Oh the weather outside is frightful.....

It's -26 but the Weather station says it 'feels like' -32 (windchill!). Most mortals would be snug inside, curled up in front of a roaring fire enjoying Epiphany celebrations. Us? We spent the afternoon outside cleaning out the backyard storage shed! Nuts, the typist is NUTS! Supper is consisting of hot mushroom soup and freshly baked biscuits in a vain attempt to get warmth back into my insides. There are fireworks tonight - to celebrate the return of the sun to our dark little part of the world. Only 30 seconds of sun today, but sun nonetheless.

I am a podcast junkie! I am addicted and eagerly anticipate new releases of CBC's Vinyl Cafe, NPR's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me and APM's A Prairie Home Companion Tales From Lake Wobegon each week. I'm on my second iPod and it has become more indispensable to me than my computer. I've actually had thoughts along the lines of in the event of fire - who gets saved? The cat or the iPod? There is a dearth of podcasts on quilting and fibre arts - a few old ones that haven't posted new content in over a year like Driven to Quilt, a couple of commercial ones, like Alex Andersen's Quilts and Annie Smith's Simple Arts and a truly outstanding video podcast by Bonnie McCaffrey (all of which you can listen to or watch without the need of an iPod). There are dozens of podcasts on knitting and a few on general craft making. Lately, I've been listening to an art marketing podcast and a creativity building podcast. Both are commercial endeavours, but are quite good. The latest episode on art marketing is all about branding yourself.

For most of us, style becomes the number 1 branding tool; artisans really quickly develop a niche and there commercial endeavours (ie. books or tools) are almost always centred around that niche. Everyone knows of art quilters of a specific style genre (even if you can't come up with a name); ie. the ones who burn, the ones who paint, the ones who bead, the ones who applique, etc.... But, how do you brand yourself as a 'quilter' or 'fabric artists' in everyday society? Do you have a tattoo? Do you carry your guild membership card on a lanyard around your neck? Wear inchie's as jewelery? When I'm with like minded folk, I can talk fibre and technique for hours; but I'll quickly bore the socks off a non-creative type. How then do we identify each other? Perhaps one day I'll rethink the tattoo, but in the meantime I wear a necklace which I treated myself to a few of years ago. It's a lump of silver with an impression of a 17th Century French sewing guild's seal in the centre.


When I was cleaning out the studio - I found 13 USB Cables! 13! And that doesn't even account for the ones already plugged into the computer.