Thing is, I should be on the road selling silk so that my business prospers. Nothing in my business is more difficult then getting my sorry ass out of the door. I have to dredge up the confidence, make appointments, put on special clothes, do my hair, organize the product, load up my car and hit the road. My cats hate it. They watch as the office turns into a disaster area while I sort into various sizes of display organizers, totes and baskets. When the car door opens and the totes start going inside, they get nervous. “Will this be a short day run or a trip down Island or is she going to abandon us for weeks?”

The nice part is thinking of the customers that I enjoy visiting. Many of them look forward to seeing the brilliant colours and styles that will be going on their racks. Some of them pick out a few things for their own wardrobes. I have gotten to know some of the buyers over the years and enjoy hearing about what is up for them in their lives. We talk about the ups and downs of business, our families, our loves and often our learnings. Usually I learn a lot from them. There is a connectedness most of the time. But it is still selling and I approach it with such resistance.

So what is the resistance about? Over the last year it has definitely been about the lousy economy and the cautiousness that buyers have had to apply to their buying. Sometimes it is about, will they like the stuff enough to buy it. Will they buy enough to keep this business going? Will their customers like it enough to buy it? I get anxious when I see old product hanging around their shelves. Finding beautiful things that work for customers is both an art and a science. Trends and tastes change in a heartbeat.

I don’t want to discover that I have made stupid purchasing decisions. Sometimes the anxiety start to worm it’s way around my stomach, into my chest and throat when insensitive comments are made. “Oh, that is a horrible colour” or “I don’t like this or that” and other variations on the same theme. Then I take the same product to another store and they want that colour and love it this way or that. Ah, people are so fickle and so fine at the same time. I wish I could just relax into their quirks and worries and trust that all is well. Some days I can and those days are shiny! I love them.

Sometimes it is about selling myself and my values. I don’t want to ingratiate myself for the sake of a sale. I don’t want to be anyone but myself. I don’t want to invest a fortune in a wardrobe. This is tricky terrain as I need the sales but I need to stick with my integrity more. There are stores full of books on dressing for success, business books on how to sell and a ton of “how to” guides. Some of them get me all pumped to go but there is always something missing. I don’t want customers to buy things from me that they don’t want. That is not why I am in business.

Some days I am feeling small and less interested in putting up with others.  Especially difficult are the days when I desperately wish that more people understood fair trade values. It is hard to watch buyers who only see the beauty or the sales values embedded in the product. This is where my “Pollyanna” has to go underground and remember that every sale is good for my producers in Cambodia. It really doesn’t matter if the buyer understands fair trade or not. Or does it?

My heart says it matters. It has to matter that some of us have way more than we can ever use, while others don’t have food to eat. It matters when some four year old children are sold into sexual slavery while others are being put into too many activities to “prepare” them for life. I guess when it comes down to it I worry that conscious consumption isn’t going to be enough. My ego tells me that I should be doing something else more important. For now I think I will hit the appointment list and thank the Goddess for Vivian.< >< ><–>

Ancient window inside Cambodian temple

Life has recently taken me to that twisting, often potholed road less traveled, the inner landscape. It has been a time of spiritual spring cleaning, vacuuming up the dust and debris that obscures the truth, the beauty and the joy. It has been a time for polishing, to bring up the luster that lies below the surface. It has been a time of recycling lessons learned and tossing out all that needs to be let go of. I rarely visit this place without a few spiritual jack hammers to throw me into that painful abyss of personal confrontation, awareness and dirty laundry.

The reasons for landing here are obvious to me now. However, I failed to see the warning signs. I failed to pay attention to what was in my heart. I was feeling stressed and lonely, dare I admit it, sorry for myself. I met others along the way with the same song. We teamed up and went on merry distraction adventures. I didn’t make choices soulfully. I ignored those softly spoken inner callings. I became unconscious for the sake of having more – you name it, income, friends, lovers, family harmony, shoes, new windows, fancy meals, good wine, the list is endless. And predictably, these choices led to painful disappointments. I marvel at how lucky we are in life to be able to reflect in this way and make corrections. Regroup, dust off and make new choices.

