Weather Reports

I’m feeling a bit under the weather today; probably something I picked up from the assignment in the hospital late last week. No trip to the flea market today! (It ended up raining anyway.)

So it’s another day of odds and ends.

I had my first BreyerFest nightmare Friday night. This surprised me, since I usually start having them earlier in the year. But so far all the little projects that I need to get done prior have been going reasonably well.

Even my two ticket times are fine; I’m not crazy about the 10 a.m. Saturday ticket, since that means I’ll only have one shot - not two - at the Store Special Bluegrass Bandit, who's going to be the insanely hot item this year, I think. But I’ll deal, and sharpen my elbows if necessary.

I’m so not on board with the Sunday ticket times. I know they’re doing it to increase the number of tickets sold; there are only so many people you can push through a ticket line in an hour, barring medical emergencies. But that means the sales of extras are getting pushed to the very end of the event, and I am not keen on that development.

If I don’t have any volunteer commitments (none that I know of, this year) then I like to high-tail it right after the Sunday raffle. Hanging out that extra hour or so just means a longer drive - and possibly, another day off of work I have to schedule for.

Following up on some recent comments…

Regarding the history of Peter Stone and Breyer/Reeves, that’s sort of a tricky subject for everyone involved, and not something I feel I can discuss in a direct way in a public forum.

Let me put it this way. I think it’s one of those topics that makes me think that we really need someone from the outside to write the history of the hobby. Not to get into any details, but it would be better if we had someone who could be more objective about it.

Putting on the graphic designer cap: regarding the dropped letters in logos, yes, it’s done to draw the eye. I was never fond of the dropped R in the previous "coffee can" logo though, because it looked more like a mistake than an intentional act of design. If it looks like a mistake, it’s perceived as a mistake. (And ergo, the people start looking for more…)

For the record, I don’t think Breyer has had a clear, consistent or successful brand identity since the early 1980s. It’s gotten better in the past few years, but it still seems a bit too bland and corporate to me. When I look at the most recent logos, I don’t see "legacy toy company with a slightly quirky fan base".

And finally, because I just scanned it for another project entirely, here is a picture of that one quilt block that I was recently preoccupied with, Odds and Ends. Most of the web searches for the block name will give you something completely different. THIS is the one that piqued my interest:

All of the other sewing projects - outside of the BreyerFest stuff - have pretty much been put away for the time being.