This week's project: re-pricing.

This week, I will be re-pricing all my baskets. The time has come to lower the prices so more will sell. I have to accept that this basket-making enterprise is a hobby, not a business, a fun thing to do but not a thing likely to make me rich.

I hope that by lowering my prices I will increase the number of sales while maintaining the revenue level that covers the cost of entry fees to shows and the cost of obtaining the materials from which to make baskets. And, I hope to reduce the inventory I built up for the Signatures Christmas.Craft Show.

(By the way, Anne has been very busy changing my banner to reflect the banners I had produced for the Signatures show. That way all my basketry sites will have the same image. Business cards, in the future, will have this same motif too.)

The Spencerville Mill plans to open a consignment store.

http://www.spencervillemill.ca/mill-foundation.html

 Last year, I took part in an exhibition and sale at the historic Spencerville Mill in Spencerville, Ontario. The Mill's Foundation sponsors a series of events each year to bring people to this historic site. The exhibition and sale brought to the mill crafts people showing their crafts from years gone by. My basket-making crafts fitted in well with this.

Last week, I received an invitation to place selected baskets of mine in the proposed consignment store at the Mill. This is planned to open on May 1st, and to be an on-going fund-raiser for the Mill Foundation. I accepeted the inviation and look forward to having baskets for sale there this summer as well as taking place in their exhibition and sale.

To learn more about the Spencerville Mill, click on the link above.

Transforming grapevine branches into hoops for rib baskets

 I was fortunate to see Ankaret Dean, master basket-maker, while at the pre-Christmas sale at Lansdowne Park. Ankaret is the person who showed me how to make rib baskets. I bemoaned the fact that I found it time consuming to remove the loose outer bark from grapevine branches. She told me it was easy if you soaked them first. She places her branches in a stream for a couple of days. My stream is my bath tub. Here the grapevine branches have been in soak for 36 hours. Since the weather today is frightful with freezing rain, I decided this morning was an ideal time to peel the loose bark from these branches.

 Here that bark is collected. The tote was quite full when I finished.

 The stripped branches are formed into hoops. The first two are shown here. I found the grapevine much easier to strip, as suggested by Ankaret. They were also much easier to form into round shapes in their soaked state.

By noon I had twenty-six "hoops". This is sufficient to form the frames for thirteen rib baskets. Lots of work remains! I am now waiting for spring and the first flush of leaves on the willow in my garden. Then I can strip that willow and have the white willow ribs for the baskets.

Weekly blogs

 Today I received a message inquiring about the hat stands I featured in a blog a while ago. That query gave me the incentive to renew my blogging efforts. I now resolve to write a weekly blog featuring different basket products. And I will start with the hat stands. These vary in size and shape and range from new-born baby size to adult size.

They are made from rattan cane and can be in ivory (using the undyed, natural cane) or in other colours such as the "desert dust" colour shown in the middle above.

Prices range from $30.00 to $50.00 plus shipping.

Removing snow from the solar panels

 We had a White Christmas after all. Today, Boxing Day, our eldest son, Julian, came to remove Christmas Day's snowfall from the solar panels.

 The snow rake, fully extended, is sixteen feet in length. Julain is able to reach the full length of all the solar panels and pull the snow from the.

With the snow removed, solar energy can now be created.

Give the gift of life

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

In today's Ottawa Citizen is a series of articles about the benefits of organ donation on the death of a loved one. The feature article focuses on a local Kanata family and their responses to the suggestion that the husband of the family become an organ donor following a massive stroke  a year or so ago. Their response was a heartfelt "Yes."

 The doctors harvested his heart, lungs and other organs and so were able to contribute to the lives of several others in desperate need. The family members, wife, son and daughter, were able to find joy in this tragedy as, over the next few months, they learned of the lives impacted by these donations. They were able, anonymously, to exchange correspondence with some of the recipients. Their husband and father lives on in the lives of others.

If its at all possible, sign your organ donation card and keep it with you at all times. The gift of life is yours to give.

Here comes the sun.

Today's Ottawa Citizen has an article about solar radiation on this, the shortest day in the year. In Ottawa the day's length is down to its lowest of the year at 8 hours, 42 minutes and 49 seconds, But tomorrow will have a longer day by a grand total of four seconds. And the day's will get incrementally longer after that.

Today's sun will reach a peak elevation of 21.2 degrees above the horizon, a huge contrast to its angle of inclination of 68 degrees at the summer solstice. And the current solar radiation at 550 watts per meter will increase to 1240 watts. Summer is a coming in!

 I find this article fascinating while Anne calls it boring. There is a second article, about the number of fender benders and pedestrian injuries caused by falls during the freezing rain storm of yesterday. I feel the  article about the return of sunlight is much more uplifting.