Friday 15 May 2009

purple cat nightmares


"Erratic" is the word I was looking for, but which my scrambled brain failed to remember for at least the last ten minutes. That word is exactly the term I needed to describe my sleeping pattern of late.

Near enough every night I have been up until well past 2 o'clock in the morning, and have then tried to go to bed, feeling sufficiently exhausted, only to just lie there, head buzzing with thoughts and ideas, failing miserably to fall asleep.

Every night, in those early quiet hours, you can find me here at, or not too far away from my trusted laptop. I'm still building my web shop and it's slowly starting to take shape. The shelves still need a lot of filling up, some of the legal nitty gritty, like terms and conditions needs sorting out, but the layout and design are more or less in place.

Normally, I'm mostly typing in values, text, etc.., one eye on the PC, and another on the big fat manual. Last night however, it all got a bit more exciting (you are about to find out how pathetically unexciting my little life really is...). All these products have to be photographed in order to show potential customers what they look like, and that is exactly what I did last night.

You should have seen it! The makeshift photographic studio of the year was constructed : One length of white satin and a few pegs; the satin is to be attached to the extraction fan, using aforementioned pegs, making sure that the top is sufficiently gathered. Drop down length of satin, in front of cooker, where a strategically placed ironing board serves as a shelf. The "shelf", a.k.a. the ironing board, needs to be covered with the satin as it comes down, so to create a continuous flow of fabric, moving from vertical to horizontal position in one flowing sweep. Then you collect the uplighter/reading lamp combo from the sitting room, and places it to the left side in front of the arrangement of shelf and backdrop. It is very important that great care is taken when pointing the "reading lamp" spotlight, at the arrangement. In the depths of my store room I still had a slightly lopsided adjustaform bust. However, she is a rather offensive shade of purple, and her "legs" (metal stand) have been lost a long time ago. All was resolved using a polo neck jumper of Little Haggis and by perching her on the "shelf". As soon as this set-up had been put together, I discovered the next problem: the whole point of dragging the bust out, was that I had scarves to photograph. It turned out though, that the neck on the bust was much too short, in fact it was almost non-existent. After a few moments of rummaging around the storage cupboard, I found just the thing: a white ceramic plant pot, just about "neck-sized", carefully placed upside down on the little stomp of neck of Mrs. Adjustaform. So there we go, the set up completed, I could finally get going.

After lots of clicking and zooming, I finally managed to successfully put about 12 different designs of scarf in the picture!

The results are now available to see at www.purplecatbycindy.com. You don't know how pleased I feel with the progress of my site. All I need now is visitors, and of course for some of them to like the site and its contents enough to become a customer...

Here's hoping.

Thursday 7 May 2009

Drowning in little dresses...











Ok... So, you'll think: "What's this all about?"




Well, it's just that I'm currently drowning in little dresses, as I'm taking pictures to put on my website.

This building of the website turns out to be so very time consuming that I've hardly got any time to actually make more dresses! Help!
I'm posting this to get REACTIONS! So write a comment.. tell me what you think, please?
OK, I'm showing off... but it's all in the interest of market research.
The pictures above show an example of how I'll present them to start off (that is, while I have no suitable little model to pose in them for me).

Any ideas, remaks, constructive critisism? Just fire away!!
Speak again soon!
POC








Sunday 3 May 2009

How to be a millipede.

I have not abandoned this, I have not forgotten this, and like so many other things, this is now another source of guilt. Guilt for not finishing, for not keeping up, for not being able to devote enough time and loving care to it.

Beloved (is he beloved??) and I are going through a very rough patch... It's been almost all-consuming. It's not working well at all, between us just now. I'll leave that story for another time though...

On top of that there is my little business. It desperately needs a boost in these times of downturn and despair, so I've decided to give it another outlet, namely through an Internet shop. Now, THAT... That is not as easy as it seems! In effect it means that I'll be running 2 retail outlets, one virtual one and one actual physical shop. Both will be drawing from the same stock, and so my usually messy book-keeping will now need to be brought up to scratch. I will need to allocate an individual identification code plus description to each article, and that is just the stuff that is working in the background... not a spot of designing has been done to present my online shop in a nice way yet!

It has suddenly made me realise how much is actually already involved in my shop here. When I signed up for the web hosting, I was asked if I wanted the basic package, which allows you to list up to 2000 products on your site, or if I wanted the more extensive package, which supports 10000 items. I laughed, 2000 items?? Haha! Of course that would be more than sufficient!
And then I looked at how everything needs its own identification number, and realised that I probably have around 300 different kinds of ribbon alone!! I don't dare to think of how many different buttons I have.... And those are just little things. Anyway, I've decided to start simple, and the ribbons and buttons might just have to wait for a space on my e-shelves.

And then... on top of that I've been sewing dresses, dresses and more dresses. Most of them not to order, just as one-offs, they are currently gracing the walls, shelves and rails in my little shop, and that, thankfully, has led to an order for 9 dresses! ..... Only snag? They have to be ready in 4 weeks! YIKES!!!

Well, I'll figure out one day how to be a millipede... all those hands would really be what I need.

And then there is one more thing.... I am missing my little Belgium, so so so so very very badly. It has been tearing me into pieces lately, and keep wondering what on earth I'm doing here in this cold country so far away from everything that is part of me...

Well, I'll keep you posted. And you will all be invited to the official opening of my Internet shop... once it is ready to go live. Hope you'll stick with me for now, I promise I'll post more once things calm down, in every possible way.

Love,

POC x