So what does all of this personal reflection stuff have to do with a silk traders blog or you for that matter. The link lies in that slippery slope of going unconscious and being out of integrity. Integrity being the linchpin of fair trade values. It is so easy to travel to South East Asia and get caught up in the big adventure. A million opportunities abound to buy cheap, eat cheap, stay in cheap places and basically vacation side by side with dire poverty. But hey there are so many amazing ways to deepen into the experience and make it so much more meaningful. These are beautiful opportunities where deep connections are made, greater understanding takes place and real change can happen in a world that desperately needs connection.

I was introduced to Achrep with the hope that I could help to find a way to pay for her medical care. Achrep worked as a cleaner in a workshop and did some sewing tasks. My friends were going to train Achrep to work in their silk studio, giving her marketable skills and a sustainable way of life.

I was sure I could raise  funds in Canada to help to some extent.  Achrep had a breast removed. Five hundred dollars covered that as well as some medications, further tests and food while she stayed in hospital. That was the beginning of a nightmarish awakening.

Things happened that were beyond my comprehension and I seriously doubted whether the funds where helping Achrep or contributing to her demise.  It is not enough to have money to pay for medical services, you have to have reliable information in order to have informed consent. Here in Canada, where the health care standard is high, we hear of unnecessary testing and interventions causing harm. The medical system in Cambodia is sketchy to say the least. One option was to get her into a French hospital but my friends would never have been able to pay the much higher costs charged there. If we could have raised the funds, there would be no going back to the hospital that Achrep had gone to in the first place. So what would happen the next time a family member was ill or needed medical help.

Another funder stepped forward to provide enough to get Achrep radiation treatments which may have actually killed her. Eventually Achrep’s mother took her back to the country to try some traditional healing methods, where she died last week.

This a horrible reality where there are no easy answers. No one will ever know if Achrep received the care she should have or if our well intended funds helped or hindered her. We won’t know the real story of what happened to Achrep or if things could have turned out differently.

What to do next time…and there will be a next time. Poverty ensnares people and ensures that suffering, disease, corruption and crime will present in their lives. If any of you have feedback, ideas, experience with this I would love to hear from you.

 If you think this is hard then consider working with colour via a computer where screens differ and there are no universals, despite what pantone, the colour gurus would have you believe. How do you tell someone across cultures and continents about a colour green, a viridian green that you want duplicated in a scarf of many layers?

These are everyday questions for Marcia Polo the techno silk trader. Today I went to a couple of my favorite gallery shops in West Vancouver. And the question came up in both stores, “what colour do you call this?” One was easy. “Oh that is French blue” Partly I call that French blue because it has a certain cachet. It sells the colour because it sounds elegant or something like that. The colour could also have been called slate blue but that falls a wee bit flat when describing silk.

The discovery for me with this is that you have to be creative with words to find colour descriptions. I always call beige, alabaster or oyster or champagne depending on the tone, anything but beige. Sometimes the creativity is to sell the product but mostly it is to order the product.

Where I shop for silk there are thousands of colours, further complicated with the two tone mysteries of the warp and weft. One set of threads is warped up with one colour and the other set that run across the warp is another colour or sometimes more than one. This is what produces that, oh so sought after, iridescence common to silk. The other buyer wanted to duplicate a particular scarf and we didn’t have a camera handy.

So I jotted down teal (green blue – dark but not too dark, aqua or pale turquoise not too light and viridian or pale pea shoot green like the scarf that we did in that green with French blue/taupe two tone organza and French blue soft silk… I sure hope the scarf designer remembers that colour combination and just incase I attached a photo with the oceanic series (four scarves) hopefully she will pick out the right one.

More on this later for now it is time to visit with my special people in the lovely city of Vancouver!

Soft organza scarf/wrap

Hi ho, hi ho off to Vancouver I go.  Another day another dollar.

A road trip means getting packed up and making sure that all of the good stuff is at hand. Baskets are loaded with samples. Totes are neatly packed and organizers filled with a wide variety of silk goods to tempt buyers. As I walk down the street laden with the baskets of samples, the silk billows out of the baskets causing people on the street to turn and wonder. That is a Marco Polo moment, or should I say Marcia Polo? I love watching their eyes being captivated by the glossy silks. There is something about the richness and luminous qualities of silk that draws people in.

