Hazel's Shop, and Hazel's Other Blog

I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving! We trekked 4 blocks to our friends' house for our meal. Today we had a second Thanksgiving at some other friends' house. Our cups run over.

I've been updating my Etsy shop. Building up inventory is my main goal, more important to me than sales right now, and it is going slower than I would like but I make a little progress on crafting every day and I'm enjoying the process. I'm excited about the item I'm working on now. It's a neuroscience textbook for babies, the marketing of which will be directed at neuroscience fiends who are looking for a baby gift. I'm sure there are at least 2000 of them out there at any given time. I've got all the pages finished and now I have to sew them together. At some point production will increase.

Blueberry is great, developing a lovely personality, pulling herself to standing, and as of yesterday spends most of her play time standing. She likes to pull herself up on the safety gate at the doorway to the kitchen and peer in while we cook or clean. We chant "Attica! Attica!" at her when she's standing at the gate. This has something to do with some movie Stanley saw about a prisoner's revolt or something.

Hope you have a great week!

Extra Special Bonus Video of Fake Halloween

For Lotus*.

Not sure if this video will work. I uploaded it differently plus I used a different camera than usual and the video quality came out really poor, but I still enjoy it and I hope you will too.



Watching this makes me want to put the costume on her again because she seemed to get a kick out of it.

*Name changed.

Fake Halloween and More Business Developments

I hope you all had a happy Halloween. Blueberry got a ladybug costume handed down from a friend, which is great, but we didn't get around to putting it on her on Halloween, mostly because we didn't go anywhere that she needed to be costumed. So November 2nd rolled around and I finally got her dressed up and took pictures. And I'm so glad I did. Here she is from the front:

And the back.

I think I will participate more fully in Blueberry's future Halloweens, particularly when she is old enough to look forward to the tricking and the treating.

In an amazing coincidence, Blueberry's friend Almond* (Hamer Adventures blog in "These Blogs Are Great" section in the right column) was also a ladybug this Halloween.

I've been living and breathing my new business. I keep putting off telling you about it because I want to be at a certain state of readiness, but I don't know what this certain state is. There's always one more thing I want to do before I update you. Well, I would like you to come along with me on this journey and the journey has started so you'll have to run alongside this slow-moving train and hop on. I'll give you a hand.

In the previous post I stated that I had chosen the company name. Shortly thereafter, I dropped the name because the .com was taken, or maybe the .net, or maybe the blog name. I can't remember. So I went back to the drawing board and came up with another name for my upcycled crafts/environmental blog business.


My business is called Verdant Violet. Verdant because it's a green/eco-friendly effort and Violet because it's Blueberry's middle name, and she is the main inspiration for this new direction in my life.


I bought verdantviolet.com. It doesn't have my website on it yet, but it's my .com. You'll just have to trust me. Late Edit: By now, it may redirect to the still skeletal Verdant Violet blog, but that's only if I followed the cryptic directions correctly.

Even later edit: Apparently I did it backwards and the blog redirects to the parked domain name. What? Whatever, it's late and I'm tired and I will figure it out tomorrow.

The next day: By jove, I think I've got it.

I opened my crafts shop on Etsy and I've made one sale. That's okay because I have done zero marketing so far - I'm trying to build up inventory and flesh out a lot of details first. And that one sale is the first time I've ever sold anything that I've made**, so I was over the moon about it.

I would love to know any thoughts you have about the company name, or questions about product descriptions or whatever crosses your mind. It would really help me out as I am but a fledgling entrepreneur and I need your feedback.


*Names changed.

**Unless you count the Psychology Association of Chico State bake sales and I don't remember for certain if I ever baked anything for that. I do believe I bought muffins from Costco, and did I get to keep the money? No. So does that count? No.