dark if I waited. Once I had all of the jewelry back in its bags, I was able to grab it pretty quickly and put it into it's little pink bag. Most of the other vendors started shutting down at about 5:40, so I started folding and packing my stuff, too. Once I had everything packed up, I went and got my car and pulled it up next to my space. I packed up the car and was out of there by 6:15. I was home before 7 and was really happy to take off my shoes and sit down. The next day, though, I could barely walk (all that standing and walking around on muddy, uneven ground on Saturday), so I spent the day just lazing around the house.

Anyway, that was the start of my craft show season. And now I'm working on my inventory for the next show, which is on October 19/20. This one is an indoor show and I'm looking forward to it. I've been making these little dolls, which were originally created by a lady as a swap with her friends. My dolls are a take-off of that idea, but instead of just having a ribbon hanger on them, I plan on adding a lobster claw clasp so that they can be snapped onto a purse pull or a cell phone. I'm hoping the tweens and teens will like them. Each doll is made from one 5" charm square, and since I'm adding the clasp, I'm thinking of calling them "Charm Dolls". My goal is to have two dozen of these ready for the show. I'm also working on some 9" and 10" ankle bracelets. I had a couple of folks ask me for them at the last show and one lady is planning on coming to the next show to see if I actually got them made. I want to have about a dozen of those ready, and I hope that lady shows up and buys a couple of them. I will also have my Halloween Trick-or-Treat bags at that show, and I hope they sell. People at the last show thought they were cute, but I think it was too far out from Halloween for them to buy them.

After the October show, I have shows on November 8 and November 15, followed by my traditional season ending two-day event at St. Gertrude's Church in Chicago. I have been doing that show for almost 20 years, and I already have orders for a couple of extra long table runners. I'm hoping to have a bunch of the Charm Dolls as well as more of my jewelry, holiday table runners, tree skirts, stockings and ornaments. By the time St. Gert's gets here, I will probably be ready for a nice break from crafting, but you know, I have seen some really, really cute things over the past few months and I think that I can actually make money with some of them. So, I might not be taking such a long crafting break after all.

Happybird's Crafting Haven

I love the internet. You can find some of the best information about all kinds of things. Since I'm a crafter, I am always on the lookout for good craft sites - and I found a really good one. The lady's moniker is Happybird and her website is Happybird's Crafting Haven. I've posted the link to her site here. Happybird loves to share her joy of crafting with everyone and acts as a clearing house of information. Her blog is what I hope mine evolves into one day. In the meantime, I'll just keep popping into hers every once in a while to see what's new. Do yourself a favor and check her site out, but I've got to warn you. Once you start checking out her site, it is really hard to stop.

Happy Crafting!

Family Reunion

A couple of weeks ago, the Mathy Family got together for one of its reunions (we have them about every five years). We gathered in Clifton, Illinois on June 28-29 for two days of food, photos, and remembrances. There were two books handed out at this reunion. The first was the family directory, which lists all of the descendants of Edward and Mary (Riordan) Mathy - my grandparents - and current addresses, emails and phone numbers. The directory shows that there are 405 family members (including stepfamily members). Subtracting the deceased members (25), we have a total of 380 living family members. There were approximately 350 family members at this reunion. The second book handed out is titled "Recipes & Remembrances - The Mathy Family Cookbook". It is a compilation of 349 recipes passed on from five generations of family. I can't wait to try some of them. Of course, there are a few from our branch of the family that I'm already familiar with, but there are still a lot of others that I want to experiment with.

The weekend started with a hotdog/hamburger cookout on Saturday afternoon. We ended up with about 180 folks there. This meal was originally put together to deal with all of the out-of-town family who came in on Saturday for the main reunion on Sunday. When you bring that many folks into our little towns, it puts a real strain on the local restaurants, so we started having a Saturday night meal for all of those family members. That way, they didn't have to worry about getting everybody dressed up to go to a restaurant. It also helped cut down on the cost!

On Sunday, there was a mass at Sts. Mary & Joseph Catholic Church in Chebanse, the town just north of Clifton. That church is bigger than the one in Clifton, and since a lot of the family are members there anyway, we use that church for mass. Each family wears a different colored teeshirt, so mass was a brightly colored affair that Sunday morning. It was easy to tell who the Mathys were - they were all in teeshirts! We started using the colored teeshirts at our first big reunion in 1989. It has become the way to tell which family the kids belong to. There have been some color changes over the years, but not many, so you know that if you see someone in a green teeshirt, they're from Duane and Jennie's family, and if they're in blue, Russ and Rosie's. We used to take a big panoramic photo of the family, but we've gotten so big that this time we just took pictures of the individual families. Even those took a while to get set up (one family is over 75 and another over 60). Getting all those folks to sit still for five minutes can be a real pain. I'm going to post a photo of my family (Duane and Jennie's) here. Hope it works.

In case you're wondering how you feed a group of over 300, here's how we did it. Each family brings a meat dish (lots of fried chicken, some meatloaf, ham and roast pork loin), vegetables, salads and desserts - enough to feed their own family. Of course, everyone thinks they need to make just a little more than usual, so we end up with enough food to feed three times as many as show up. This year was no exception. We had enough food left over to feed at least another 300 people. There were at least six huge containers of fried chicken, on top of the other meats. We had potatoes of every sort (mashed, cheesed, fried, hashed) as well as green bean casseroles, broccoli rice, mostaccoli, spinach, corn souffles and Italian style vegetables. Not to mention potato salad, cole slaw, fruit salads and jello salads galore. Then there were the desserts - three 8foot tables full! If anybody went away from that day hungry, it was their own fault.

