Compost Dyeing now in PRINT!!!


Compost Dyeing and Other Fermentation Techniques is now in PRINT and is available through my Etsy.com store http://www.kbaxterpackwood.etsy.com Check it out!!! 44 pages of Step-by-step instruction, packed with color photos and is a major improvement over the CDROM version if you ask me.

If there are no copies left email me and I'll post more to my store it would seem the trick to Etsy.com is to add a few items at a time not have hundreds ones store, which makes sense.

What The???

I had a woman looking at my work this morning, bags that I make with my own fabrics, stitch the begeebers out of and then create lovely handles for, and she proceeds to try and disassemble the bag!

She was shocked that I would be horrified, her comment was "well don't you take things apart to see how they are constructed and to see if the construction is quality or not"? Well actually no I don't, and I informed her as much and since the bags were silk I was a little bit more than put out. She kept claiming that she wasn't doing this to try to copy my bags - yeah whatever get your mitts of my stuff lady.

So the twenty million question is how does one politely tell someone to get their mitts off of your work??? I'm not always known for tact and I know this so I tend to keep my mouth shut so as to not dig myself a grave but come one why would someone do something like this??? Personally I find the behaviour not only odd but inconsiderate - I just don't know how to tell this to people when they behave in such a manner.

Coming Along

Things are coming along at the store, next weekend is VEISHIA and John wants me open for that, so open I will. How I'm going to work the training into the schedule is beyond me, I am in need of serious training on the new printer, I can't get it to do half of what it can do, and why a trainer hasn't been sent up yet is beyond me.

Anyway I named the printer, it's a boy btw, Simon. To say that Simon has a colic problem would be an understatement, the thing is royally tempermental and alarms go off just about everytime I touch the crazy thing. I have successfully printed off copies of the book, have yet to figure out how to do saddle stitching yet - hopefully a trainer will be presented and soon - the prints are gorgeous! You haven't lived until you have seen a photo real print.

Kerfont

My cousin Brian Kerfont, he lives in Newfoundland, emailed me with a quite a bit of family information and confirmed what I have always suspected, mom is native american! Mi 'kmaq to be exact. Mom had always told us we were, well she used a not so politcally correct term. But with all moms sometimes it's hard to know what's fact and simple entertainment for small children, after all my husband's mother told him he was a little eskimo and as far as we know he's scottish and swedish. So anyway... the "how much part" would appear to be quite large more than half, maybe whole??? There seems to be a dead end on researching the family name.

Now in Print


The Rust and Clay Dyeing Book is now available in Print format!!!

Anyway... The book is 97 pages and almost every page has color photos on them (I think there may be a dozen pages that don't have an image or color of some sort on it!), the book is chock of photos. For a limited time the video clip cd will still be available with the book but once they are gone I have plans for a full out DVD, which will be done soon.

What's Up?

I updated some links on the right side bar, I added a spot for Newfoundland. My mom was from Cape St. George, NFLD, my dad met her at teh NCO club in Stephenville in 1964, pretty wild huh! He has some pics that I'll get scanned in someday they are really wild, the clothes they wore back then were something else.

The studio and store are coming right along, hopefully I'll be up and running next week. I know I swore off retail but with hubbies health issues and the like we decided that it'd be best to do it anyway. The potential for employees to help me is much higher now as I have a place for them to actually work. John will retire or be forced (which is most likely) in less than three years and his retirement is enough to pay the insurance only - that's if our politicians don't get their way and take IPERS and spend it on some idiotic program - which they are wanting to do and in a really bad way. If that happens then all Iowa public employees are screwed, not just us. I'll try to post pictures when the everything looks nice, and there's no scaffolding in the middle of my space.

Oh and there's this really charismatic church in the basement below my store/studio and Woooohooo are they ever a happy bunch!

Email Update

If you have a Yahoo addy and have been trying to get ahold of me I have received your emails but for some reason when I reply the emails to Yahoo bounce, I'm not sure why. I'm working on this on my end but it's been going on since November now with no cure in site, I seem to have the same problem with earthlink and aol addies as well.

Ok Ok Ok


I'm so excited, there's nothing like getting an unexpected beautiful gift! John and I went to Des Moines to pick up my chair and crate, that we bought a tag sale on Sunday but couldn't get home because he truck was already full, anyway...
I went to the shop where my items were being held and they had a lovely pink wire soda fountain shoppe type chair, because I bought the chair Ron gave me three dozen pink roses.
Turns out he didn't like the pink chair! The florist up the street stopped in to give him her old flowers while we where there and he gave me the roses to hang up and dry in my studio/shoppe!!! I couldn't believe it. They are gorgeous.


I'll be photographing them with a bunch of things tomorrow, like old linens, china, silver, etc.

Storage Units


An antique store closed, in Valley Junction after 50 years, the owner retired. Anyway I managed to get these two pieces for around $55.00, the big unit, which will be painted Medicci White and the grain sorter, it's the dark green piece on the green wall, the green piece being about 4 x 9 feet by about 8 inches deep. I plan to dry brush some blue paint, a mistint, over the green unit so that some of the original green paint peeks through.