Moving Day at the One of a Kind Antique Mall...

... plus news of sales and new arrivals...

Today was moving day at the One of a Kind Antique Mall. I moved all of the collectibles and antiques over to our new booth located two booths from the cash desk in the first aisle. More prosaically, we are right across from the women's bathroom. On the one hand, ewww, right? But... guess whose booth everyone is going to be heading directly for afterwards? Hah. We also are distinctive because our two dark blue walls; and with the yellow wallpaper on the back wall, it's instant interior day-cor without lifting a finger.

Last look at the old half-booth:

Getting there... I do lovelovelove my dolly. Even the bookcases were a snap to move. I moved the small dishes in the buggy.

Nancy's display table was the last item to move, thanks to Jack's diligent delegation and John's and a pal's strong arms -- and you get a sense of how cavernously cavernous this place is: at least half again as long behind us, three aisles with booths on each side of the aisles on the first floor for a total of three floors of booths and displays and old offices with tons of nooks and crannies:

The goodies in Nancy's display table:

Now to shuffle things around a bit...

And done:

Our

20% OFF Moving Sale 

Vendors 800 & 847 

(excluding jewellery) 

is still on, but it won't be for very much longer. Come and visit us! There are lots of great sales throughout the Antique Mall, so it's worth a visit. Closed July 1st, alas.


New Beads & Items Sold:
Literally winging its way from Afghanistan as I write is a big shipment of individually hand-cut and leather-polished matte lapis and turquoise beads. My dealer told me he has two new traditional tribal designs hundreds of years old, an arrow and a "spoon" shape. I will post pictures as soon as they arrive.

Meanwhile, this month, I've sold several strings of interesting beads from the showcase: gone some time this weekend were the three strings of chunky green Roman glass hanging in the back, as well as the string of raw lapis chunks fourth from the bottom. I still have the white with stripe tube beads hanging on the left, and maybe one remaining of the deep blue with occasional blobby dots of colour tube beads you can see there on the right.

Fave Use of My idiotPhone
That's what the "i" in iPhone stands for, as far as I'm concerned. Meanwhile, I take lots of pictures. I'll tell you, though, when my current contract is up, I will go for whatever model of phone has the best camera -- are you listening, idiotPhone designers? Your public is speaking to you -- yet still processes credit cards. Go, Square! I love you to bits.

I got this order on Saturday at the market and, rather than drive myself nuts trying to write and later decipher a detailed description, I took a picture against a ruler of the exact length my customer wanted using the anklet I made last year and put beside it the bracelet colours she wants matched.

Happy Dominion Day to all you who remember that we are at least still nominally part of the British Empire, and Happy Canada Day to everyone else. Since my typing is done and gone, I will hanging out here in my wonderfully breezy little piece of paradise chasing birds away from my strawberry plants, making jewellery and sorting beads for The Gem Expo in Toronto, which is coming up faster than fast.

Thanks for looking!

Chains, Bones & phones...

I have been having problems with my idiotPhone. All of a sudden -- well, as of last week after having the charging interrupted twice by the power going off with no notice -- it wouldn't hold a charge. The place I bought my idiotPhone from said that the battery has a memory, to not stop/interrupt charging before the battery is fully charged, other people have said, no, phone batteries now do NOT have a memory, some people/sites say wait 'til it's low to recharge, other's say wait 'til it's at 50%, don't fully charge/do fully charge -- but no one says what percentage it should be at before disconnecting the charger: 95%, 97%, 99%??? -- and I have read copious and contradictory nonsense online about what else the problem(s) might be, AND I've had the advice to leave it plugged into the charger for 24-plus hours. Last night, after leaving it charging for 30 hours I was texting someone and watched the charge drop 3% in ten minutes. From texting. So the 24-plus-hours charge obviously wasn't working. Then I decided to see what would happen if I turned the phone off completely overnight and how much battery loss would occur.

Isn't this interesting: this morning I found that not only did I not incur any battery loss past the 97% point it was at when I turned it off last night, it somehow magically reset/recharged!?!?!?! itself to 100%. Is this possible? This morning, I sent three or four texts, I've taken five or six photos of the bead chains I've been making obsessively while obsessively watching Bones for the past three or four days -- I'm thinking the characters must have whole jewellery rooms in their screen lives -- and just now talked on the phone for a total of 30 minutes whereupon the phone is down to 84% -- all after 2 hours of on/off usage, no downloading of email at all. Is this normal?

I'm now second-guessing myself about the wisdom of having an idiotPhone, which I chose solely for its ability to use Square so I can accept credit cards at beads shows and markets (and it works great for that -- IF the phone will continue to hold a charge longer than 8 hours!) and to be reachable in an emergency.

Seed bead & mystery stone copper chains:

Another beautiful fall morning:

Now to figure out what to do with them all...

Thanks for looking!