Saturday Market has a few iron-clad rules. The first is The Maker is the Seller. No kits, no imports, no resales cleverly disguised as originals.

The second involves respect to the community. No shouting. Don't badger the customers, call out to passersby, In the words of the members manual, No aggressively "hawking" your wares.

I wonder, does this count?

I mean, it's a hawk. Well, a kestrel, a sparrowhawk, tiny little thing. Probably smaller in real life than it appears on this big serving bowl. Hawking at a whisper.

Doesn't matter, anyway; a couple came in and bought it not two hours after I posted it as my Today's Theme Is on Instagram.

Chere, my usual potter neighbor, was gone down to California, driving the doggie rescue bus, so her space was occupied by a new member. New to Market, new to Eugene, and it was a crying shame she didn't sell at Country Fair last weekend. She'd have made bank.
Her name was Kira, business name Riddlemetrue's Leathercraft. Brilliant masks, key fobs, journals, bookmarks and fantasy maps. She'd just gotten back into the fair circuit after a move from California and a new baby. Who was there in the booth with her. Along with a four-by-four pop-up canopy, six grid panels, a table, two camp chairs, multiple boxes of product, a folding stroller and playpen. Her husband helped set up the booth and grids, then left to park the truck while she hung up masks and baby Rowan snoozed in the crib.

For a while. Twenty minutes, maybe thirty, before she started fussing. Began crying, quietly at first, then louder. There was only one thing I could do.

I loaned her my bear. Umberto bravely entered the playpen, and the fussing immediately turned to pleased gurgles. The distraction lasted long enough for her to get the rest of the masks out, and I helped move the stroller back into the unused space behind the booth, giving her enough room to organize the rest.

The day started pretty slow, I finally made my first sale around 11, a gravy boat and one of Denise's large journals. After that, things were steady: an incense dragon, some mugs. Four pie plates in a row. A trio of women, cousins, one of whom was the daughter of a retired Market glass and lapidary artist, crowded the booth, looking at all the painted mugs and tall mugs, before settling on four. The big kestrel bowl sold, to a couple who've been using Cornell bird lab's app and finally saw a kestrel live, after having its call IDed multiple times.

A young couple came in to get another mug, having bought one last weekend. He was wearing a University of Wisconsin-La Crosse track shirt, so I asked if he'd attended. No, but his mother had. Told him I'd been across town at Viterbo, met and married my wife there. He bought the bear mug, and a hummingbird French butter dish as well.

A little girl came in to look around while her sister was considering fantasy maps at Kira's. She was wearing a T-shirt that read, "I'm really a ladybug; this is just my human costume" and carrying a canvas tote covered by bugs, reading "Easily Distracted by Insects." I told her she really needed to visit my next door neighbor, Jesse, who makes shadow boxes and compositions around beetles and butterflies. Her squeals of delight probably attracted dogs in the surrounding six counties.

Sometime around two, the cousins returned. They'd scouted the rest of the Market, decided they liked my mugs the best, picked out five more, going through all the tall mugs in the restock box, arguing about who was going to pay and how. I just smiled and wrapped things.

Talked to several people from northwestern Washington, Bellingham and Camano Island, so was able to alert them to the Anacortes Arts Festival, and took their email addresses so I could send them my e-card.

Sold my last tall mug, a praying mantis, to Jesse just before closing. She'd had a really good day, a relief after last weekend's poor showing. Kira's day was slower--no masks, though she sold some dragon-eye key chains, a map and bookmarks. She's going to look into selling at the Renaissance Fair, and is doing one of her California shows. Sadly, FaerieWorlds, which would have been perfect for her, closed during the pandemic and didn't reopen.

I ended up at exactly $1100 for the day, bettering even last week's great day. Between the two, I covered ton of clay delivered at the beginning of the month.

Was visited this morning by the Arts and Culture reporter for a new online news source. She's just started, and would like to do a weekly feature on Saturday Market artists, and would I mind being the first one?

Of course I said yes.

We had a nice Q&A session, I talked about my history as a potter, showed her pots, demo'd the incense dragons. She took a bunch of video as well, and promised to let me know when the article dropped.

Well, it dropped around lunchtime--had a customer around closing stop to tell me what a nice article it was. I have to agree, she done good.

ETA: And I found out what the video is for!

