Sat Chat and Shady Dealings!

Hi friends, yes, I know I am a day late in posting the Sat Chat to my blog (what’s new right) but it’s been a busy weekend. Today Mr. Frugal and I went around to car dealerships to look for a new vehicle to share as we are planning on letting the girls use our current vehicles when they get their licenses. In Maine auto dealerships are closed on Sunday so people can look without being harassed by eager salespeople so we thought it would be a good day to do some window shopping. We are planning to get a fairly recent dependable used vehicle (my mid-life crisis convertible will have to wait) but only one of the dealerships we visited had prices on the used cars. That seems super shady to me and I already trust the dealership with prices and disclosures on the vehicle 100x more. The moral of this story is don’t be shady. Speaking of shady there has been a storm brewing with one of the largest companies on the crafting scene: Cricut. Watch this weeks Sat Chat to learn more.

Recap:

• Cricut Drama, there was a lot of it this week and the reason I had to re-record this video. The last one was to warn you to register machines before you have to pay to use them but luckily Cricut did the right thing and rolled back that decision after a huge backlash from furious customers. The lesson here is to be wary of buying machines that you have to hook to the internet and use on the companies website to work as they always have control and ownership of the machines. I am glad they did the right thing and decided not to charge people who already bought machines that were sold as free to use in an unlimited fashion but I am disgusted that they tried to bait and switch their customers. Disgusted but not surprised. Be smart consumers. The sewing report has a lot of info on this. *that was the 1st in a series of 3 videos following the drama in case you missed it.

• If you want to vote with your dollar you can purchase generic blades and mats (not sure on specialty tools that might be on newer machines as mine are 10+ years old)

• Generic cricut-compatible blades, 25 cents a piece! assorted deep cut, standard and shallow and standard 45 degree all-purpose blades *on my machines the deep cut blades require a different holder, not sure about newer machines tho.

• Generic mats: (variety pack)

• Chromaflow pencil review will be on Monday, here are the pencils

• Dollar tree DIY to make a really useful tool!

• Awesome shop: Hallmark Scrapbook (formally Custom Crops)

I did want to add one more thing, in my YouTube comments some viewers said you can now download an app to use offline with your Cricut but I have no idea about that. One person said you have to upload designs to their website first but again I don’t know and apparently many users are unaware of it. I heard is is super glitchy, an upon researching it Cricut says you need to parodically connect to the internet for verification and updates. I don’t know. There is a lot of mixed info but it does not seem like a download and be done with it kind of thing.

That’s all from my neck of the woods. I hope you are having an awesome weekend and til next time happy crafting!