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| Photo copyright Aji, 2020; all rights reserved. |
See that scalloped edge? He's freehanding ALL of it. That's a saw blade, and I watched him do all four sides, each one in one go: no backtracking, no adjustments, no straying from his line, no matter the curves and points in it.
I've never seen anything like it. Neither have you.
And this is one of the reasons his work costs what it costs. You don't find that level of talent and skill just anywhere. This is decades of practice and experience, and here, it's being put to use in his latest work, which I hope will be ready by the end of the day.
Which is why this is getting posted first, out of the usual order. If all goes well, I'll be back sometime later today with the new piece (if not, I'll post something else, but I think he'll have it today). He's also got three more bracelets and several other items in the works, but the problem is studio time, since we have no one to help with the heavy labor around here anymore.
We also have one URGENT new expense, and I can't cover it, because I'm going to have to set aside cash for the wood, and for his test strips, and for other things. It's on our wishlist, and I would be incredibly grateful if someone would take it off there for us: the Epson printer. Our old H/P printer lasted us something close to 5 years, despite all the power surges and other problems when we were in the RV. It finally died earlier this year, and we replaced it with a Canon we bought locally at Wal-Mart, one that was supposed to be highly-rated and supposed to produce good-quality photos. It's been crap from day one. Three days ago, it quit printing entirely. I can't even print two return labels I need, or the labels for Wings's jewelry gift boxes, or a plain-text sheet of paper, never mind anything resembling a photo. The one on the wishlist is expensive, but it will also enable us to return to printing his photos ourselves rather than paying someone else to do it. And we really need that now; the fewer contacts we have to have outside in this place where the pandemic is raging uncontrolled, the better. [And yes, I have specifically asked that it be new, not refurbished, because we need the warranty protections and we have had bad luck with supposedly "refurbished" items in the past. I need this to work, and work long-term.]
I'm beat, sore, and way, way behind now, and I have all my work yet to do, so the rest is cut-and-paste, and the only thing that really matters is that we're running out of time to make holiday sales to get us through the next spring, so please share the links.
We were very blessed a few weeks ago to be able to cover November's expenses and get hay for the horses and firewood for the winter. But it's December now, and my Patreon payout yesterday was down by some $400+ (now it's down only $300+). I'm pretty sure a couple of them are folks whose credit cards expired and they just need to update their accounts, so if that's you, please check your subscriptions; this is BIG hit for us. But most of them, I suspect, are folks who simply can't swing it this month, because four years of a Nazi gutting everything and now a raging pandemic have destroyed people's safety nets. If that's you, don't worry about it. Unsubscribe immediately if you need to; things are hard enough without folks worrying about something like this, too.
Of course, what that means is that I have to make up the difference with sales. As grateful as we are for our current blessings, we also know that real winter hasn't even arrived yet, and it will be a long one. Cases continue to spike state-wide and locally both, and deaths locally, too. If they allow ski season to open on December first and allow tourists in, unquarantined, our local numbers are going to be deadly indeed. Meanwhile, the economy is wrecked already, the number of people who need help climbs by the day, and after refusing to do the minimum by locking down (she couldn't even last two weeks this time without weakening her own rules, and now people locally are paying for it), the governor has announced she'll soon be shifting to so-called "crisis standards" for hospitals, which means that if you're disabled or otherwise less likely to survive COVID-19, doctors can abandon your treatment entirely, let you die, and focus on those they think will make it. Which means, by very definition, wealthy and white, and Indigenous peoples will be left to die disproportionately, even though we already know that such appearances are NO predictor of who survives and who doesn't, and that this "underlying conditions" crap she's let her people flog for the last 10+ months is just another Trumpian lie. Our communities are dying, and it's about to get a lot worse, and we have to be able to help where we can.
This is all by way of saying that, blessings or no, I have still got to make consistent sales somehow, through the end of the year and beyond. In more ordinary years (long since gone now), our holiday sales alone carried us through the winter, the late winter/spring closure, and on toward summer. Those days are gone, and the closure is already here (and if not permanent, it's the next thing to it). We will still need to sell Wings's work regularly to make it. So please share the links, and if/when you're in the market for gorgeous, authentic, Spirit-infused Indigenous wearable art, Wings will have something perfect for you. Check out last Wednesday's brand-new masterwork; it's extraordinary, and it's meant for someone out there. There will be another, very different new masterwork coming possibly today. The links are here:
Oh, and there are some additions to the wishlist: The towels folks took off it last month are the absolute best I've ever used in my life, so I put a few more sets on there; it will mean I don't have to keep running these two through the laundry all the time. Also, there's a hideously expensive chiropractic gun on there, but even at that price, it's only a couple of appointments and it's already paid for itself. It's for both of us, but mostly for Wings, and this is the model that was recommended to him. Thanks.
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2020; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
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