1. Our window for the internet upgrade was 8am to 12pm and I got a text at 7:30 saying the guy was on his way, and he arrived a little before eight. Glad we were his first stop! Since it was just an upgrade, not setting up new service, it didn't take that long. I think he was gone by 9:30 or so. Everything seems to be working well, both in terms of speed increases and, more importantly, wifi range. When Carla got her Switch 2, it wouldn't connect to the wifi if it wasn't in my room (where the router is), which is inconvenient. We hoped it was just our crappy old router affecting it and not the Switch itself, and sure enough it works fine now. Whew!

2. Since the guy finished so early, we decided to go to the farmers market and then go to Disneyland for lunch afterwards. Got two bottles of the watermelon lemonade at the farmers market, as well as some more rhubarb as Carla wants to make a rhubarb syrup to make rhubarb lemonade. We also got some delicious grapes. Carla had run to the store while the internet guy was here and I had meant to ask her to get some sort of fruit and totally forgot, so I was excited to find some really tasty grapes at the farmers market.

3. It was very sunny down in Anaheim today, though not super hot. Crowds were decent. We had a nice lunch and had a fun afternoon. Definitely felt a little wiped out from that sun afterwards, though.

4. This is what I wake up to every morning. Molly always sleeps in this spot right next to my pillow. She usually keeps me company the whole night, too.

We originally moved our weekend Disney trip from Saturday to Sunday because the internet guy was coming this morning, but then he ended up getting done so early that we decided to go ahead and go today for lunch and just stay home tomorrow.

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Title: Face Your People
Fandom: Greek Myth
Characters: Apollo/Hyacinthus
Rating: G
Length: 530
Summary: Apollo helps a nervous Hyacinthus as he prepares to face his people for the first time as their new king.
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Rating: G
Summary: A plushie with a rose for a face! THAT'S RIGHT, BABEY. I SEW NOW

( me when it's the 19th and oh no i have to finish this plushie TODAY (and then I finished it today!!) )

Title: bird flight
Fandom: Princess: The Hopeful
Rating: T
Length: 204 words
Content notes: this is what zephy looks like!
Author notes: This is also for rainbowfic haha :3
Summary: Zephy messes around with an airplane pilot for a bit

 It’s hard to believe that DC-Slash Con will already be underway next Friday!

If you haven’t seen it yet, the full schedule is now available on our website:
 https://www.dcslash.org/dc-slash-con/programming/schedule

The schedule should automatically adjust to your local time zone. We tested it last night to make sure it’s working correctly. It's one schedule; no math required. Panels happen pretty much all day, and we’ve built in breaks every six hours to help you pace yourself. Some panels may occur while you're asleep (Sleep during a con? What?). That’s because we used the time zones and preferences you gave us during voting to shape the schedule as fairly as possible. We will be recording many of our panels. The exceptions are single fandom panels and 18+ panels.

If you haven’t joined the DC-Slash Discord yet, now is the perfect time. You can use this invite link, which is valid for the next seven days:
 https://discord.gg/QyqNQj3W

If you don’t already have a Discord account and need help setting one up, please email us at concom@dcslash.org. Much of our discussion and some programming happen on Discord. All attendees are given the Con Attendee 2025 server role, which will unlock special channels next weekend. All those who have registered can be identified by the P.Lot Bunny graphic that should appear next to your username.

We’ll hold two tech check sessions today at 14:00 EDT and 18:30 EDT to help everyone get comfortable with the platform. Feel free to join whichever one works best for you. If you need the Zoom link, please contact concom@dcslash.org

More information will be coming your way as we get closer to opening day. Registration is still open, and we do have a few scholarships available. Please help us to spread the word. The wonder of a virtual con is that we have space to expand and include more fannish voices! The more attendees, the merrier.

I cannot decide whether I'm tired enough to actually attempt to nap or whether to do something when I'm feeling too sleepy to decide what I want to do, so I shall babble at you. ;-)

Yesterday at work, we had to attend two hours mandatory explanation of the current data protection laws. It wasn't helped that the lecture had actually been intended for supervisors only who were then supposed to instruct those at the bottom, and our head of department had decided to just have everyone attend at once, much to the bafflement of the person from outside the institution faced with 40 instead of 15 people in the virtual meeting. It was very lucky it was at least online. Not that I did anything but intently listen, of course. Particularly to the stuff totally above my paygrade. So, it was certainly not during those two hours of my life that I googled the number who keeps calling my landline and my cell phone after all. And to my surprise found that it was indeed already known for aggressive advertising. So, not a person who knows me, but someone had apparently sold both my numbers at once. Not that much better, but I can now stop wondering if it is my sister-in-law suddenly remembering my existence after all (possibly because I stubbornly keep sending Christmas and only recently birthday cards into the silence, as I am not going to be the one who cuts the relation for good Period, or poked at by one of the aunts). Good I googled after all, at some point I might have felt obliged to answer in case it is her. Now that number is blocked.