Churning through product to get it ready means more ordering as I see quantities dwindling, more dreaming up new colour combinations and more culling of older styles and colour combinations. This begs the question of what colours will be hot and in demand next month. My mind is constantly checking on the colour combos out there in this rich and vibrant world we live in. Colour is everywhere in patterns and pairings. It is a really nice thing to be on the lookout for.  It draws me deeper into landscapes, gardens, sunsets, pools of water, works of art, house colours, font colours and the milky greyness of dusk. It is not just noticing colour but becoming present with it. Not sure what that really means but I know it to be true.

The other really fun part about this on the road business is finding new outlets. There are some very lovely shops and those are the ones I aim for. I am looking for a boutique,  studio, gallery or shop that stands out from the crowd, that is lovingly tended by owners that have a roving eye for something unique, special and definately a cut way above average. What I usually find is that the shop owners are a cut above average too. They have started their enterprise because they love the collections they offer to their customers. Their connection is deeper than just a buying and selling experience. They all have an incredible commitment to their customers. And there is an experince that happens in their shops rather than just a buying/selling situation. And it is all about relationships.

Ok, so by now it must be apparent that there are a ton of details and distractions on my plate and I need to get to the task.  More next week!

This is my office and apparently my life. I gave up life as I knew it for this biz and at times have felt abject terror. But today have more confidence after travelling the break neck slope of the learning curve of being in business…an ethical trade business to boot. OMG if I’d only known. I would still be getting a paycheck for teaching college students. I would still have a dental plan and would be able to pay for designer eyewear…note we don’t call them glasses anymore!

Over in the corner is a table with two cabinets filled with fresh water pearls and semi precious stone. Will I ever return to the quiet contemplation of designer jewelry? I loved creating those peices to go into shows and have people snatch them up with gusto. Selling jewellry is a breeze. I alway supplemented my stock with Soon’s creations from Bangkok. Until I couldn’t stomach another lungful of toxic waste. My God there are 40,ooo taxis there, who knows how many tuk tuks, and vehicals in the millions. Get me to the river puleeze. Bangkokalese for the only way to travel with any chance of arriving quickly. Scratch the jewelry. Back to silk, always back to silk. It is my mantra.

Met an Israeli customs agent in Chaing Mai (Thailand.) He gave me a stellar piece of advice, “focus on what you really want to import.” And that was silk, so silk it is. Fairly traded silk. And here I am surrounded in exquisite hats, bags, pillows, hairbands and purses galore. Life in the silk zone…gotta love it cause it is my life!

Summer Hat in Raw Silk with Flower

Welcome to Floating Stone’s blog site.

We have gathered some pretty amazing stories over our five years of silk trading in Asia and have a ton of photos to show you. It is time to share some of these stories with you. We hope that you will enjoy meeting some of our favorite people and will get to know a little bit about their lives.

Articles are in the works which will be posted soon. Floating Stone is all about colour. We have to find ways to  communicate colour across cultures and continents. This article will tell you a little bit about our adventures and misadventures with colour. We really hope to hear your feedback and suggestions on this story.

Another article tells  silk trading stories that involve crossing bodies of water. A bit of a modern day Marco Polo story with a feminine twist. A third story, inspired by crossing  roads in India tells of  mind boggling, road crossing challenges in Asian capitals. But enough about what is coming…check out what is here!

Lots of new products are in and they are colourful – bags, purses, scarves, hats and head bands  in violet, raspberry, olive, mandarine and more with my daughter, Matia’s,  prints on the silk.

Just in as the weather starts to sizzle, a great every day summer hat in Fushia, Mandarine, Olive, Lemon and lots of other colours, each with a unique cotton print to match up with the raw silk. For the adventurous fashionista, there is an all raw silk, super wide brimed,  chic hat with an amazing flower. For those of you who don’t want the hat but need to keep your hair off the face, our head band collection is fantastic, exploding with colours and style. You will find layers of silk, bows and silk string twists. They are completely unique and stunning in silk.

I have to get back to work on the website so that you can actually see all of these gorgeous silks. We are currently getting new photos taken for the website and will have the pages up toute suite…check back soon.