Pricing Revisions

My Services page has been updated with some lower, and more explicit, pricing.

I had made a mistake when putting up the pricing for flat html design, and made it sound like it was $400 per page -- now it specifically says that I am changing $250 and up per page design. So if you want a design for the homepage, and a separate design for "inside pages" it would be $500+ and a per-page fee for the inside page content.

I also corrected the costs for putting pre-designed designs into web applications, a few web applications are easier to template than others and their fees are listed separately.

I'm sorry if that caused anyone to panic and run :)

[tags]prices[/tags]

day lily buds

I knew that day lilys were edible, and I saw them cropping up all around my new house. So I broke out Steve Brill's book -- he being my favorite authority on edibles -- and he mentioned all the various ways people eat day lilys. My mind got caught on day lily bud pickles. When Steve said that the plant no longer propagates via flower, it propagates via rhizomes, I knew I'd hit the jackpot. I bottled some day lily buds in a fairly usual pickle manner last night, and today I'm trying a variation on a day lily bud recipe I found on the internet. In a few weeks I'll be able to say how they taste. But the one I bottled last night is a beautiful red color. I had brined the buds for 12-24 hours (2 batches that I collected over two days), and put a plate on top to weigh them down. Some discolored a little, and some discolored a lot. I should have put them all in the jar and poured the hot vinegar over them, but I discarded some of the most discolored ones. Turns out that everywhere they discolored turned a brilliant red color in the vinegar solution, making a very pretty display if nothing else.

However Steve Brill said that day lily pickle buds are delicious. If it ever stops raining, I'll put pictures of day lilies and their buds online for people to get a good id. There's similar, still edible species (tiger lily), but the day lily has no poisonous look-alikes. As always, pick your plants away from car-ways. You don't want auto emissions on your food.

Also, I use pasta/tomato sauce jars or pickle jars that I've cleaned for making things in vinegar. Vinegar corrodes metal -- normal Ball or canning jars use metal rings and the lids will often corrode. Tomatoes are also corrosive so they use lined jar lids for pasta sauces.

My recipe -- the first batch I used about 1/4 cup salt to 1c water for the brine. I soaked the day lily buds by submerging them in the brine at room temperature (you may try in the fridge, maybe they wont get browned around the edges...) overnight. The following morning I picked more and left the whole lot in the solution until the evening. I created the vinegar pickling mix by filling a similarly-sized jar about 4/5ths or more with 1/2 organic cider vinegar 1/2 white vinegar, about 3/4 to 1c white sugar, about 4 whole cloves, 1/2 tsp coriander, 1tsp fennel seed, 1tsp black peppercorns. Stirred it up, put it in a non-metal saucepan to heat to steaming. You can be more patient than me and boil it :) While waiting, I rinsed the buds from the brine, and lined them up in the jar. Line them up very tightly if possible -- I didn't, and they all floated to the top. I was afraid to squish them too much. When the vinegar solution was ready, I poured it SLOWLY over the top (make sure the jar is warmed so that it does not shatter!), waited for bubbles to float out, poured in more, etc. I attempted to completely cover the buds without having the vinegar touch the lid of the jar. I eventually put the lid on, and turned the whole jar over (use gloves! it's HOT) a few times, re-opened it and poured more solution in. Label the LID of the jar, and turn it over a couple times a day for the first few days, especially if there are buds that aren't quite covered on the top. I'm hoping they eventually get saturated and sink to the bottom.

Today, instead of brine, my recipe calls for boiling the buds for 20 minutes or so -- enough to eat them as a vegetable. I'm using a different pickling solution -- one much less clear, so it won't be as pretty on the shelf. The buds came out of the boiling with the water mainly black, and the buds looking like soggy stringbeans. I put them in the jar, heated the pickling solution and I'm waiting for it to cool so I can put a label on it. This time I did a part apple cider and part white vinegar solution again, but I made about 1/3 of the sugar molasses and the spices were 2 whole cinnamon, 5 whole cloves, and a pinch of allspice powder (I need to get more whole allspice!). I couldn't really pack the jar tightly, but these babies were so tired and waterlogged that they sink easily. At the same time, they have totally lost all firmness and color compared to the brined buds. We'll see how it all turns out.

[tags]day lily, pickles, canning, steve brill, recipe[/tags]

New Portfolio launched

Ok, I give. Not everyone wants to have to dig around to see the cool stuff. The Portfolio link takes you directly to a gallery, where you can page through all the artwork. But you aren't totally spared my verbosity. Each detail page may have a blurb.

