As we enter the last couple of weeks of 2025 I also find myself in that interesting period that I think of as a bit of a "no man's land."
What I mean by that is that the year is not over yet, the things that went well and not so well at shows are still fresh in my mind, and I have a little bit of time on my hands — because I'm not processing orders — to start working on filling gaps of stuff that we sold at the holiday shows.
Because I am afflicted with ADHD, I tend to do stuff "last minute," so anytime I feel inspired to work on something well ahead of time, I tend to jump at the chance to do so. I won't get into the finer details of how that works here...
Surprisingly — because I keep records of stuff like this — the last two weeks of the year are often quite fruitful in terms of creating new work.
I spent the couple of days immediately following our final show of the year taking inventory and figuring out where the big gaps are, as well as those where I need to experiment with for the year ahead.
A couple of days ago I actually sat down and started to work on filling some of those gaps, rather than just taking it easy or working on the eternal process of listing new items for sale on Etsy.
Once we hit the first of the year — and I have gone through a full retrospective of 2025 — I plan to get back to the process of consolidating all the items I have available for sale in a single online sales location.
For years, I operated under the impression that the best approach would be to spread inventory our across multiple venues because they would "catch" different customers, but all I really accomplished — I think — is to have insignificant selections available in each place.
Still trying to find the optimal formula!
The main thing remains to try to keep interested in everything. I've been at this for about 15 years now... so "keeping it new" is sometimes a bit of a challenge.
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2025.12.21 AS-TXT-352/322