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Research and Markets: This important new study of the U.S. Luxury Market provides the results of a four-year longitudinal research study of the luxury market.

…in other words, the things people do rather than material goods one has or one owns. The typical luxury consumer spent $22,746 on experiences in 2005 that is nearly double what they spent in 2004. Luxury consumers also spent nearly 20 percent more buying luxury automobiles, a highly experiential luxury good.

While spending on experiences and automobiles went up, luxury consumers spent less overall on home luxuries, down 4.6 percent to $19,990. Out of the nine product categories classified under home luxuries, only three posted an increase in average spending. They were luxury kitchen appliances and kitchen and bathroom fixtures; kitchenware, cookware and cook's tools; and garden and outdoor luxuries. "In keeping with the experiential trend in luxury, the only home categories where luxury consumers are spending more are the ones that are experiential in that they function and are used in the home, not the purely decorative home categories," Danziger explains.

Spending on personal luxuries like luxury apparel, fashion accessories, jewelry and watches, wine and spirits, pet luxuries and pens and desk accessories, rose 5.6 percent to $10,007 in 2005. A moderating factor in the growth of personal luxuries is that the super-affluent households (incomes $150,000 and above) didn't hold up their high 2004 spending levels, while spending on personal luxuries among the near-affluent ($75,000 to $99,999) and…

…her sons Darren and Dalton own a professional guide service and supplied her with porcupine skins. Marge, 52, and her two sons live on the family farm.

The small critters are more common West River than they are locally.

"The quills from a single porcupine will last about three years," Dosch said. "You can get thousands from just one porcupine. And they stink to high heavens," she said, popping the lid off a container of quills. Indeed they do. The smell is reminiscent of frequently worn, unwashed socks. "I spray them with Febreeze," she laughed.

Handling the quills is quite a challenge. "They're very brittle and pithy inside. I have to wash them and that softens them up. There are many different sizes of quills on a porcupine. The ones on the belly are smaller and don't have much color." After washing the quills, Dosch carefully sorts them by color and trims them to size. Then she strings a foundation row of beads together on a clear thread no thicker than a human hair. That will be the base upon which she hangs the quills. The process is delicate and takes patience, concentration and good lighting. A necklace can take about six hours to assemble.

Other materials

Besides jewelry, she creates arrangements from high-quality silk flowers, from pheasant feathers and…

…Kyle Patrick.

Asked about the upcoming disc during a telephone call from his tour bus — driving in upstate New York — bassist Ethan Mentzer states the obvious. The group also includes guitarist Joe Guese, keyboardist Ben Romanshan and drummer Joey Zehr.

"I think that the drastic difference is gonna be the fact that Kyle is singing and Eric is not," Mentzer says. "They have very different voices. But ... stylistically, we still consider ourselves a rock-and-roll band or a power pop band playing pop songs. And our goals are still the same: We want people to enjoy these songs and understand the lyrics and have fun, too."

Dickherber's voice is so different, Mentzer says, that the band in recent shows has skipped songs from its first album.

"That's not so much deliberate as it is we have sort of been really, really short on rehearsal," says Mentzer, who expects to add the hits later.

"We literally finished our record and left for tour. ... We just haven't had time to figure out how we're going to approach the old stuff, because [Dickherber's] singing range is pretty different from Eric's. You know, if we're going to do old songs, we're going to have to sort of rework them."

Differences in approach to new music apparently are what caused the split with Dill. In a recent interview with Starry Constellation, an online magazine, Dill said his tastes leaned more toward rock than the band's pop, and other members "resisted working with me on songwriting."

Mentzer says Dill's assessment…