What did you do over the weekend? Me? I made 6 reversible drawstring pouches.
I've been desperately trying to increase my stock as I feel rather nervous about Christmas approaching. Yes, you heard it right. Christmas is coming in about 3 months and I hadn't been vigilant about keeping my stock at a decent level. If I don't start making stuff to add to my stock now, I will feel very pathetic in December. Ideally I would like to have 100 items on hand by December but that's an impossible figure to achieve. I don't have the energy. Like over the weekend, I was aiming for 10 drawstring pouches but 6 was all I could manage. I realise that when I make anything in batches, I feel drained more easily. Still I have to try as hard as I can to increase my stock.
This time around, I went a little crazy with power over the mix and match choices. I'm pretty happy with the end result.
Don't the pouches look like little puppies just chilling? Let me introduce them, starting from green polka dot, clock-wise - Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon, Janet and last but not least, Michael.
Last week in Singapore, Wildlife Reserves Singapore (WRS) caused an uproar with a unpopular decision.
Its CEO, cancelled a popular 6-year old "Halloween Horrors" event at the Night Safari
- 2 weeks before it was launched
- after selling 1000 tickets
- after a group of final year Polytechnic had spent 7 months working on it as their gradeable project
- after spending $1 million
The CEO said sorry. Halloween had nothing to do with conservation. Then she remembered the President just attended a mid-Autumn festival held at the zoo. And we all know the mooncake festival has nothing to do with conservation. So now, the spin is - events need to have an Asian focus and be family-centric.
The CEO said sorry. No one told her the students' work would be graded.
The CEO clarified that there were no religious reasons behind the cancellation but she did indeed say
"a lot of money spent on an infrastructure (Haunted House) of devil worship". In addition she added that there were "controversies about the 31 October festival, where some U.S. schools even ban Halloween events."
I only know Halloween from TV and movies. As far as I can tell, it's a harmless tradition which is meant to be fun. I don't associate devil worship with a Halloween haunted house. Plus, we live in Singapore where 1 month out of every year, businesses and individuals deligently go about spending huge sums of money to stage events and burn paper products to "feed" the hungry ghosts. And I'm saying it's an accepted practice. If you can live with "feeding" the hungry ghosts, how can you be offended by a haunted house?
And I'm always unimpressed when anyone says, the US this or the US that. It sounds more like the person ran out of anything substantial to back up her decision.
This brings to mind an exchange between me and a customer when I was out selling my bags. A customer admired one of my pouches but expressed reservations about the animal print I had used. I asked her what her concerns were. Her reply? She was afraid the animal had a spirit in it.
What!? I assured her the animal print is just a print. And there were no spirits in my bags. I wasn't even keen on her buying the pouch as I honestly didn't want to be drawn into any spiritual debates. When I make a bag, I only care if it looks cool or not cool. She did buy the pouch eventually although I can't imagine why with all the reservations. I guess that's how awesome my bags are.
your bags turned out so nice! :3
ReplyDelete6 is a lot already and so I definitely think it is great progress! ;)
haha interesting story about how the person thought there were spirits in the animal prints :P
It was cool to know that she still bought it though :p hehee
Wow, are people funny or what?!
ReplyDeleteHere in the US it amuses me when I hear people say "I don't like Halloween--it's all about the devil and I don't like it." I don't want to get drawn into a debate either (as a few of these people are friends) but there is a large piece of me that wants to fill them in on the European origins of the holiday and what it really means, and that's it's not evil or devil-worship or anything. And after all the money, etc. spent - why not just rename the festival or say it will be the last year for the event? I like Halloween because of all the spooky stuff and the cute costumes and all that stuff...I'll say it again. People are funny.
I forgot to say - I love your pouches! Great colors!
ReplyDeleteWow! I'm from the US and I agree that Halloween has nothing to do with devil worship in most people's minds. We went Trick or Treating as kids dressed as ghosts and monsters (a way of dealing with fears of these things) and we collected candy. To us it was all about CANDY! Here in South Texas a lot of people of Mexican origin celebrate Day of the Dead, which is a day to celebrate the lives of loved ones who have died. (Nothing to do with the devil there either!) Some schools have "banned" Halloween, but the same schools have also banned prayer, Christmas, etc. They are catering to those few who fuss the loudest. My granddaughter's school, which is a private religious school, had a Halloween parade with all the kids dressed up as Bible characters.
ReplyDeleteI feel for the people who have put so much time and money and even their grades on the line and were let down by the misguided ideas of one person!
A bag with a spirit in it? Now that is odd! I'm glad the woman still bought it - although I think that handmade items are full of "spirit" - hand made goodness!!
ReplyDeleteYour pouches are great, I love the bright colors.
As far as Halloween goes, it certainly has a spiritual history behind it, but of course, it has been commercialized and watered down to a children's event aimed at selling lots of candy.
How insane to cancel the Halloween event when all the time, effort and money has been spent on it; it would have made a lot more sense to just make this the last one.
ReplyDeleteYes your bags are awesome, no wonder the lady couldn't resist buying the pouch!
uh-oh. you just made me feel very inadequately prepared for my craft fair. i just took stock today and counted 14 bags, 22 pouches and 7 sets of coasters. thank goodness there's about 2 more weeks and i crazy up my production till then!!
ReplyDelete