SHINY FALLS - Everyone has heros in Second Life, people who, when confronted by their presence, you undergo a lobotomy and are reduced to pointing at the screen going "OMG it's THEM!" while hugging yourself. Fallingwater Cellardoor is, for me, one of those people, so you can imagine my delight/excitement/embarrassing squealing fit at the idea of experiencing a day in her life.

I'm pretty certain that she needs no introductions, but I'm new to SLNN and keyboard happy as she is one of the best known prim torturers; the things this woman creates make my eyes boggle unattractively. Her best selling 'Old Boots' are not only a staple in many a fashionista's wardrobe, but a superb example of her pre-sculpty work that put to shame many other sculpted shoes on the grid. Fallingwater jewelry is exquisite, looks perfectly natural and is enhancing rather than showy - and don't even start me on the flowers.

So, without further ado, a day in the life of Fallingwater Cellardoor.

When you're one of the grid's leading shoe designers and SL is behaving as badly as it has in recent months, you're going to be busy before you even get near a prim.

"The first thing I do every day is answer customer IM's in my inbox and most of them are about undelivered purchases. I've cut down on the volume in 2 big ways -- one is to have color and size demos for everything and the other is that I recently redid my signage to make the permissions explicit. I was too old school for too long, thinking I could expect people to hover their mouse to read descriptions".

She then moved on to show me her latest work, which I had already been sneakily dribbling over as we chatted in her work space: delicately strapped wedge heels in a variety of colours all at various stages of the design process.

"I started a couple days ago, made the basic heel shape, then prototyped a strap design with nonsculpted prims. Yesterday I sculptified the straps and worked on the fit around the feet. Then started tweaking the design, because it was off, I wasn't happy with it," Cellardoor said.

A week is typical for one of Fallingwater's designs, although she admitted that "a lot of that is futzing around like I did today. My last pair, the Brandys, took a ton of tweaking. They look pretty simple but well, I'm me, that's how I work".

The next stage is the color choices for the shoes