In the item detail pages, there are links back to the old portfolio pages, where there are case studies for those of you who still care about my babble. So it's the best of both worlds. Everyone can pretend to be illiterate and look only at pictures (like coloring books, ya kno?) and click around playfully, etc. Those who prefer snuggling in bed with a nice book and some warm cocoa can click through to the juicy ramblings and corporate scandals. Can you beat it?

Good luck!

[tags]portfolio, new site, design[/tags]

And the green grass grew...

I love my little garden.

It's been struggling. The woodchuck LOVES the greenbean leaves and the spinach.

My first planting of greenbeans was pretty much a disaster. All but two of the plants were eaten by insects or critters. Those two are fertile, flowering, and seem to be a variety that does NOT require fencing or poles to climb on. One has a seed-pod growing already.

My mom and I planted greenbean seeds that are children of her beans from her garden last year. And we planted A LOT. Of those, about half are doing well, and half have been chomped by deer or woodchuck. Those are struggling to bring up leaves again, but I'm afraid they may not make it. I planted more of the organic freestanding beans between the climbing beans that probably won't make it. So that will be 3 crops of beans if any of the 3rd planting make it.

The basil is starting to look healthier, the parsley is growing into it's pre-adolescence. The dill looks great. But the mystery is that the oregano never grew. At all. So I used that area to plant a late batch of tomatoes.

My son's one lonely pea plant is climbing faithfully up one tomato cage and its started to flower. I hope they don't require separate plants to be fertilized.

I put two cages down around the cucumber plants to give them something to climb on, but I'm really afraid they're going to totally overwhelm the cages LOL

I have one more cage for the tomatoes unless I find the other ones that may be buried under the poison ivy.

The spinach is starting to stalk and grow vertical, but many of the baby leaves were trashed by the varmint that has been eating the greenbean leaves wholesale.

Because most of the plants have been struggling, I planted all the rest of the seeds in various places for a free-for-all. Many of the plants can be harvested before they are mature (basil, spinach, parsley, dill), so why not? Nearly all the new seeds I planted are already sprouting above the soil, and will join their more mature brethren.

I've considered fencing in the front side of the garden, but I'm not sure it will inconvenience the critters more than it inconveniences me. Next year, I have to plant the tomatoes all across the front. I only put them across half the front. Hopefully that will be enough of a "nothing interesting here -- now move along" to keep most vermin out (tomato leaves are poisonous -- tomatoes are in the nightshade family, and in the middle ages the fruit of the tomato plant was thought to be poisonous).

Any of my spare seeds I scattered in the wilds around my garden plot. If nature allows them to root and grow, the critters can chomp away. Or they can eat the beans and cut out the middleman ;)

Bees. Some of the largest bumblebees I've ever seen live in my garden. And they don't like me much. They come over and check me out here and there. One decided I was too close to their hive and stung me a little on my eyebrow. Not enough to hurt me too badly, and not enough to rip its stinger off. My eyebrow was unhappy for a couple days, but I did my first aid like a good little mommie so it didn't get too bad. Now I avoid the area where the beehive is. Unfortunately it was a place that my mom and I planned for the beans to vine into. I need alternatives now.

I have wild strawberries all over the wild parts of the yard. Tons of them. But the berries are going to be tiny, which is typical of strawberries that haven't been cultivated or which have escaped from the garden. And there are brambles. I think I have black raspberries, and I'm waiting to find out what the other varieties all around the yard are - I expect blackberries, in abundance.

That's about all the gardening news for now.
[tags]critters, strawberries, stringbeans, berries, spinach, bees, tomatoes, basil, parsley, dill, garden[/tags]

Myrna Owns Her Content

Myrna, a massage therapist of 20 years, finally has a website after years of rejecting the typical website-for-massage-therapist templates always being pushed onto her industry.

Myrna is a tough-as-nails massage therapist, very straightforward and to the point. At the same time, she is an attentive listener, and flexible in her massage style. She has 20 years of professional massage experience, specializing in therapeutic massage for a variety of health ailments, and wanted a website that was a blend of medical, sports and that touch of down-to-earth holism that she has without being at all fluffy.

personalcarebymyrna.com, designed by Eclectic Tech and hosted by Archutech Consulting, is a wiki. Myrna has the password, and I bet she's not sharing! All the content on the site is by Myrna.


Case Study
[tags]new site, new client, holistic, massage[/tags]

CMS Disappointment

I have been trying to work out the features and the back-end program to run Holistic - Hudson Valley.

As I would do for any client, I wrote up a sheet of the major features I required. I checked 3 CMS packages that are free/open source, and that I have confidence that they have a large number of add-ons and a strong community: Drupal, Joomla! and Xoops.

I've used Xoops, and I liked it A LOT.

