The Little Bird, My Solution to Sanding Dust, Exploring Google Trends

The Rescue

The other day, Mom and I are eating lunch and we hear “smack!”. A bird had flown into the window. I looked outside and see a cat investigating something on the porch so I went out there and when I had determined that the cat hadn’t yet done anything to the little fellow, I scooped him up and figured he’d take off the second I opened my hand.

He wouldn’t fly so we put in the loquat tree and waited until he shook off the incident and finally flew off.

Sanding Makes a Mess

I mentioned that I had made a new “contraption” for my workshop. Well, here it is. Sanding metal makes a huge mess. I wear goggles and a respirator (of course), but that doesn’t mean I’m okay with all the metal dust particles left all over the workshop. So usually I sand outside, but that entails carrying all my stuff out there and of course I never remember to bring everything I need on my first trip out.

So here’s my solution. I took a regular cardboard file box and cut off the top. Then I cut two “arm” holes in the front. I taped Saran plastic wrap to seal the top. Then I took some latex kitchen gloves, cut off the fingers, splayed open the wrist portion, and taped them to the two “arm” holes.

Now I can sand inside the box and all the dust stays put. Yay!

Jewelry

Oh, I don’t think I showed you these. I made them for myself (steel and resin/paint).

Also made this for myself.

Google Trends

Want another internet way of wasting time? Check out Google Trends.

Put in keywords and see what’s trending on Google (or what other people are searching for on Google and what country they’re from).

As About.com puts it: “This isn't a measure of searches, but it is a measure of what people are talking about on the Internet.”

I found it interesting that the U.S. comes up first when searching on the word “handcrafted” and Vietmam comes up first when searching on the word “handmade”. But put in “handmade jewelry” and we’re back to the U.S.

When you scroll down, you can see the top related searches. I just find this stuff interesting.

You can compare search terms. For example, “handmade jewelry” seems to have (for the past ten years at least) always been searched on way more than “handcrafted jewelry”.

“Handmade” and “artisan” are must closer in searches…

… until you add the word jewelry to them. Then we have an even larger split.

Just something to kill 15 minutes when you want to play around with words. Who knows, it may help with your SEO.