Quite a while ago I had preordered a book on amazon, before I had started to order books in German on Thalia. I was quite baffled last Saturday when I saw someone posting on Tumblr about just having received the book that is only supposed to be published next week, and went to check - amazon still only offered preorders, Thalia already had listed it as available for mail orders. I have noticed that orders from Thalia are actually sometimes fulfilled by wholesale trader Zeitfracht, so I can see how they could be quicker with something newly published. I waited until Monday, hoping my order would be sent with only a few days delay, but no - and as I am impatient fangirl I ordered at Thalia on Tuesday and had my book on Thursday night. I had actually forgotten to cancel the amazon order which I meant to do once I got confirmation of the other copy being mailed, and expected it would now be too late - but no, no problem, not even the thing with the later email rejection or confirmation, order just gone right away. I see that now they say they could deliver on Tuesday, but it would still be a preorder. Interesting. I shall investigate further with other things to come out soon.

The book now gotten quicker is Die Auferstehung by bestselling author Andreas Eschbach, who wrote a crime novel with the Die Drei Fragezeichen/The Three Investigators characters, but at a much later point in their life. As the two and counting graphic novels who also chose that motif he has them be estranged for decades, but thankfully his book is not as dark as the graphic novels and doesn't do the cliffhanger endings they apparently will keep on having (I will in all likelihood faithfully keep buying them, but I'm not sure I would if it weren't about them, because they really are gloomy and I am not a fan of the cliffhanger), but has an actual ending. I started yesterday afternoon and finished this morning and if I hadn't been keen on being early at the pool for minimal swimming crowd (or was still younger ;-) ) I'd probably have read it in one go. So, obviously, I liked it and wanted to know how it ends and was very invested in them finally working together again already instead of trying to solve the same case solo. Very much appreciate that they hadn't just been aged up to be somewhat older, but where actually my current age with the graying hair and all. And yet, Aunt Mathilda is still alive, yay. ;-) I can't say this really is where I see the characters going with their futures (well, acually, I see them living happily ever after bonded in eternal friendship as professional private investigators ;-) ), but interesting take that I thoroughly enjoyed and that I at least intend to read again at one point.

In other news, while I was lying on the balcony with my book yesterday and took a little break to admire my petunia, I noticed they had lice. Two different kinds of them. And ants herding them. Booo.

Four works new to me. three novels, one TTRPG supplement. Two appear to be fantasy, one SF, and one is a mystery (by an author famous for their fantasy). Two appear to be stand-alone and two are series.

Books Received, July 12 — July 19

1. I did some store visits today, none of which involved having to go there for negative reasons, so it was very pleasant. I did have some deskwork that needed to get done today that I then had to do at night when I got home, which sucked (especially since the bulk of it was pushed to today because two people did not get something to me they were supposed to do by Wednesday, even though I reminded them multiple times, so now I had to finish it all by tonight or else on my day off, because if I left it till Monday it would not leave them enough time to revise before the final deadline EOD Monday). But I got to eat some tasty food at the stores I visited and stopped for mochi donuts on the way home as well.

2. Just one more week until our new store grand opening. That was one of the places I stopped today and it's really coming along and looking great.

3. Our router has been slowly dying so today Carla got online to see if we can get a replacement, and also ended up getting us an upgraded plan, so we will have a new router with a longer range (sometimes wifi drops in the garage, but this should cover it better) and we'll have much higher speeds, for just a little more per month. They are coming to do the installation tomorrow.

4. I started playing Donkey Kong Bananza the other night and it seems like a lot of fun!

5. We got two new hires for our NoCal management team confirmed. Hopefully they work out, because our next new store is in the SF Bay area and we need to prepare!

6. Tuxie modelling how to do a perfect loaf.

Title: Spat in the eye
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto, Jack
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,385 words
Content notes: None
Author notes: Written for Challenge 485 - Face
Summary: Ianto is accustomed to less than friendly inmates, though some prove more painful than others.

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Title: In Her Arms
Fandom: Women's Soccer RPF
Pairings: Hope Solo/Kelley O'Hara
Characters: Hope Solo, Kelley O'Hara
Rating: G
Length: 76 words
Summary: Hope breaks down, and Kelley is there to hold her.

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