I've used Drupal, but when looking for plug-ins that would give the package the features I was looking for it fell short.

I researched packages for Joomla, and except for true single-sign-on integration with Moodle, it came up with the most promising feature availability. I saw that a couple of the components would cost money. The amount wasn't enough to hamper me, so I dove in. I started working on it, decided to opt for my first purchase of a module, which was more than the original price I thought I would be spending on the feature ($99). I bought it. It's one of those no-money-back things. Then I saw that Joomla! did not include the fine group permissions that I had come to expect from using Xoops.

My first barricade was that the new $99 module only works with a certain release of Joomla! -- that was OK because I'd downloaded two versions of Joomla. I installed the correct one, got it working, fed it the database info, and everything was happy. Or so I thought. I could now install the somewhat expensive module (the other modules were cheaper).

Joomla! comes with a pre-created set of a few user group types. And no way to customize them, unless you want to buy someone's hack. I have a list of about 8 module features I need installed. The group modification hack gives no easy indication of which other modules it plays nice with -- you need to pour through the forums. Maybe they've created patches for it to work with the modules you want -- maybe not. No guarantees. Oh, yeah, and if you want the best version of their package, there's a subscription fee. Not a one-time license fee -- a monthly or annual subscription fee. This stopped me dead in my tracks.

I was looking for something cheap and easy. So far I'd spent about $100 and had at least another $50 USD and £22.50 (probably about $50USD) to spend ahead of me. If any more unexpected barriers came up and I had to shell out any more money for modules that did not guarantee playing nice with other modules --- this was going to end with me going postal.

I'm starting to think that Joomla! is a rip-off -- about 1/3 of the functionality I was looking for as a base to begin was going to cost me money. I think some of the people charging money for components were on the package's core development team. If the component is terribly useful, and should be ported to the main body of the program -- such as flexibility with user groups -- it would probably never happen because the guy who is making money off the module is going to scream bloody murder. That is not the type of open source generosity I'm looking for. I don't mind asking for donations, and I don't mind giving donations if I make money off my project -- AT ALL. But Joomla! doesn't say "Warning, most of what you want to extend this package with will cost you."

I should have considered my choices longer and harder, but thankfully I've only spent $99 so far. Once I spent the other $100 or so, I may have found out that something else essential was missing, and how much would that have cost me?

I'm off to do more research on the Xoops packages. Xoops has a better core philosophy as far as I can tell. The basic package is deliberately made to be extensible without having to hack the core code. Even if I do end up having to buy an add-on or two, they won't come with huge warnings that they are hacks of the core package and may not play nice with other modules. I've used Xoops and was very happy with it. If there's a module I can't find to fill a feature I need, I can try creating it myself.

Xoops had come in a close 2nd place in my assessments, but I was lured in by the promise of everything "just working" with Joomla!. Joomla! is more polished to the eye, but apparently the "just working" isn't true. I'm going to need to triple check that none of the modules I want costs money, but I'm pretty sure they don't. In any case, I have some experience in hacking Xoops modules...and I know the user groups are already fine-grained and fully customizable.

*Grumps*
[tags]cms, drupal, xoops, joomla, open source, web applications, custom programming, modules, expenses[/tags]

Thank You For Your Time

People probably don't get it, but I write "Thank you for your time" out by hand at the bottom of my emails, above the pre-generated sig lines.

Time is my one finite commodity.

If someone puts a project request up on a site or write to me asking for a bid, they've spent time on that, and in return they're looking forward to quality in the response. I find that many of my competition on such venues are a disaster, a blight on my industry. Their responses are form letters, no consideration is given to whether they fit the job or why, generic quotes are pasted in, if any time has been spent on the response at all. They're quite stingy with their time, and I'll bet it shows when they're on the clock.

When I write to someone, I'm hoping that they read what I have to say. From the moment they open my email, to the moment they close it, their time is being spent on me. Time they will never get back. They're moments closer to the end of life on this fair Earth. My response, even if it ends up being the bid they choose, has just sucked away some portion of their time above and beyond the responses I have no control over.

I send out my blessings for the time they are spending on me every time I write "Thank you for your time" and click send.

At the same time, I have to acknowledge that the return-on-investment of me spending my time on these people hand-writing to them probably far overshadows the quality of responses I receive, if any. I get few if any clients through such competitive venues. That's why, if I know I don't fit a job, I am not going to waste my time writing to the person, unless--

Unless somehow I'm going to serve them in a very quick and definitive fashion.

I often write to people who seem to need a little advice. I have no intention of taking their job, it probably doesn't fit me, but something they said implied a need for direction. Sometimes I'm misguided, and should keep my fingers on the mouse, move on to the next ad. Sometimes I earn a bit of respect for my wisdom.

