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I can (and often do) market the stuffing out of my friends’ creative endeavors. I’m the person with a nice word, the pat on the back, and the confidence building admonitions. But when it’s something I do, something I made, something I’m invested in I lack any kind of confidence.

Oh sure, I act like I’m confident, and sometimes that’s enough to allow me to bulldoze my way through. In reality what’s going on inside my head is that I equate the fruits of my labor to my self worth, and since my self worth is usually in the toilet I tend to think just as poorly of the things I produce. So promoting my own skill is a major leap– and I crumple hard sometimes.

And this is where I cringe. Because I don’t always feel brave enough to say “Hey look guys, this is what I made!” Let alone try to say “Hey look guys, this is what I made and want you to exchange money for it!”

Besides I hate shop blogs in general, because sooner or later they turn into “Oooh we just got in a case of three toed glass pickle sharpeners and wouldn’t you know it? Everyone has to have one.”

So fine. Flannel curio bags on eBay and flannel curio bags on Etsy. I made them, the price is good if you need them. There. Happy now?

I’m going to go work on finishing my In the Style of Queen Anne doll and hope no one is judging me too harshly.

Sooki is the main character in The Saggy Baggy Elephant, he’s happy with himself and life in general until a parrot starts making fun of him.

Parrots can be such dicks.

Sooki then tries ways to make his skin fit better, mostly by asking predators for advice and putting himself in harms way. Each time he tries and fails the parrot is there to make sure that Sooki feels the sting of public humiliation.

Really depressed, Sooki hides in a cave (an obvious metaphor for eating a gallon of Cherry Garcia and wearing dirty sweatpants) and a hungry lion finds him there. Sooki cries out as loud as he can when the lion goes after him and his terror is rewarded– he is saved by a herd of elephants that not only chase off the lion but affirm that there’s nothing wrong with Sooki, he’s a fine looking little elephant sags and wrinkles and all. Then they go stampede through the jungle in a rage (okay, the book says they all dance through the jungle, but I’ve watched a lot of National Geographic specials on elephants and dancing was not even mentioned in passing.)

It’s probably too sad to recount that the elephants’  joy stampede destroyed several small villages and took many innocent lives so it ends with them “dancing” in the jungle. Not to mention that graphic depictions of death and destruction could have been problematic for the illustrator of a children’s book. I can respect editorial discretion and I still love this story even though the intended moral of the story is “You’re okay as you.” and I’m pretty sure the real moral of the story is “Yell loud enough and an angry mob of adults will eventually come and save you.”

Also: “Parrots are dicks.”

The truth is no angry mob is going to save anyone from deeply seated self loathing caused by the taunting of parrots with borderline personality disorder or lions that may or may not be suffering from a serious eating disorder.

Still, it’s a lovely story and I couldn’t pass by the little handmade elephant in Keeper’s Corner without thinking of the book, so I bought the elephant and Matt gave me the book.

My re-organizing of the craft room is going well. I took a little time out to deal with a pressing case of yarn vomit. Yarn vomit is when a skein of yarn expels the loose inner core of yarn in a one or several large clumps which will then tangle if left to their own devices. Yarn vomit is the bane of knitters and a single skein of yarn suffering from yarn vomit is capable of infecting the whole herd.

Somehow winding new neat and tidy balls of yarn just isn’t giving me my crafty fix for the day. I think I’m going to make a push to finish painting my Queen Anne doll later and start working on hearts for Valentine’s day.

I’ve been down with a cold for the past few days. I’ve made friends with the NyQuil bottle.

During my convalescence I revamped Cutemojo with a completely new look, new theme and re-installed the shopping cart that I took offline when I moved last year. I have to build another light box and start taking photos of my inventory now but the shop is otherwise ready for business.

Last night I started painting my Queen Anne doll. It was really difficult to make myself cut the joints and get started on her, because painting is where I will inevitably screw things up. Obviously I know gesso exists and if I really mess things up, it’s here for me to apply over and start again. Worst case scenerio: I have to cut, sew and stuff a new part. I would just rather get things right the first time.

I also know that this is a tendency that hangs me up on a lot of things, since I would much rather not try than risk failure. I’m excellent at not trying. I don’t usually think about it, but being sick tends to punctuate certain habits of mine that I don’t like very much. I cringe when I think of wasting supplies and materials and it takes some mental flexibility for me to see that my making mistakes and redoing bits is not really a waste.

