Cazmanian_minx's MFi3 diary

tsharp

Cool. I've had a quick look and will check back regularly to see what you're up to. It's like stalking but with the stalkee's permission!

It also served to remind me that I have 85,000+ words of a novel already written and really should finish it!

cazmanian_minx

A quick round-up:

Beads
Going great, am VAT-registered today and all went smoothly. The good news is that I can claim back about £3,600 on my first return for VAT paid on stock on hand and other business purchases, the bad news is that I found over £3k's-worth of unlisted stock whilst doing the stocktake The new gemstone bead lines are selling really well and I have two enormous orders arriving from China and Hong Kong next week (at the moment both due on the same day, which is spectacularly bad planning on my part!)

Writing
Haven't had a lot of time to write, due to preparation for VAT day, but I've had a nice email from the erotica publisher saying he's not the editor, but he thinks my latest story is great, which was nice. And I'm going to a crime writing workshop with none other than Ian Rankin (!!!!!!!!!) next week, which I'm really looking forward to.

Other stuff
I finally got round to chasing up my piccolo and funnily enough it sold last week :rolleyes: The cheque's turned up today (£640) - I was going to be good and put it all in the offset, but I think I'm going to buy myself a netbook with some of it. This laptop takes 20 minutes to boot up and has an annoying habit of cutting the power if you move it, so I think it's finally time to replace it. Dell apparently have an offer on their Mini 10V tomorrow and that's only £199 full price.

We've also made a decision to start using our fields - as well as veggies next year, we're going to be raising a couple of pigs for home-reared pork, sausages and bacon. I'm hoping we can get Gloucestershire Old Spots and we have a friend who's a butcher who says the abattoir will deliver straight to his shop for us. Apparently two pigs can produce the equivalent of £730-worth of pork products at Tesco prices, so with the amount of sausages and bacon the OH goes through we're going to break even in year 1! Not sure how I'm going to be when we have to drive them to slaughter, but at least I can tell myself that I'm going to be eating meat which had a happy life and is low in food miles.

Caz

StuartGMC

Caz
Well done on the progress and the new plans.

gallygirl

cazmanian_minx wrote: »

We've also made a decision to start using our fields - as well as veggies next year, we're going to be raising a couple of pigs for home-reared pork, sausages and bacon. I'm hoping we can get Gloucestershire Old Spots and we have a friend who's a butcher who says the abattoir will deliver straight to his shop for us. Apparently two pigs can produce the equivalent of £730-worth of pork products at Tesco prices, so with the amount of sausages and bacon the OH goes through we're going to break even in year 1! Not sure how I'm going to be when we have to drive them to slaughter, but at least I can tell myself that I'm going to be eating meat which had a happy life and is low in food miles.

Caz

Yeah, can't wait to [STRIKE]taste[/STRIKE] see Pinky & Perky :T

cazmanian_minx

Mortgage payment day yesterday, but for some reason IF's website didn't update with the interest until this morning A couple of milestones this month:

:j:j:j Mortgage balance is now under £140k! :j:j:j

:j:j:j First £5,000 paid off! :j:j:j

The offset is very nearly at 10% of the outstanding balance as well, but a big chunk of that's going to disappear as soon as I get the bill from Stuart for the drive.

Big bead order number one arrived yesterday and is going to be *so* much easier to deal with - I got them to bag it all for me into selling pack sizes Slightly worried that I only ordered 6000 silver plated charm bracelets - they went back up for sale at 4pm yesterday and 330 had sold by 6am this morning :eek: I want to get rid of my business overdraft before Christmas - it's only base rate + 5.5%, but it's the most expensive debt I have at the moment. So I need to make £2.5k to clear that and then bank another £3k on top for my next big overseas order.

Big bead order number two is arriving today - this is the one that's cash on delivery for the customs charges and I'm not going to be in (off to Inverness for Ian Rankin's talks tonight and then class tomorrow :D:D), but I rang the courier who's going to be delivering it and have arranged to leave him a cheque in the annexe, so I can get cracking on those as soon as I'm home.

The latest saucy story is finally starting to work. I scrapped my original idea and started again, I was trying to cram an over-complicated plot into too short a space. New editor started on 1st October, so I'm waiting anxiously to see if he likes my Valentine story - every £50 helps...

Caz

cazmanian_minx

Quick edit - make that 730 charm bracelets sold in under 12 hours - help!!!!!!!!

Caz

gallygirl

cazmanian_minx wrote: »

Quick edit - make that 730 charm bracelets sold in under 12 hours - help!!!!!!!!

Caz

Crikey, that's incredible, well done :T. Do you process all these yourself? How long does an average order take to bag up & get ready to send? Just being nosey, but strange to think of a whirlwind of activity in such a quiet location!

Do you think you maybe should increase the price on the charm bracelets

Enjoy the talk - he's had a really interesting life so I'm sure it will be great - or maybe it's more about how he writes, which would be even better for you. Love his Rebus books, so atmospheric, I remember reading one where he went to the Scotsman offices, I'd been in the exact same room in there earlier that day

cazmanian_minx

gallygirl wrote: »

Crikey, that's incredible, well done :T. Do you process all these yourself? How long does an average order take to bag up & get ready to send? Just being nosey, but strange to think of a whirlwind of activity in such a quiet location!

Do you think you maybe should increase the price on the charm bracelets

Yup, it's just me (the dogs try to help occasionally, in their own unique way...!). Time taken depends on the order really. If I'm concentrating and no-one's ordered 30 different types of cabochon, I can pack 30-40 orders an hour. I've been doing some sniffing round my competitors to see what happened with their sales while I didn't have stock and the one who sold most did less than 100 a week at a pound more, so it's quite price sensitive. By importing them myself I'm making a very, very good margin on them, so I'm happy to just let them sell themselves.

gallygirl wrote: »

Enjoy the talk - he's had a really interesting life so I'm sure it will be great - or maybe it's more about how he writes, which would be even better for you. Love his Rebus books, so atmospheric, I remember reading one where he went to the Scotsman offices, I'd been in the exact same room in there earlier that day

It's both, I think. Tonight's two events are Ian Rankin in conversation with Nicky Marr (his old flatmate who's now a presenter for Moray Firth Radio) and The Three-City Crime Panel, which is a panel discussion between Ian Rankin, Alex Gray and Stuart MacBride on their respective series set in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen. I've been reading as many of Alex Gray & Stuart MacBride's books as I can get my hands on over the past three weeks and although I'm probably not going to read any more Alex Gray (I had to give up on one after she introduced about 25 different characters in the first 40 pages - I couldn't keep track of who was who!), I'm delighted to have found Stuart MacBride who's a sort of Aberdonian Mo Hayder.

Then tomorrow is the one I've been looking forward to most - a writing workshop with Ian Rankin :D:D:D:D:D:D:D

setmefree2

cazmanian_minx wrote: »

Mortgage payment day yesterday, but for some reason IF's website didn't update with the interest until this morning A couple of milestones this month:

:j:j:j Mortgage balance is now under £140k! :j:j:j

:j:j:j First £5,000 paid off! :j:j:j

well done Caz :T and fantastic news about the charm bracelets

evab_2

Wow enjoy your workshop, and well done with your sales - great news.