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Sometimes you have an idea, and you get all excited, like — oh my gosh, wouldn’t it be great to have a pumpkin curry tea towel to sell along with the Sri Lankan cookbook!!!

So you design it and Kavi draws you a pumpkin, and you get it printed, and you sew it up, and all the while, you’re wondering if anyone will actually think it’s as cool as you do. Cool enough that they’ll want to actually spend real money on one for a gift, along with a cookbook and maybe some curry powder?

And then yes, someone actually orders it. Whew.

I am not going to get rich off pumpkin curry tea towels, but it’s still rather nice to know I’m not completely off-base with the concept.

We’re happy to customize the boxes to work with people’s allergies (although keep in mind that we do use nuts and gluten in the kitchen, so trace particulates may be present for those extremely sensitive; we don’t use peanuts at all, though). We can also accommodate scent sensitivities, either by skipping body & bath products entirely and substituting in other items, or by sending unscented versions.

The base level (“Earth”) is $10 / month (which works out to $30 / box). This is what’s going in the next level up (“Sol System”), $15 / month ($45 / box):

– and a silver star, just for fun

These are shipping out today! The theme for the winter box was Dragons Knitting; the spring box will be Unicorns in the Garden.

Link to Patreon here. Quantities are very limited, as they kind of take over my life for two weeks, and that’s about all I can spare, time-wise.

After yesterday’s frustration with the dragon candle and its many, many failed attempts, it was really a delight to have this one come out perfectly on the first try. So cute!

I can’t include it in the small Patreon boxes, because it’s just a little too big to fit into the small priority mail box, so it’ll be in the other tiers, and available for individual sale. I’ll ask Stephanie Bailey to add them to our Shopify site (once I try wrapping them in a padded envelope and weigh them, so she knows the shipping cost), and as always, we’re happy to offer porch pick-up. They’re lightly scented in cedar leather and amber, as part of the dragons knitting theme. Color may vary, depending on what mica powders I have on hand, but if you have a color request, let me know when you order, and I’ll try to oblige.

The next box will go out in March, and I’m thinking “unicorns in the garden” for the theme. I’ll also note that I’ve now enabled annual subscriptions on Patreon (a big commitment for me, but I think do-able). I think that means that instead of paying $10 / month for the first tier boxes, you’d pay for the whole year at once — it comes with a 10% discount, so a little bit of a deal. The boxes will still arrive quarterly.

Hey, folks. Some sad cookbook news — the Mascot quarterly royalties came, and it’s just $200-ish dollars. That’s a massive drop from the several thousand dollars of the first royalty check (three months ago), so a bit of a financial shock.

There’s about $2300 outstanding from Amazon (which often takes 6 months to pay), so hopefully we’ll get that in late February. There was about -$600 in returned books from Ingram, which I think is mostly small bookstore orders that were cancelled — I think that’s the effect of the pandemic. Some of those stores may have gone out of business entirely, alas.

Mostly, I think this is the result of the pandemic crashing through our regular publicity schedule. We basically stopped all of it for three months (as I switched over to madly learning how to sew masks, panicking about the pandemic, making mask sewing videos, etc.), cancelling all public events, book tour, etc., and so this is the effect of that.

We picked up again with mailing out press releases in late May / June, and that led to a lot of glowingly positive newspaper coverage and some TV/radio publicity, so I’m quite hopeful that there were quite a few orders coming out of that, and we’ll get more funds in 2021. But it’s certainly disappointing for now.

Kevin and I will likely have to loan some money to the press to keep things going through the next quarter, so I can keep paying staff. (The kids don’t really need a college fund, right?) Guess I should’ve applied for those federal paycheck protection funds; I thought others would be in more need, so I held off, but that may have been a mistake. Sigh.

If you were thinking of buying my cookbook for yourself or a friend, now would be a lovely time. I’m offering some nice little packages of cookbooks + curry powder, or cookbooks + dish towels, etc., if you want to buy from me directly, or feel free to order from your local bookstore or from Amazon; whatever’s convenient.

If you want to read it, but aren’t in a position to buy, I’ll note that requesting it from your local library is also good for me — that lets libraries know that there’s an interest, and they may buy a copy or two. Also, y’know, I just like supporting libraries.

And if you’d like to tell your friends about the book, or leave a review on Amazon or Good Reads if you’ve already purchased the book, that’d be much appreciated!

Hey, it’s November 30th, which means it’s the last day to sign up for December treat boxes. Sweets, soaps, candles, bookmarks. Linked here.

These help me pay my part-time staff, who help with social media, design work, and more, enabling me to spend more time developing recipes and writing stories.

Eventually, I’m hoping they’ll even let me cut back a bit more on teaching, because as much as I normally enjoy teaching, I do want to spend a little more time writing….

I am also apparently the queen of tissue paper — I go through a lot of it. I’m tempted to design my own tissue paper at some point. We’ll see…

Packages out the door, moving tea towel fabric from the washer to the dryer, then on to the next thing, which I think is cookie baking; I have a second batch of dragon cookies to make, so I have enough for the Patreon treat boxes.

I have the second season of Virgin River (just dropped on Netflix) to keep me company, a pleasant low-key slightly soap-y small town medical / romance drama. I didn’t quite finish Outlander, but I felt like I needed a break from Jamie and Claire after yesterday’s 8-hr binge.

Plus, if you buy any of them, you get a free e-book of The Marshmallows of Serendib thrown in — a baker’s dozen of marshmallow recipes, plus a tiny story Anand and I wrote together.