A long time ago I decided that the chance to help people is well worth spending my time on. If I save someone a moment of time, maybe that's one more time they smile at a child, blow dandelion seeds into the wind, procrastinate one less chore. Perhaps I'm saving some people far more than just a moment. Minutes. Hours, even! Those bundles of moments we measure.

I want to take a moment, if you have read this post, to thank you for your time. I really appreciate that you've listened to my babbling on this. This is a very important and dear topic to me.

With luck, I will eventually have sufficient referrals, print ads, and repeat business to leave off reading Craigslist and other posting venues, and spend more time creating, advertising, dreaming, and contributing to the works of others. In the meantime, here's a toast to the customers I have found at such places, the associates within my field, and to all the moments where people really connect and collaborate, whether for a minute or a month, and then sit back and salute a job well done.

Blessings,

Crisses

[tags]time, gratitude, clients[/tags]

Advertising Excitement

I have the pleasure of being a member of the Orange County Chamber of Commerce (I really need to put a member logo up to that effect), and as part of their membership drive I get to include a letter-sized flyer in a mailing.

I opted for the July mailing, since I have a couple ads coming out in June, and I want to see what impact they have. Also, I wanted the June 15 deadline to get them the flyer. Brainstorming and printing up 3000 flyers is no joke.

I've opted for 100% post-consumer paper, and I'm on the third laser cartridge (if anyone knows of soy-ink laser cartridges, I want to know! Now!).

Why the brainstorming? Boy, I'm so glad you asked!

You see, most of the flyers that come in the mailers are typical. Boring. Dry. Unimaginative. I'm a designer, a creative spirit -- and adding to the boredom in the world is counter to my Declaration of Don't Waste My Time. Boring flyers destined for the round (or *cross-fingers* recycle) bin and tantamount to spam. To environmental waste. I've come up with a unique idea, and unlike most people I'm going to use both sides of the paper (novel, isn't it?). I'm making sure it has as low an environmental impact as I can muster on my low-budget-advertising strings. This chamber mailer is sent out monthly with other fliers anyway, via snail mail that gets delivered daily anyway. No extra envelopes needed. The recycled paper helps too, though I would prefer renewable treeless, denim, soy ink, etc. I just can't afford the printing costs, and if I print at an environmental printer's there's delivery costs, the truck to my place -- the extra pollution-per-mile of delivery.

I put a plea on the paper, right next to the recycle symbol, asking people who don't need it to pass it on to someone else. The box of 3000 pages is rather large. Did I mention 3 laser ink cartridges? I hate to think of all my effort going to the waste basket.

I also don't think any other company put as many man-hours into designing their flyers as I have. I've already put about 50+ hours into it. Creativity has a price. But now that I'm done, it is also be a viable stand-alone flyer for private mailers. It also has the potential (with a smidgeon of effort from me, I did my retouching on the greyscale images) to be printed in 4 color glossy (and look great!) eventually, but this time I think it will just be a laser print. I doubt a 4 color printer with sufficient ink for 3000 flyers is in my near future, and 4 color environmentally sound printing isn't in my near future either.

I have preview images for y'all on my inhouse portfolio page.

Enjoy!

[tags]ads, design, print design, comic, creative, recycled paper, inhouse ads, 3D art, rendering, Chamber, portfolio[/tags]

Oxelot round four

Today I completed and sent out the third round of revisions for Oxelot's corporate identity. I've added round four samples to the Oxelot case study page in my portfolio. Amazingly, I've already heard something back from the client ;)

[tags]new client, design, logo, identity, portfolio[/tags]

Green Thumbs

My mother has the best green thumb I've ever seen. Must be those Missouri genes. I've been struggling with crappy store-bought vegetable seeds. It takes nearly twice as long as the package says for the sprouts to break soil.

My mother comes here one weekend, we plant tons of green beans -- they're her own seeds matured from her garden, which is several bean-generations old by now. We must have planted about 40 seeds in my tiny garden. A little "Mommy Magic" and a lot of watering, some rare rain and dreary days for once followed by sun, and 10 days later, the beans are breaking soil.

All my life, my mother has had a garden. Even in Brooklyn, NY, she's always managed to find some dirt to grow something in. My luck with plants extends mainly to the wild, cultivation is shaky, and indoor plants near impossible. I managed healthy aloe plants indoors but most others have died due to my incompetency or an indoor black-thumb curse.