After cutting the joints and setting the loose beads aside, I applied a thin layer of gesso directly to the linen where I planned on painting. Once the gesso dried I used antique white as the base coat.

Next I mixed a little instant coffee into clear sealer, not a smooth blend– only mixing enough to wet the granules without incorporating them into the varnish. If I’d been thinking I would have taken an in progress picture, because as the coffee/sealer is applied with the brush the granules do dissolve leaving sharp grains behind.

Then I followed with crackle finish and the same antique white that I started with. Since it’s a little paler and more uniform than I would like I’m going to do one more very light coat with the coffee/sealer blend, diluting it with a little more sealer to grunge up the finish a little before applying clear varnish and painting her features.

What’s interesting about some people is how careful they can be to remain very non-specific. Victorian knitting patterns where the author gives everything else but carefully withholds gauge come to mind, where I assume one would just follow the instructions with obedience and worsted wool on such-and-such-sized pins and hope to heaven they know someone in whatever size the item ends up, because blocking can only go so far. While I love the challenge those old patterns can present, in humans the unwillingness to communicate clearly is maddening.

With vague patterns, I’ve found the best way to decide if I want to invest time is to approximate the required yarn and needles, then knit some small part, for instance starting at the cuff of a guernsey instead of around the body. The cuff is usually a good indicator and easy enough to tear out and adjust the gauge by changing wool or needles, it takes a little guessing and a little math but if the pattern is worthy the effort eventually pays off.

With a person who is utterly vague, I have no solution. Guessing doesn’t work, one of the advantages of being completely absent of specifics is that no matter what other people might take away from a conversation the non-specificity lends enough confusion that no matter what. The vague person always (and I mean always) claims everyone else misinterpreted what he or she means. Patiently waiting for context doesn’t work, because that’s never going to happen– if you think it’s happened, too bad, because whatever you took from the context you thought you got: You’re still wrong.

Which leads me to think that maybe, when dealing with such a person, that they mean for me to treat them like a Victorian knitter would her latest magazine pattern, that I should gather the necessities and be obedient to the instructions and hope to heaven that whatever comes out of it fits someone in the situation.The author, having carefully constructed this knit pattern with much thought towards the fashioning of this garment has clearly more insight than the lady subscriber.

This isn’t to say that being unwilling to be specific is meant to be evil or manipulative, but when it’s continual it has the effect of keeping the target of all that vagueness off balance. The finished garment then resembles a canvas jacket with very long sleeves, lots of straps and buckles, and fastens in the back.

Mod Podge is miracle stuff. Especially since I’m convinced that somewhere encoded in my dna is an imperative to never throw away a wooden box. I’m pretty sure that since this box had an ugly fish (now obscured by gesso) design on the top that it bore dried and horribly out of date smoked salmon from my mom (sometimes she gives Christmas gifts a little late, not good from a culinary point of view but makes for awesome funny food poisoning stories.) Before doing anything to it I removed the hinges and set them aside so they won’t get gummed up with my creative impulses.

Sanding only improves soft woods so far, so I took off the rough edges with a medium grit sanding sponge and primed with a few coats of gesso but I wasn’t especially concerned with perfection.

Decoupage isn’t necessarily a speedy process, especially when using tissue paper and especially when going for a deeper varigated finish. The first layer consists mostly of the light blue tissue paper and a few bits of the violet, the second and third layers are almost all violet paper cut into slightly smaller diamondish shapes.

Now I’m going to tattle on myself.

Here’s one of my first boxes from a few years back, although I still like the general idea of the box, I really keep it because I made so many mistakes with it. My first mistake was not putting down a base coat, so in some of the thinner spots the wood shows right through the tissue (which could be cool if done intentionally, but very uncool in this context. Also, dust was a serious issue, so while I started with a nice clear clean pink, you can see what went wrong on first glance right around the edges where the lid and box meet.

On the inside things went a little (but not much) better. That bit of gold haze is from the judicious application of Perfect Pearls dust when the final coat was slightly tacky. I did wise up and apply more layers of paper, but did not have enough wisdom to let the layers dry out between applications, so it looks okay, but not great and doesn’t reflect the effort I put into it.

Everything has a learning curve.