Your one-stop center for crafts & sewing patterns, with an emphasis on the cool, the unusual, the classic & the rare. Check back often -- thanks!

Here I am at about age 13. I am wearing a dress I bought at PayLess for $3. What a fashion maven I was.

A recent photo. Less embarrassing than most.

Hello, lovely buyers and browsers!

What is Zedol? Zedol is...a state of mind...a presence...a willingness to dare, to take chances. Nah, I'm just joshin' with you.

Actually, Zedol is a nonsense word I made up when I got my eBay account and all the sense-making nicknames I could think of were already taken. The tiny bit of sense it does make is that it's a very vague reference to my favorite hockey player, Richard Zednik. Since I've had an eBay store, I haven't watched as much hockey as I used to, but I still love the sport -- and the reference lives on.

I googled the word zedol once, and it turns out it's also the name of a hair-loss-preventive product (so-claimed, anyway), and the name of a lake -- both, I think, in other countries than mine (U.S.), although I can't remember which ones.

My sister has a pattern store, too: It's called Pam's Patterns and Cool Stuff. She and I love to sew together whenever possible. (Not often enough.) She is a much better sew-er than I, and has made lovely outfits for a couple dolls I have. Her store is great -- check it out!

What does Zedol look like? Well, I'll show you. I've selected two pix from widely varying stages of my life. I do not photograph well, so it was quite a job to glean these from all the awful shots.

About my standard Zedol store photo: I feel obliged to mention that in that '80s picture, I am dressed for a Halloween party; I have never been cool enough to pull off such a look in everyday life -- but I did have a band in the early '90s (the Bad Mothers) for which I sometimes dressed this way.