No Longer A Place for Second Thoughts.Forward!

When you're a writer, you are basically a retailer of ideas.
Ideas are your stock. The writing is your product. So, your inventory costs are very low.
Used to be, you needed a typewriter, paper, some envelopes and some stamps. Now, you need a computer and a decent internet connection.
And lots and lots and lots of time. Which is always expensive in anyone's accounting. But for writers--even though you can sneak in a paragraph in the morning before taking the kids to school, or change a word before you go to bed at night--it takes an astonishing amount of time to whittle words into sharp little points that drive your idea home. Even the worst, most prolific novelist really makes pennies per hour when all is taken into account.
But even years are not always enough time to make a good writer into a great one. Ideas--however good--sometimes moulder away in the mind's warehouse--slouched over in dull, lumpy shapes on musty couches, taking up space.
You have all those second thoughts as you go over them--maybe you can make something of them yet, if you just went at it again, brushed them up a bit, moved them around, maybe looked at them from a different angle. Maybe.
But I had this other idea. I'm selling actual stuff. Big stuff that takes up space and costs real money. Lots of money.
Soon, I'll be moving this blog to my online retail site--Hippique-Hippik. I'll have second thoughts about 19th century French sidesaddles and silver stirrup cups.
I don't have time for Second Thoughts anymore. It's forward over the wall!

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The Lost Designer of the 80's

Claude Barthelemy seems to have been one of those if-you-needed-to-ask-you-didn't-need-to-know designers. In the '80's, he was listed as a young, hot couturier alongside go-the-distance blue chips like Karl Lagerfeld and Lanvin with his oversized sweaters, minis, leggings and fur-trimmed stoles. Exclusive stores carried his soft-edged jackets to shoppers in the know. And then what happened? His pleated skirts, intarsia sweaters, and naughty, zippered wool catsuits still fetch high prices in vintage world and any dealer with his elegantly simple, Gallic tag on her racks raises a flutter in second-hand seekers. He designed for Barbie, for heaven's sake! But the designer himself, who seems to have cut a meteoric swath across the runways and then...? So what's the story with this wasp-waisted pleated skirt? I wondered what else this woman could have dropped off on her Goodwill drive-by--a Chanel original? A couture Pucci? Surely someone this linked in wouldn't just ...

Change Your Tone!!

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On Making Things, Photographing Things, or Blogging about Making and Photographing Things.

There are people who can do all those things. I don't know how, but they seem to be able to-- Beautifully executed projects that they have artfully photographed throughout the entire process, each step gorgeously and clearly lit, and techniques are illustrated with the addition of the artisan's hands--healthy cuticles and all. Sometimes they mention a family. I can only assume that their clean, cheerful children happily play under the table, on the un-filthy floor of the studio, making adorable age-appropriate crafts with the scrap material. Sometimes there are photographs--wispy-haired, sweet creatures blowing dandelion seeds or with their little garnet-lips parted in awe over an exquisite bird's nest. There are no armless Transformer toys or spontaneously shed clothes anywhere! sidesaddle habit by Sarah Cannibal for Hippik. Vintage fabric and salvaged suede; altered Donna Karan coat dress pattern and side saddle apron I keep thinking when I get really good at s...

Second Hand, Second Thoughts

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