Being Productive With My Procrastination

So I've been working on the novel for the past... meh, however many hours, and I need a break.  So I'm getting on here to tell you about the little project I churned out yesterday, but first I need to say that if your name is either Alana or Curt you need to stop reading right here.  I mean, unless your name is Alana or Curt and you're not actually any relation to me, in which case carry on.  Or your name is Alana or Curt and you've already received the package I'll be taking to the post office on Tuesday, in which case you need fear no spoilers.  But if your name is Alana or Curt, and you are related to me, and you have not received said package, well then you should have stopped reading several sentences ago, and I cannot be held responsible for what you're about to see.

Anyway.

Curt and Alana had a busy day the other day, what with providing Eel with a brand new little sister (whom I shall call Bee).  Now, you may recall that when my nephew Grasshopper was born I embroidered a bib for him.  What's that?  You don't recall?  Well how fortunate for you I'm such an obsessive life-chronicler.  Go ahead- refresh your memory (you'll have to scroll down to the very bottom of that entry to see the picture).  I'll wait.  And take up some more screen space while I'm doing so.

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Are you back?  Excellent.

Where was I?  Oh yes, embroidering bibs.  I did a hedge pig for Grasshopper, and for little Bee I've done... well, I've done this:

 

 

 

 

 

AKA "White Sage" AKA "Bee Sage" AKA "Sacred Sage"

The picture doesn't really do a good job of showing the details, but a)Nathan just switched over his entire system from Pentax to Nikon so he hasn't managed to replace all his lenses yet and b) I think I've pestered him enough for photos for one day.  He also provided these for me, because the moment was really too hilarious not to document:

Ooo, under-chin love!

My handsome boy is very secure in his cathood.

Anyway, what I wanted to mention about my process on this one is that I used an incredibly slick floss on the white portion of the flowers.  It's shiny and gorgeous, but unfortunately the afore-mentioned slickness makes it something of a bitch to work with, especially on such a tiny scale.  I'd originally planned on adding little... well I'm not sure what they're called, but they look kind of like antennae:

They're an fairly prominent part of the white sage flower, but they simply were not going to happen, so rather than drive myself insane with trying to force it to work, I decided my newest niece will probably not be scarred for life just because one bib is not entirely accurate in a botanically anatomic sense.

Probably.

Anyway as I sat there stitching this up (and watching Numb3rs on Netflix and may I just say that while I loved the first season, so far the second season has mostly been pissing me off and I hope it gets better soon) I started to think about how much I would actually charge for one of these little things- and I suddenly realized that the answer is "a lot".  That is to say,  the price I'd slap on one of my hand-embroidered bibs is one that I would certainly never pay for a bib for any child of mine.  But I simply could not justify charging less, you know?  It takes me anywhere from five to eight hours of pure stitching to do one of these- and that's after I've come up with the design and done the custom drawing.  Of course, there's always the thought that if I was doing this on a regular basis I'd get a lot faster, which means fewer hours spent on each one, which at least cuts down part of the hourly rate (I always calculate my hours in terms of wage- and quite frankly you should, too).  But even if I could do one in, say, three hours- I'd still be looking to charge about fifty bucks.  For a bib.

Just to check how insane I am, I went onto Etsy to see what hand embroidered bibs are going for.  The price point is about $7-13, which just sort of boggles my mind (although less so, perhaps, when one considers the quality of some of the work).  I absolutely 100% would not be okay with charging so little.  Which I guess means I'll be sticking to embroidering things for presents rather than profit...

EDIT: I just looked up "hand embroidered original design" and the price point there is pretty much what I'd come up with for mine.  So there may be hope for making money off my hobbies yet...