* in.cube8r INTERVIEW:
SALLY MORRIGAN FROM GEORGIE LOVE
sal, tell us a story :)
sometime in 2004 or 2005, sally morrigan had a dream. not a literal dream mind you, she's not any kind of fancy psychic lady, but a dream none-the-less.
see, sally morrigan was born to shop. preferably online where it was only starting to come in fashion, as retail shops, crowds and over enthusiastic staff terrified her. she shopped online and goddamnit, she shopped CRAFTY. spending all her hard earned dollars from working on a secret project in a chocolate factory (true) and then a secret anti-terrorist project for the government/ASIO (also true, the woman gets around) in handmade stores in the US, the fairly wonderful cut+paste and completely formidable shana logic. ...and it was good.
well, to be truthful, it was good-ish. sally was an impatient and thrifty girl and got frustrated that despite paying the expensive TOPTOPTOP dollar for shipping, her packages would take weeks to arrive. and that made her sad. but not for long. see sally was a reasonably bright girl and a lightbulb flashed above her head. WHAT IF, seriously, WHAT IF there was an Australian site where i could buy ALL AUSTRALIAN HANDMADE GOODNESS and have things arrive in DAYS not weeks. so she got googling and googling and found nothing, not a hint of australian handmade online goodness. she despaired and rejoiced all at once. she held on firm to her idea and told all her crafty friends about it. everyone got excited, but sally was uncertain. while an internet shopping and googling maestro, a programming web nerd she was not. she told her then boyfriend (who is forever known as dickhead dan, but for brevity, we will call him DD in this story), who coincidently WAS a programming web nerd. DD saw the potential of her idea straight away and offered his services to help her build it.
....and it was done. well, eventually. in between their full-time jobs and other social commitments, which at the time was plentiful.
but what to call it. i have to tell you, some of the names suggested by friends were obscene. sally's longest relationship in her life thus far was her dog george. sally, being a woman of many ideas and sometimes secretly naff baby talk, had exactly 2149 nicknames for this goofy dog george. number 1746 was infact "Georgie Love", which to pronounce correctly is *high pitch voice* Geeeeeoooorgeeeee Luv" she loved george and thought everyone else would too. so Georgie Love was born and the website was oddly, and some might say inappropriately, dog themed.
soon after the launch of Georgie Love (April 12, 2006)... no, if I recall correctly it was a fair few months before, Sally Morrigan and DD parted ways and Georgie Love became as it should - a one woman-one dog operation, which has been run out of living rooms in houses all across melbourne and the greater surrounds for going on 3.5 years. it originally had about 8-10 crafty folk, a mix of her real-life friends and people she poached from the rose street artist market. now, a good number of years later, there are 58 different artists on the site, and counting. google tells her that about 1500 different people come and visit every week. sally morrigan still has a 2.5-day-a-week job at a university (not secret), a 9 month old baby and a lovely and fairly odd partner who looks remarkably like jesus. georgie is still counted as her longest relationship ever at 5 and a bit years and counting. they live in a crooked little house in the mountains where they avoid social commitments on saturday nights, which are instead spent in the dark watching movies, drinking nice wine and writing waffling stories about themselves.
