Shopping

Houses hunted: 12(good); Chairs hunted: 23 (approx); Waffle irons hunted: 1 (it opens, it closes, but it doesn't give waffles)
Have spent ahem (coughs) hours doing the House and Garden hunt, 50 shops, with some good stuff. When finished, rezzed it all out on Infolit (which brough Infolit perilously close to its prim limit, but that's another story)
Mostly people on the hunt were polite but purposeful, with not much chat, but towards the end, when tp-ed to Napoliy again after initial fruitless search, was approached by small lady with offer of help. Not only did she show me where the hunt item was, but she gave me her blog address, where she listed hints for all locations: at http://stephanieleclerc.blogspot.com/2010/08/httpslurl.html. Was very useful for filling in gaps, but did most of it myself.

Here it all is rezzed out, thought at this stage there was one item (a flower in a sack) that was actually the delivery bag and I thought it was the gift til I saw the full stuff on the feeds. Anyhow, here is all the goods rezzed out. This Belle Belle swing is very cute, but, as with all her stuff, a bit primmy.

Now all that remains is to work out what to do with it (inventory beckons, I fear).

More homemaking

Houses deleted: 1 (slow process); Houses rezzed: 1 (v. good); Houses disappearing: 1 (odd)
After the Infolit session on Thursday when Brielle did her excellent presentation, decided to have some r&r in SL after hard day in both worlds by finally setting up new home from "Y's" on my land. Had already decided to demolish the Ingrid Ingersoll Town House, which still like, but didn't really spend much time there and bedroom was frankly bit of a mess.
Took longer to demolish than had anticipated, since must at some point have UNLINKED everything and so had to delete prim by prim, v. tedious. Had originally intended to set up new house in roughly same place i.e. overlooking beach, but is SO laggy at ground level in the end made the new house a skybox.
Spent happy time filling it with some stuff from old house and some stuff had been saving up.
Key items for display were various objects with butterflies, and artwork. To start with put these in central courtyard, but in the end have created one room with butterflies/art and put bed in courtyard. Remaining room is kitchen/living/music room and has ended up rather cosy.

Will delight readers with some proper pics, but in meantime these ones show rather curious effect when last went in (to install a few cute items that had just bought in Kloka, namely teapot, box of tissues, tea set and comfy chair) and found that everything was there ---- except the actual house. Am sure house in fact IS there, since do not fall through space, and meet resistance if try to go through places-where-walls-were.
So did not panic, but took opportunity to take interesting pics of inside of house. Think I like it almost as much without walls, as with.

Home expo

Benches bought: 1 (good); Houses bought: 1 (good); Time spent watching objects rez: aeons (bad)

Have spent a little time at the Home & Garden Expo. Amongst purchases is a cute sofa from Greene Concept. Am seen in first pic sitting on one at the Expo (haven't actually unpacked my own yet).
Am still in new Eva skin, to give it a chance. Still think it is a bit too grey. With the Marguerite hair from Truth, that was wearing to start with, seemed to look much too SMUG all the time. However with this new hair from Simply Britnee possibly look too CUTE. And cuteness evidently leads to pole dancing (see previous post) which can only be a slippery slope.

Bought yet another house, well, it was only 500 Linden and has sash windows that open and close, a retractable ladder, and (the clincher) a teleport to the attic, disguised as a mouse hole. The vendor is Turnip. Will need to be for personal use, since navigating round it would be challenging for a noob, so can't really put it on the island.

Unfortunately must be said that spent less time looking at cute homes than I did watching oddly shaped lumps rez, trying to work out what they were going to be. The 2nd pic shows an example, and not the worst. Will it be a chair? A washbasin? A grandfather clock? An amusingly shaped vegetable? Who knows, and (after half an hour of slow-rez pain) does one care enough to wait and find out?

Lessons in fashion marketing: 2

No. of free items obtained through DNS: 10 (good); No. of useful free items obtained through DNS: 7 (even better)
On Thursday had interesting meeting about possibility of having information literacy week and will blog that when have gone through usual tedious business of putting chatlog online, editing pictures, putting up link to chat inworld, announcing that same is available, plus this time intend to put out notice encouraging people to contribute ideas and possibly set up dedicated social networking site. Feel tired just thinking about it.
In meantime have joined the Designers Showcase Network as Consumer. This is something that had been at edge of radar, with fashion bloggers mentioning items from "DSN", but finally sprang into action when noticed that Chic Aeon blogged an intriguing tree from October Rust. Am a sucker for SL trees (hmm, almost an unintentional pun there). So followed v. useful explanation of how it works [which can't find atthe moment, but can use the DSN link above] and then popped inworld to sign up for a few channels, namely Female Fashion, Jewelry, Tools, Home & Garden and Poses.
Idea is that each designer contributes a free item. Each day a randomly selected sample of people get that item. No person gets more than 1 item per channel per day. No one gets more than 1 item ever per channel from the same designer.
Gain from designers point of view is that for a mere 250 Linden and cost of designing item get possible access to new markets, or reminding existing customers that they exist. Obviously the hope is that you say "Wow, really great [insert name of item] must buy more!" and tp over to store to buy.Benefit to Consumer is that you get free stuff. This is definitely a plus (see below) and adds excitement of "what will I get free when I log on today!"
Down side is that you want to log in to see what free stuff you got today, so addiction factor of SL goes up notch. Also adds IMs, thus meaning some useful IMs may get capped. Also is matter of inventory bloat, but at 25,000 items, what are another few? Or so I say to myself.
I am pictured with some of the best items above. Am rather picky about fashion things, so neitherof 2 outfits were my thing, and only one of the jewelry items, so outfit is Model's Own, as they say. However, am using one of the free poses, from Reel Expression. Also can see cute piano stool from Kunstkammer (today) and Bed from Lyla (yesterday, see 2nd pic showing it in my bedroom), plus 2 tools. Translation one is a board where you drop in notecards in different languages (should you be able to translate into all those languages) and then people click on relevant flag to get them. Designer sells translation services, so obvious where THEY see money coming from. This COULD be used to dispanse notecards about Information Literacy in different languages, is my thought on this - even just "what is 'info literacy' in ..."
Other tool appears to be full permissions, and when you click it, asks for you to type something in (you would drop in a texture saying what you wanted e.g. "type in your idea for information literacy week") and then it dispenses whatever object you put in, as a gift. Am thinking of commissioning some jewelry with the info literacy international logo, that would be IMHO cool.
Crunch point is: have I spent money with any of these people? At this stage answer is: no. However, will certainly visit new-to-me Lyla and (whoever it was designed the full perms tool, am not inworld at present), also it reminded me that Dark Mouse (cute bangle) and Kunstkammer are good designers. So think this is good marketing idea.
Research perspective: one of my key interests used to be the pricing of electronic information, so marketing is topic know something about; promotional strategies for virtual goods ....
Final pic has nothing to do with all this and advertises Infolit iSchool June festival. Bring your friends.