Look What I Made

I had the worst nights sleep last night. Seriously awful. It has gotten ridiculously hot here and on top of that my brain won't shut the hell up. You see Saturday we met with our real estate agent to sign a few papers, but she had unexpectedly received the escrow papers so we got to look over and sign those as well. This is our first house buying experience and though I've done a metric ton of research on this stuff, it's never real until it's actually happening. Causing a particularly high level of stress were the pages denoting the tax disclosures. I know that they will be reevaluated with the new, much lower sale price, but they still gave me...pause. All those things we were going to buy for the new house listed out in our heads are now right out until all this business works itself out. So, yeah...didn't sleep so well.

Before all that happened though, an interesting tatting project fell into my lap. A friend of mine, met through the Internet, Diana. You might know her as paynesgrey , asked for a few pieces to add to her current doll project. Now, I've been asked to make some odd things in lace, some easy some impossible, but these rank high up on the things I never thought I'd try to make. First a hat band and matching garter...so easy. I made them both in a Celtic fashion to make them not only look a little more complex, but also to give them a little extra strength. Yeah, that wasn't the odd part. The odd part was a little whip. Honestly I would not have known where to start with this piece, but she had made a design out where it would be made in three parts and folded over with the whip portion braided.

I went a little further with the design and matching the other pieces weaved the handle together in a triangle. The actual whip was a simple crochet chain braided together thicker toward the handle. I was pretty proud of how quickly the pieces came together. Though I am notoriously design lazy. I mean, the first prototype of a piece is almost always the end product. I rarely take the time to refine and adjust a design. If it looks like it'll work the first go round, it is done. Anyway, I'm certain you have questions as to what sort of doll might need these accouterments, but for now I shall keep you in he dark. Hopefully I'll be able to reveal it as she does.

Goals

It's that time of the year again. The time when I start to get antsy and decide to come up with a set of goals. The goals I've chosen this time are a mixed bag of slightly possible and absolutely ridiculous, as is my way. The set this time includes receiving 5000 heart in my etsy shop and my 1000th sale by years end. Then there's the ridiculous one. In the past I've set this goal to revive tatting as the newest craft craze and while I admit to doing my part to expose more people to the art, it remains an illusive one. Another ridiculous goal was the writing of a tatting book. This one is hampered by being the stay at home mother of two small children...yeah it's not happening any time soon. This time I've aimed for the starts, I want at least one celebrity sale that results in a tatted jewelry sighting on said celebrity. This doesn't even need to be a sale, I'll give away the tatting to get the sighting, though I've no idea where to start to make this one a reality. Which is why it sits comfortably in the ridiculous goal spot.

More house updates for you this morning too. The house was appraised yesterday and came it at what we needed it to, so that's moving smoothly. Packing however is going to be the death of me. The dust is a killer...I know I could wear a mask, but I don't and I not certain it would really help anyway since the dust I disturb floats around the house all day and night now. Also my desire to keep everything is fighting dramatically with my desire to throw away tons of stuff so I don't have to move it. Of course I also suffer from an advanced form of the pack rat syndrome. I believe everything will eventually be used and to throw it away now would mean that need simply presents itself sooner. That's the way it works...right?

I opted for a simply call for donations on the Wunderkammer's sidebar. I'm hoping to get in a healthy handful, so I can run the same sort of giveaway I did here. You know, more entries more prizes and all that. It was really successful at getting new traffic and though the levels I reached during the giveaway were not maintainable, I did see a sustained increase in traffic, so here's hoping I can do the same thing for the Wunderkammer. I've already gotten a couple of responses so I am hopeful...for now anyway.

Naked

Well, what do you know, we heard back yesterday regarding the house. I don't know if they were waiting for the first of the month, the end of the fiscal year or if the timing was just coincidence, but I suppose it doesn't really matter. We don't have a lot of details yet. We were only told that both banks have approved the deal and would like us to start on our loan to close by the end of the month. So all that stress created by not knowing has been immediately replaced by the anxiety of, 'Oh, my gods, we're actually buying a house'. This anxiety will likely plague us for the coming month, so I apologize in advance if I drone on about it repeatedly until you want to harm me.