But outside -- I coax wild plants to grow where I scatter their seed, I plant store bought seeds and they escape to grow between the cracks in the pavement, and I have a great eye for wild plant identification. Show me ornamentals and cultivated plants and I have a low rate of recognition, but I can recognize about a hundred common wild plants on sight. I also talk to the plants and trees, but you wouldn't want to know what they have to say about you ;)

When we filled my garden with my mother's bean babies, I had another 5-6 left in my hand. Put them back in the #10 envelope my mother brought them in? Why? So they could sit there doing nothing? No way! I tossed them amongst the cornucopia outside my garden and commanded silently to the sleeping vessels: "Go forth, and multiply!"

At the least, if they succeed, they'll give the rabbits something to chew on.

[tags]stringbeans, critters, garden[/tags]

Family and Beliefs

I don't know what you, the reader, believe in. Right now, our nation struggles with a fundamental question regarding the "face" of what is an acceptable "American family."

There is the Federal Marriage Amendment, being contemplated for addition into our Constitution. This amendment seeks to limit marriage and any rights resembling those of rights of marriage to couples who are male and female. In other words, it's to dictate what states can say about marriage between gay couples -- which specifies that they may not allow marriage and marital rights. It does away with domestic partnership rights, annuls marriages already consummated, strips many families of privileges they require and depend upon legally and medically.

Historically speaking, the document called the Constitution has been most successful in outlining our rights and freedoms. Whenever we have used it as a document to impose limitations on basic human rights, it has failed.

We also have kept it relatively free of judgement, free of religion. A miracle in a partisan country where one religion or a set of somewhat compatible religions have the power.

Marriage is already a messy "Chinese menu" of personal and private romantic and supportive commitments between individuals, a religious binding oath, and a contractual financial and legal arrangement. Not to mention a component that is a contract with the State, in return for which one gets certain legal and financial rights. Pick and choose any or all of the above for your marriage. To say two men, or two women, can't make a personal and private romantic or supportive commitment would be absurd -- that is something one can't dictate and needs no contract or sanction and makes marriage a mere formality or a public announcement of the commitment. To say two men or two women -- or indeed any number of individuals -- can't enter a contractual financial and legal arrangement is equally absurd and would burst every corporation or partnership in the country leaving us with many sole proprietorships, no clients, etc.

Whenever an argument opposing gay marriage comes about, I hear the protest coming from a religious standpoint, yet the contract of marriage requires no religious component. People can be married by court. Marriage by church is an option that persists for tradition and sentimental or religious reasons, but the two matters (legal or religious marriage) can easily be separated from one another.

Yet most opponents to gay marriage insist on quoting quotes from various interpretations of one religious compendium called the Bible. Someone passed around a counter-quote, "When you take an oath in court, you swear on the Bible to uphold the Constitution" not vice-versa. We are not a nation to uphold the Bible. There are no precedents outlining which religious source we are basing the Constitution on because the Constitution was written with the express intention of separating the impositions of religion from the governance of a nation. Our forefathers had the wisdom, the resentment, the foresight, and the first-hand-experience to know that no one religion was going to get it right, and that individual political freedoms could not be dictated by religious mores.

I am not Christian, or Jewish. I'm not Muslim, nor am I Buddhist. Yet religion surrounds me, infuses me, draws me, defines me, limits me, and expands me. My religion doesn't have any creeds whatsoever limiting lifetime unions to only man and woman. If your religion says it's not ok to marry the same sex, then marry only the opposite sex (or change religions), but do not limit my Constitutional freedom to practice my right to personal private commitments, enter into contractual arrangements, to celebrate the religious oaths I may choose to enter into with any gender, or to enter into a legal and financial agreement with my state. Certainly do not try to limit my religious freedoms from within a document sworn to protect them. Your state may not honor my agreements, but the Constitution is not allowed to limit them.

[tags]religion, marriage, queer, freedom, Constitution, family, legal, activism[/tags]

New Blog

Instead of posting news in the news area, I'm going to use this blog that I've added to my site.

I'll pull all my old news into the blog area, give it the correct dates, and properly tag it.

[tags]metablog, news[/tags]

Healing

Dose of common-sense: I'm not prescribing remedies to you. If you want to make your own medicines, get at least a basic education in herbalism first. If you want to do field identification of plants and herbs, get some good field guides, and verify some plants against knowledgeable persons before imbibing.

What a godawful two weeks.

I got something, perhaps a case of Poison Ivy, about two weeks ago. I know because the grass needed to be mowed again. My partner, Chris (yep, two of us), mowed two weeks ago, having bought a new mower. I was a complete IDIOT and tried keeping him company while he did it -- put on some gloves, and went out to prune some of the crazy hedges and bushes out there. I didn't care that the mower was spewing cut grass at me on occasion -- or that I was breathing in the dusty crud that it was pouring out. I clipped hedges, and gathered up armfulls of brush clippings to the margin of the woods to toss on a pile of deadfall we'd been collecting there.