We shared old photos and old stories. The older generation (there are only six of them left now) told us about the day their brother Donald's body was returned from Denmark after WWII. He had been killed in action in Germany in 1945, just before the end of the war and was buried in Denmark until 1947, when his body was returned with a full honor guard. Uncle Donald had been awarded the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star (for meritorious conduct) posthumously. A lot of the third generation family members had never heard the story, so Aunt Dorothy, Uncle Ed, Aunt Marilyn and Aunt MaryAnn related the events of the day Uncle Donald came home. There were many tears as we heard of his heroism in the face of enemy fire and about the honor guard of officers who brought him to his final rest.

The day continued with card games and visiting. The youngsters went swimming at the pool next door and the older folks sat in groups talking and catching up with others. Late in the afternoon, ice cream was served. It was store-bought, since there were so many of us, but it did bring out the stories of how we used to have Sunday dinner at the farm with Grandma and Granpa, and how, after dinner, Grandma would mix up a batch of her homemade vanilla ice cream and us kids would be put to work cranking the old-fashioned ice cream maker. No electricity was used back then. Just good old-fashioned kid power! And if the season was right, we'd have fresh strawberries from Grandma's patch to go with it. Ah, that was great ice cream.

It started clouding up around 5:30 on Sunday, so folks started packing up. Food was wrapped up and sent home with everyone. Chairs and tables were folded up and the hall was swept up. The ladies cleaned up the kitchen and the men cleared off the pavilion, and one by one, the families started leaving amid many hugs and kisses. And suddenly, after months and months of planning and organizing, the reunion was over. We won't be getting together again, except for weddings and funerals, for six years. At that time, it will be Ed and Mary's 100th anniversary. By that time, we may have lost a few more of the older generation, but I'll bet we'll have gained a lot more of the younger ones. Who knows, by 2014 we may be over 500.

I'm Retired

The past six months have been full of change in my life. The arthritis in my joints had gotten so bad that I could no longer do my job without a lot of pain - and a lot of mistakes - so, at the end of February, I quit working. I've been in the process of filing for Social Security Disability since then. You wouldn't believe the forms, and the redundancy. Hopefully, though, the end is in sight and I'll get a positive adjudication. If not, I'll have to hire an attorney, or just get along on my savings until I can file for early SS in November (I turn 62 in December). In the meantime, I have made some pretty big changes in my life.

I just finished moving down to Clifton, Illinois, the home village of my family. My sisters and brother live in Chebanse, just to the north, but I have nephews and nieces who live in Clifton. For the first time, I didn't have to do it all by myself, or hire movers. And that is evidently thanks to my mother.

Mom passed away in September of 2007, after a valiant five year battle with breast cancer. Unbeknownst to me, she made my siblings promise to help me when the time came. You see, Mom is the only one who ever really understood just how much pain I've been in for the past eleven years. It seems that one of my doctors told her something after one of my knee replacement surgeries in 2000 that made her worry. I have no idea what he told her, but it was enough to cause Mom to exact promises from my siblings before she died. My sisters, by the way, don't think I'm as disabled as all that, primarily because I still do my crafts. What they fail to understand is that I've been able to adapt my crafts so that I can continue to do them. I could not do the same for my work skills.

I was a legal secretary who used to type at 80 wpm with no errors, and could sustain that speed for extended periods of time (extremely helpful when preparing large court documents on a deadline). At the end, I was pushing myself as hard as I could, but my speed had slowed to less than 65 wpm and I was having to spend more and more time making corrections due to my growing inability to control my finger movement. Also, I had to keep taking breaks to stand up and move around. I used to be able to sit for 4-5 hours straight without stopping. Just before I retired, I was having to get up every 40 minutes or so to walk around and to shake out my hands and fingers in order to continue. The pain in my wrists and fingers was also reflected in the loss of strength in my hands. I was having trouble lifting file folders of any size (and in litigation, file folders can get to be six or seven inches thick). I dropped a folder one day which resulted in my spending about 20 minutes reorganizing the file, which put me even further behind.

The skills I need for crafting are different from those I used for working. When I'm sewing, I can keep my hands flat and fairly immobile. I'm not causing too much stress on my joints that way and I'm not lifting any weight. I don't do as much creative work on my jewelry as I used to because of the loss of dexterity in my much stiffened fingers. Most of my work now is simple stringing - and even that is beyond me on certain days. And at this point, however, it is my crafts that have been keeping me afloat financially. During this past spring, I was doing at least two craft shows a month, which resulted in my not having to dip so much into my savings, and which is why I didn't have to move from my old apartment until now.

As I said earlier, my sisters helped me with my move. Of course, I'm not as neat a housekeeper as they are, so I have been having to put up with a barrage of disparaging remarks about my lifestyle for the past three weeks. One sister told me that I had too many clothes and that I should get rid of everything but two weeks worth of outfits for summer and two weeks of outfits for winter. I don't know about you, but I like to have choice in what I wear. My friends think her idea is absurd. But that's just the way she is - a material minimalist when it comes to other people. She and her husband, daughter and son-in-law helped me move my things from my old apartment down to the new one (it cost me less to do it that way ($160) than it would have to hire movers ($180/hr with a 7 hr minimum)), and I am extremely grateful for their help. However, I am glad that she is letting me put my new apartment together myself. She has offered to come help me finish unpacking and organizing next week. Hopefully, I'll have most of that finished before she comes down.

It's getting late now and it's taken me a lot longer to get this post prepared than usual. My fingers and hands are really beginning to ache, so I guess it's time to stop for now. (Time was when I could have sat writing for hours without a problem.) More later.