On the horizon

One of the on-going things I've been playing with is switching Black Bunny Fibers to its own domain. After looking at a lot of options, I found a very user-friendly e-commerce interface and I was able to build my own website in an unbelievably short time. This week I'm "beta-testing" it but I think I'll be ready to switch over from Etsy to my own domain later this month. Etsy is a wonderful website, but at this point, my volume of sales justifies the switch, since those Etsy fees (for listing and a percentage of sale) add up. And saving money on fees means cheaper yarn for my customers. I"ll let you know when the Grand Opening is, along with the URL.

January Books

Here's what I read in January:

1. Mississippi Mud: Southern Justice and the Dixie Mafia by Edward Humes. Story of a Mississippi judge and his wife, and their unsolved murder; their daughter began investigating when the local police didn't get the job done. Interesting background on the "Dixie Mafia," which I had never heard of before.

2. Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography by Andrew Morton. Yeah, and I read People Magazine at the hairdresser's, too. Your point? Cruise is a fascinating figure with power, celebrity and influence in Hollywood. Morton seems to have done a lot of research, including numerous interviews with people who knew Cruise, and he also extensively quotes Cruise's own words in interviews over the years. Unlike some reviewers, I think Cruise's "religious" beliefs are fair game, since Cruise himself speaks publicly of them in an attempt to influence others' behavior (think Brooke Shields). Morton provides an eye-opening view of Cruise's involvement in that regard.

3. Switching Time: A Doctor's Harrowing Story of Treating a Woman with 17 Personalities. Oy, this was a bizarre tale, written by a psychiatrist who treated a woman for depression, only to realize as treatment progressed that she was one of those extremely rare cases of multiple personality. I would have thought this was fiction were the psychiatrist not clearly identified and if he hadn't included scans of various notes and letters written in the different handwriting of the various personalities.