The wild coast of Bohemia

It'll start today as soon as I can get all the listings up. I can't do everything but we will add to the listings as often as possible so do keep checking.

I'll post the link when we're ready to begin.

I'm still going through the rather mammoth task of switching all the small drawstrings to the "standard" and "custom" options. All in all it will take until the end of the month I think as we have about 200 bags to list. Scary in a way, but I am doing just a few at a time.

It's a great move I think as it should simplify things and let us not only maintain prices but even shave a bit off them - while fulfilling orders faster. And much as we like doing custom bags it should mean that we will have fewer to make - better for Romana and it means I can also spend some time dreaming up some special combinations with vintage fabrics.

Anyway, a few more went up on the shop today. Eventually nearly all our prints will be available in standard and custom versions - the hope being that most of the standard colours will be in stock most of the time.

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Anyway, it means I haven't had time to list any more of the sale bags today, but I'll try to get back to that tomorrow. I think there are a couple of Alice messengers with small marks on the canvas (on one it looks like a large drop glue was spilt on to it, I removed it but it left a mark - on the other one small patch of canvas is a bit lighter - I suppose it's a fabric fault). I'll try to list those over the weekend if not tomorrow.

SOLD
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The last of the stiffer-interfacing samples. This is an Alice in a taupe silk (please note, not the pink silk shown). Again, silver-grey silk lining. One only of this.


Again, same price, $10 plus $4 postage - but postage can be combined if you buy more than one (we can hold any bags you buy until you see what else is on the way)

Please pay via PayPal:

Orders at magic dash realist dot com

I asked for input about bags on Aeclectic Forum some months back. One thing that came out strongly is that people want Pre-Raphaelite and Medieval options. We like those images too, so we've been working on them. Here are a couple of examples.

It's really hard to find either type of imagery in high quality copyright-free form so Alex had to do a lot of work on both of these. I do think they look good:
Sorry - our sites just went down as I was putting these in (the host has an announcement up so at least they know). So here is just a small upload of one image for now.






 

After more than four months of looking at code like this:

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{* $Id: select_currency.tpl 3746 2007-08-27 08:24:25Z zeke $ *}
{if $currencies && !$hide_currencies}

{if $settings.Addons.seo == 'Y'}
{assign var="qstring" value=$seo_url.page|fn_query_remove:'currency'|replace:'&':'&'}
{assign var="qaction" value="&sl='+this.value"}
{if !$qstring|strpos:'?'}{assign var="qstring" value="$qstring?"}{/if}
{else}
{assign var="qprefix" value="$index_script?"}
{assign var="qstring" value=$QUERY_STRING|fn_query_remove:'currency'|replace:'&':'&'}
{/if}

<select ... >
{foreach from=$currencies item=currency}
<option ... >{$currency.description} ({$currency.symbol})</option>
{/foreach}
</select>
{/if}

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and sending off pleading questions daily to the rather, er, well rather Russian support team at CS-Cart (what do I mean by rather Russian? Well, for starters they sometimes forget themselves and tell you you're an idiot. And you can see that they find it a real strain to use "please" and "thank-you" sufficiently for a Western-culture customer. Which reminds me of the redoubtable Vassilisa who once quietly asked Alex to have a word with me and ask me not to say "Please" every time I asked her to do something. "It's making me nervous, Alex," she explained.)...

...I am nearly there with the shop. I think. Unless I discover something else that needs changing. Now all we have to do is check every one of the 200 or so products (some with ten options and half a dozen pictures - OMG, what are we doing?) and do about a million test orders in various currencies. Then find out how to set up the "membership" for "Friends of Baba Studio" (okay, okay, but it's NICE) so that it only kicks in under certain criteria. Then make sure that the same happens for wholesale. Then try to prevent the inventory from insisting on believing that everything is sold out (not helpful, really not helpful).

I will say this - this is the most GORGEOUSLY well put together piece of code. I am not much of a coder - wild understatement - but I do love neat, clean, modular code when I see it.

However, the user-interface design leaves a little more to be desired, so mostly that's what I've been working on. How DO you explain to a Russian support team that not everyone will know that "None" in the currency box means that-you-have-not-chosen-an-alternative-option-so-will-get-the-default-currency-which-happens-in-this-case-to-be-Euro. As I said, er, Please (whoops) can we just say "Euro" instead of "None"? Call me whacky.

At moments like this I remember that my main profession over the years (with some other pretty odd ones thrown in along the way) was being a user-interface designer. Deep down, I am really enjoying setting up this shop. My precious.