The next morning, I had some bug bites along my right arm, from wrist to about my elbow. I scratched, didn't think much of it. Mosquito, flea, whatever -- something had snacks on my arm all night. So be it.

Then my left leg behind the knee was itching. Again -- didn't think much of it. We have pets, hence fleas, and anything below the knee is game :P *sigh* So again, I did nothing. This is about Friday night or so.

By Sunday I itched in several more areas, but nothing beat the welts behind my knee. I got some hydrocortisone cream. I figured it was a minor itch/allergy and should be treated as same.

On Monday I knew there were serious problems. Where there were two 1" wide welts behind my knee the night before, now the entire area behind my knee was swollen.

By Tuesday I figured out that it was eczema or contact dermatitis. I got a Benadryl dye free equivalent, and a topical version, some health food store remedies, and made my own ointments from herbal oils I had on-hand.

Plantain Ointment

Creating ointments from infused plant oils requires taking the liquid oil medium and adding solidifying agents to it. Usually the goal is to have something solid or semi-solid at room temperature, but which melts upon contact with the skin. Solidifying agents may vary, but my preference is beeswax, as it is natural, healing and nutritive in its own right, and melts easily into the oil. Other options may include saturated plant fats such as palm or coconut oil, lecithin, and sometimes paraffin, but I've never used these for an ointment so I can't recommend them. By varying the amount of beeswax, one can control the solidity of the end product, and you can get anything from a soft cream to lip balm consistency at room temperature.

Create an infused plant oil: Fill a clean jar with fresh, dry-surfaced, plantain (Plantago spp.). Fill the jar again with olive oil, to the very brim, and then seal it with a cap. Let sit a minimum of 6 weeks (2 weeks in an emergency...mine was in the jar for 9-10 years!). (See notes on making infused plant oils later, there are a lot of rules and notes!)

Pour off oil into a (glass or enameled) pan, removing and squeezing out all plant matter. Heat on the absolute lowest heat setting possible before blowing out the burner (or you can heat it on a radiator/riser in your apartment building ;) ), and add beeswax shavings to the tune of about 2 tsp shavings per 4 oz of oil... it's a fine art depending on how solid you want your ointment. Stir with a wooden spoon until all the beeswax is melted. Do not allow to boil! Keep the heat as low as possible. Pour into clean, wide-mouthed jars you can get your finger completely into (preferably glass, possibly metal tins or old plastic cosmetics jars but they need to be heat-tolerant).

What's left in the pan, you can smear on your face, hands, lips, eyes, etc. Did I just say eyes? Well, use your judgement -- but depending on the plants and the oils you use, this is essentially food.

I slathered plantain ointment on the affected areas. I had enough that I made 3 4oz jars of ointment. If you can't picture it, figure it's a large 12oz soda cup full of goo. I still can't say if it helped but it did keep the itching down, and my skin sucked it up like it was starving. That last may be a problem, though, since it fed my skin (yum!) but didn't necessarily lock in the moisture the way something with mineral oil or petroleum jelly would have.

Soon it was a week of intensive itching, I was desperate, and I was no longer satisfied with my normal regime of simples (one herbal remedy at a time). I suspected it might be Poison Ivy (oak, sumac, who cares?). I saw that I was going to run out of ointment at this rate, I got more creative (read: desperate), and I made a jar of ointment (same steps as above) out of lance-leaf plantain that had soaked (for about 10 years) in almond oil, then after filling one jar I added mugwort oil (Artemesia vulgaris) to the pan that had been soaking in olive oil, and a little more beeswax. I poured that into a jar for one jar of plantain/mugwort ointment. Then I punctured and squeezed out about 4 capsules of Vitamin E oil (Carlson E-Gems - d-alpha tocopheryl acetate from soy in sunflower/soybean oil, beef gelatin (?), glycerin and water), and poured a jar of the plantain/mugwort/vitE ointment. Then I added goldenseal powder (Hydrastis canadensis, store purchased), and poured the remaining 3 jars of the huge combo of plantain/mugwort/vitE/goldenseal. In the end I had a total of 6 more jars of ointment. Final 3 jars ingredients, approximated for proportions: olive oil, almond oil, mugwort, plantain, beeswax, vit E and goldenseal powder.