In other news, I fell victim to peer pressure. That's right, I did...so, umm it's not my fault blame them. Oh, yeah, a few of my friends from the twitter are fashion bloggers at The Demoiselles and there has been much discussion regarding some photos on the cover of the French Elle with a makeup-less Scarlett Johansson. The discussion resulted in a few of them posting photos of themselves without makeup. Now, honestly I am addicted to my eye liner. I do not like to leave the house without it, but this was peer pressure remember. So here they are, fresh out of the shower, my makeup-less photos.I was going to do them in black and white to better hide, well...everything, but I opted for just a bit of a fade. My hair is still wet and is in serious need of a freshening of color. They aren't as bad as I thought they would be, but this is definitely the only time this is happening, so enjoy.

One Of Those Mornings

Here we are at the end of the week and since all I've been doing is tatting custom orders on high speed, I've really got nothing of interest to share with you. This does not mean I won't attempt to ramble on for a bit however. I think you know this about me by now. We did get a little bit of pseudo news on our house buying situation. The sellers agent told our agent that he had talked to the bank and we *should* hear something next week and it looks positive. I truly hope that no one in that chain is talked our of their bums and that we will have a good answer soon, because this waiting game is messing with my sanity.

In a completely unrelated story, I was running some errands at the Target yesterday and made a swing through the clearance section as I'm wont to do at times. I was ever so delighted to find a tank that I had wanted but passed on the first time because I wasn't suppose to spend money. The price...$4.24. I know, why do you care? Eh, I'm just excited and I like it so much that I even needed to show off my ridiculously cheap tank. I am headless because there is no makeup on my face and my hair is still wet, but isn't it cute?

Well, I told you I had nothing to say.

I got another custom order yesterday, so my weekend of leisure will also be a weekend of high speed tatting to get these pieces turned out as quickly as possible. I need to build that paypal account up quickly to reverse the vacation damage and hopefully save enough for our annual Monterey trip. We like to go and stay a couple of days each year for our anniversary, but with the potential house buying process, we have no idea how it will play out this year. Crossing our finger though because it actually is a relaxing time for us.

Have I rambled long enough this morning? Yeah, doesn't matter, I'm done now...I think, yeah, I'm done.

Three Things

Tatting, tatting, always tatting. Sometimes however, even I fail and it was bad. I made an attempt to adapt a pattern to be used as a barefoot sandal motif. Halfway through the design it became epically obvious that I did not accomplish this task and the thread was cut and the half piece discarded in disgrace. I just though that I should make a confession of complete failure for the benefit of all the lovely people who have been letting me know that I did indeed teach them to tat. Every one of your stories inspires me in my half crazy quest to, not revive a dying art, but rather bring to light a vibrantly surviving art that has merely remained under the radar for too long. I have every intention on producing more instructables and videos in the future, though current live conditions preclude me from doing them anytime soon.

We heard a little more news on the house buying front, though it gets us no closer really to an answer. Turns out, like many people during the housing boom, our sellers have multiple loans on the house. This means that we are waiting to hear from not one, but two different banks that must agree on out offer before we move forward. We care crossing our fingers that they accept the offer as written, not because we have no room to negotiate, but because we don't really want to go through the whole process again with a different offer. I tell you it's a good thing that if this house goes through we will never need to buy another house. This is madness...pure madness.

Last bit for today, the corset. I think I've eased into a nice corset schedule. I'm sleeping in the corset loosely, removing it for the morning rituals and then tightening myself in for most of the day. I've been taking it off in the afternoon for just a bit and then again before bed for exercise, then back in for sleep. I even went out yesterday to the Target wearing my black corset over my shirt. Yes, I got a few looks, but remember my hair is purple and my arms tattooed, so who knows if it had anything to do with the corset. It's hard to explain the sensation of long term corset wear. It's not painful, but I wouldn't call it comfortable. The corset is very supportive though restrictive. Mostly it is causing me to modify my behaviors to accommodate it, which is not necessarily a bad thing. I'll keep updating you on the progress of the experiment, already my stomach seems flatter when the corset is off and it is easier to keep the muscles engaged, so I'm hopeful.