-22.5° this morning, sigh. I am so tired of the cold. On the bright side, I saw a 29° (above zero!!!) in the extended forecast.

The chimney guy came yesterday and looked at the chimney. He said there was minimal damage, but he’s going to write up an estimate on getting it relined and if I have the money this summer, I may do that. He also said we could get flexible rods at the hardware store in Princeton so we can clean the flue from the bottom instead of going up on the roof, so Christian is running up there today. He said the chimney was almost clogged, and because our stove is so old, it’s not airtight and that makes for more creosote buildup. But I refuse to replace it. This is the stove that my Mom’s family used to heat their house when she was a kid. It’s a lovely wood-grained brown enamel, and it is just so toasty warm.

I got another bunch of test glasses from Double Helix yesterday, so I’m off to see what I can get them to do. I sure wish they would make another batch of Dark Aurae. It is my most favorite glass, but it’s an odd lot, so they may never make another batch. :( These are a couple of beads made with Dark Aurae. Getting the green is a hit-or-miss, it just depends on the oxygen-propane proportions and how long I flash it. There’s no telling how it will turn out, which makes it more fun.

I sell my beads on Etsy and ArtFire. When ArtFire first started up, I signed up for it. It wasn’t the fact that it’s cheaper to sell on ArtFire, it was because of the direction Etsy was taking. In 2008, even when shown evidence of fraud, they chose to ignore it. There was such an outpouring of indignation and people closing their shops, they finally had to pay attention to it.

Then there wwere the $2.99 Chinese ‘sterling silver-cored’ beads, in the Handmade section. Handmade, sure, in a ‘family’ factory. Sterling silver? More like white copper.

Then there was the article on the Etsy blog from Temple St. Clair about how coral should be banned from jewelry, disregarding the fact that there are coral beds that are sustainably harvested throughout the world. Temple St. Clair is a big name jewelry designer. Not a jewelry maker who makes her own jewelry to sell on Etsy, but a jewelry designer whose lines sell at places like Saks and Target. Why was she even on the Etsy blog?!

Then there’s the rape card debacle. A seller by the name of ‘youstupidb****’ (you fill in the letters, I refuse to type it out) opened a shop, selling cards showing a line drawing of a woman crouching in a shower with the words ‘congratulations, you got bad touched.’ There were other cards congratulating people on having a Downs baby, and having AIDS. This was Administration’s response to complaints, “I understand that some items on the site may be upsetting. The themes of this shop could be considered controversial, and I can see how they touch very personally. Etsy hosts a diverse global community with a very broad range of sensibilities, as well as a wide variety of artistic expression. Etsy does not control the content provided by members, and we do not pre-screen content before it is posted on the site. You may find some things to be offensive, harmful, inaccurate or deceptive.” The story finally got picked up by CNN, and Etsy removed the listings.

Etsy has every right to allow repugnant things like the cards to be sold. But I question my place in an organization like that, whose standards seem to be at lowest level of decency just because people have the right to say what they want.

I saw a new bird today!! A red-bellied woodpecker. According to my bird book, they’re supposed to move south for the winter. Silly bird! What’s he doing here?

6 a.m., Suka jumped up on the bed and stuck his cold nose in my face, 6:30 Lukas got up to go to the bathroom. Luckily he didn’t step in the pile of puppy poo by his door. While he was in there I put the dogs out and mopped up the puppy pee in the foyer. Got the puppy poo cleaned up and Lukas back into bed, took a shower, went back into my bedroom and grabbed the drying rack (I hang rugs on it to dry instead of running them through the dryer) before it fell on the floor (Peaches the cat was up on the top rung, straddling it, and jumped off when I came into the room). Sat down on the bed and kept Suka from jumping onto my lap. Got dressed and started the coffee and the wood stove. Put Suka and Pip outside because they were chasing each other up and down the hallway. Let them back in. Got my coffee and went to my studio, filled the ferrets’ food and water containers, kept Suka from grabbing Chunk’s tail, go closed Lukas’ bedroom door that the cat got open, played with Suka to distract him from the ferrets. Sat down to have some coffee.

And how is your day going?

ETA: And my day continues swimmingly. The cat kept on trying to open Lukas’ door, so he never did get back to sleep, so I got him up to give him a shower, and the shower drain was clogged. Tried plunging it, got a sliver in my hand from the plunger, so had to resort to the snake. Then we had a chimney fire! Luckily, my nephews are up, and after I threw a chimney fire extinguisher into the stove, they went down in the basement and up in the attic to check on things. So tomorrow I get to call a chimney guy to come inspect it and make sure the flue didn’t get damaged. :( That’s going to be a few hundred dollars. If I didn’t like burning wood so much, I wouldn’t burn wood. End of story, I hope.