Having plantain and mugwort sitting in oil on my herb shelves for 9 years is a very long time. I simply had no overwhelming need to decant (pour the oil out of) the jars, and I had been slowly edging back into making remedies since moving upstate. However, this was a full all-out plunge back into being an herbalist. I researched, because I didn't see any jewelweed (Impatiens aurea or biflora, a poison ivy remedy) whatsoever in my poison-ivy haven of a yard. Mommy N doesn't work that way -- where there's a problem, there's a cure. Since there was no jewelweed, I knew there must be an alternative cure somewhere in my yard. I looked for eczema remedies. I poured over my class notes from too-many-years-ago. I thought for a moment that I might need to upgrade my field guides -- I upgrade all my techie manuals for programming languages and web languages, don't I? But wait --

Plants don't mutate over 20 years. Of course my field guides are still accurate. :P

And then I found another answer. Cleavers (Galium aparine), a very distinctive little plant, and I had noticed it growing everywhere in my yard. I even had identified the plant instantly by name around the grounds, even though I had never worked with her as a remedy for anything. The suggestions were for using the juice of the plant rather liberally, but I didn't have the heart to take that much of this not-very-juicy plant in order to attempt to make several teaspoons of juice a day. I opted to make a tincture, less effective but much more efficient in use of my green friend -- it wouldn't be ready in time for what is going on now, but I have a feeling this won't be the only time and next time I'll know what's happening and have a (hopeful!) cure handy.

Extracts

A herbal plant extract occurs when plant is infused in a liquid menstruum that breaks down cell wall materials and carries nutrients, minerals, alkaloids, and other active ingredients out of plant materials and into the liquid solution.

Fill a clean jar with clean fresh plant material. Fill it again with your choice of any alcohol, glycerine or vinegar. Preference for 100 Proof vodka, or raw/organic apple-cider vinegar.

Vodka is the most efficient "menstruum" (liquid carrier) and makes a medicine called "a tincture" requiring the lowest amount of liquid per dose. Glycerine menstruums are non-alcoholic and create an "extract", while vinegar menstruums create a "vinegar". Thus you can have cleavers tincture (in alcohol) or extract (in glycerine, but all of these are extracts), or vinegar.

2-6 weeks minimum, then pour off into a new clean jar, squeeze out the plant materials to the best of your ability, seal and label.

Tinctures and glycerine extracts are usually dispensed from dropper bottles, and the dose varies depending on the plant used -- the most potent/poisonous plants usually call for being mixed with other tinctures or teas and 4-5 drops are used, while less strong, nutritive, or edible plants may call for an entire dropper-full of liquid several times a day. Vinegars usually have a dose 2-3 times that of other extracts (perhaps a teaspoon or more, depending on the plant used), are usually used only for plants that are otherwise edible, and may be used in salads to carry the benefits to the user.

You may infuse in rubbing alcohol, which makes a liniment -- FOR EXTERNAL USE ONLY!

Note that vinegars will erode metal -- use a pickle jar to make a vinegar infusion, because the cap is lined to prevent erosion.

I also replenished my stores of plantain oil by starting a jar of plantain oil, and at the same time I started a jar of yarrow oil (Achillea millefolium) and a jar of ground ivy tincture (Glechoma hederacea).

Notes about creating herbal oil infustions

• Do not confuse infused oils with essential oils. They are quite different. Essential oils are made in a laboratory, using distiller equipment. Herbal oil infusions use a liquid oil medium and are soaked for a long period of time (2-6 weeks or longer), and can easily be made in your kitchen.


• If you're in a rush, a quick infused oil can be made by heating your liquid oil gently in a pan, and adding almost an equal amount of plant material to it. Stir, do not allow to boil or burn, and in about an hour you will have an oil that will have most of the properties of a cold-infused oil. In the process of heating the plant, the cell walls break down quicker than soaking in oil over time, but you sacrifice heat-sensitive agents and nutrients in the end product, both from the oil you choose and the plant.


• Olive oil has its own healing properties (as do other types of oil) and a good cold-pressed extra virgin oil, while expensive, has tremendous healing qualities in itself. If you can't afford or don't have the best oil on hand, any liquid cooking oil will do in a pinch.


• When making oils it is exceptionally important that there is no water on your plant materials before you add them to the jar. Some "sweating" occurs when fresh plant materials are placed into plastic baggies, so when buying or collecting fresh herbs, put them in paper bags for better results. If there is too much water on your herbs when placing them in the jar, you may end up with mold in your oil.


• If mold develops in your oil, transfer clean materials to a clean jar, discard any dubious materials, and top off with oil.


• Keep the jar full to the top -- this also prevents mold.


• Filling the jar to the top with oil may cause seepage -- oil has a way of finding its way through the lid. Place on a surface that will not mar from oil, or place in a bowl.


• Expect that the plant materials will swell and release air bubbles, poke down the plant materials with a clean bamboo chopstick or a clean undyed popsicle stick, shake the jar to loosen air bubbles and allow them to float to the top. Then top off the jar with more oil.


