5/19/07

This website is now on the very eve of being launched. And Paul Poiret seems to be everywhere - this week, I opened the New Yorker and found the very picture of the Erte illustration I'd included in this blog, with the foliage motif in the back that is beginning to haunt me in my dreams...(see my earlier blog entries on my production of Paul Poiet-influenced shawls, currently stalled as I'm preparing for the upcoming Open Studio Tour , a yearly event in Vermont.)

I've been going round and round in my head about the shopping component of this website, and have decided, for the time being, anyway, to offer only my one-of-a-kind, Big Pieces here. Although I sell plenty of t-shirts  (and some scarves) locally, and I bet I could sell them over the web, too, the fact is that I can barely keep up with the local demand for the shirts, and there's really no reason to put them out into the greater world. If I sold many more, I'd either have to hire help or send them out to be mass-produced, which is really not the point.  The other choice is to raise the prices substantially, but I still like having something for my local Vermont market. So I've been in a quandary about this. If I devote myself just to the shirts, I won't have time to make the several big complicated pieces a year that I make - and those pieces are where I challenge myself. 

I will just have to play all this by ear. The first three pieces I'm putting up on my website are all pieces that have been exhibited - two of them nationally - and one of them also appearing in Belle Armoire magazine. So they're Big Stuff. In a couple of weeks, when I have one of the Poiret shawls done, it will join them on the shopping page. 

And now, with the hourglass sands running out, I must go work on a batch of 20 shirts in preparation for Open Studio next weekend.