• Keep infusions out of the sun, unless you are using sun &/or moonlight to add additional (presumably magical) properties to the infusion.


• If your house is moldy, clean your jars and boil them before making infusions.


• Edible plants in edible oils make edible infused oils. You can create infused oils of garden herbs, for example. Pesto is something similar to an infused oil, except that you blend the basil and other ingredients in instead of squeezing them out at the end. Use sparingly, as garden herbs may have powerful effects in concentration. For example, add 1tbs infused oregano oil to a salad dressing or marinade. Be careful when making oils from other non-leafy cooking plant parts, such as garlic, as they may contain too much water and cause your oil to spoil.


• If your oil gets very "gassy" -- a lot of air bubbles causing excessive leaking of oil out of the cap -- check for spoilage or mold.


• Leaking oil makes it VERY difficult to put an adhesive label on a jar. Label the outside of the bowl you place it in, put the label on the top of the cap of the jar, or use a permanent marker on the outside glass of the bottle before starting to make the infusion -- you can remove the markings later with rubbing alcohol, but they should survive being leaked on with oil.

The good news is that in spite of (or perhaps aided by) my attempts to self-medicate, the eczema/dermititis is fading off. I have no idea whatsoever whether what I did to myself helped or not -- I know I suffered a great deal of intolerable itching, weeping, large portions of both legs covered in dry itchy patches, peripheral itching over my arms, back and belly with mild bumps and redness, skin peeling, etc. No cracking or bleeding, which is probably only thanks to the aggressive moisturizeing/nourishing of my skin.

New Design Coming

I have been working on a website redesign. It seems that creating a site design that is open and uncluttered does not sell my services. When creating my design, I thought I was expressing my preferences for information delivery over dazzle. And some people have responded to the design very positively, enjoying the fact that it is subdued and unpretentious.

Others, however, are uninterested in clarity and an uncluttered look. That 15 seconds (or less) that I have to capture their attention fails.

I want the audience that inherently understands that my design preference for my site does not dictate how I design sites for other people and other purposes. At the same time, I have to redevelop my own site, because it needs to be repurposed. During the initial design, I was not selling as hard as I am now, so my site was mainly informative. Now, my site must be geared towards self-promotion rather than discussion.

So, I will be rolling out a new design and perhaps some new content soon. The design is already in the works. I have decided on something fancier but with some of the same elements.

A rhetorical rant for those who would never get so far as to read my news: Why on earth would my site be a representation of what your site would look like? You have a different audience, different philosophy, different projections, different goals. Part of what I try to do while I work for you is become enmeshed with the energies of the organization I am designing to represent. I ask for intricate details about you and your goals, the history and the fabric of the entity I am working to represent, and I use those as the clay from which I sculpt the work I bring to you. The more accurately you portray yourself, your organization, and your target market, the more fitting the results should be. My site is not a cookie cutter.

Logo Day

I'm declaring this Logo Day. If there's already a "Logo Day" (Feb 28th was Pancake Day -- who woulda thought?) then let me know. In the meantime, I'm going to post some interesting stuff about the logo creation process.

First, an article for logo design do-it-yourselfers intended for people who are starting a business and NEED a logo/identity design, money is tight, they're in a rush, and they would rather do it themselves because they think it's a simple process.

The second is a data sheet for people purchasing logo designs (from Eclectic Tech) who need to know why the price tag is so high. Step-by-step explanation of the process and the expectations that the client should have regarding what is going on behind the scenes.

cuz I'm a wooooo-man

Ok. I'm gender agnostic on the inside, but I'm 100% certified genetic female on the outside. My Djinni is a bit androgynous, I guess. In email I only introduce my gender if someone requested a female for a specific (and good!) reason.

Yet, when a client calls on the phone, they're always taken aback that I'm female. I know that female artists are commonplace, but I'm also a programmer, a Linux admin, and competing in a fierce male-dominated field. Maybe I should make it much more obvious that I'm female. Once I get my woman-owned business certs, I can flaunt them, but for now, it's me, that's all you have, and I'm female. 2 homebirths to show for it. Deal :)

Wiki Sale Over

I'm sad to see the Wiki sale end. Hopefully you weren't one of the people who missed out. Still, $149 is a great deal. Maybe I can put it on sale again in the future, but for now, I can't afford that much extra work.

Busy - Holistic HV

I've been busy. I haven't had a chance to update my news page, so here's a brief list of what's new:
* New portfolio work including logo case studies, more branding work, and some of my newest web design work.
* busy with several clients in addition to the holistic website. Much of our latest work is