Eye Patches

Another day, another dent in the pile of tatting. I'm actually pretty proud of myself for keeping a nice steady pace on the large order and keeping the same sort of pace on everything else. There was a time when I would have stopped doing everything else to work on the order. I mean no walks with the kids, no dishes or laundry and I would revert to drive by eating habits. Now I take a deep breath, do what I should do during the day and give myself a quota on the tatting tasks to be completed in the day.

Yesterday's goal was to finish the wire covering on the eye patches. I only had a few left to do and they take less time than masks so it was entirely doable...or they did take less time until I discovered that Lizbeth thread likes to twist more when doing this task. What does that mean? Well, it means that my normal method of covering the wire which is a one direction knot I can do fairly quickly wasn't cutting it. As the thread twisted it because tighter and less effective at actually covering the wire basically leaving visible spaces between knots. So I had to change methods and use the more traditional double stitch to cover them which is much slower for me in this application. It also proved more fiddly in many places, but worked much better in covering the wire nicely. I got so used to using the black cebelia with most masks that I didn't realize that the Lizbeth colors were going to behave so differently. Of course I've been surprised by thread behavior before and I probably will some time in the future as well.

So today my quota is to finish one mask, maybe two if it goes quickly. Then I have a necklace and a pendant to remake for the shop. Business has been pretty consistent lately, not terribly busy or full or large sales, but a nice steady trickle and that's a nice feeling really. I certainly hope things continue like this for a while because it's the perfect pace for when school starts up for the kids again in just a couple of weeks. I'm counting down just so it won't sneak up on me or them.

Monday

I feel like if I start yet another Monday post with the sentiment, 'what a weekend', you're just going to skip reading on Mondays, but yet another one it was. I had my large mask and eye patch order to work on every time I got a few moments, but there were so many other adventures to take my time. Saturday we had a cement path put in on on the side of our house and spent way more money on it than I hoped, but it's existence with reduce a lot of aggravation on trash day alone. Then there was a birthday party for one of the kids across the street with much sugar and silliness. Sure the rest of the day was a normal Saturday, but we were already done in my the morning activities.

To make the weekend more interesting the husband has been upgrading our computers and switching mail clients on my systems which means I was allowed limited access to them much of the weekend leaving me strangely attached to my phone. It's kind of sad how often I felt the need just to be near my computers, but on the other hand I did get more tatting done than I expected with the electronic menace otherwise occupied. This is the pile of tatting before I got the last mask tatted. The next and final task is to cover all the wires of every piece and do the finishing work on them.

That reminds me, last week I started to get an odd tingle in my left pointer finger at the tip. It wasn't numb, it didn't hurt, but it was annoying. When I consulted the internet it was suggested that it could be a nerve problem that might actually be in my back somewhere and given the amount of stress last week dealt me twisting my back muscles in knots it seemed a logical hypothesis.  I used my massage pillow until my back was sore to try to fix that problem. I also got myself some of those stress relieving craft gloves because it seemed like a good idea to give all the easy fixes a try before I allowed myself to get concerned. So as an apparent result of the massage my back feels much better. As a result of the strange gloves my hands allowed my to tat much longer without complaint. Now, I'm not sure which one of them gets the credit, but the tingle is gone now too. So I think more frequent sessions with the massage pillow and I shall now tat with the strange gloves on all the time to test their long term usefulness.

So now that I've told you stories you probably care very little about we are firmly in the realm of what's next for this week. Of course I will be working on the mask and eye patch order much of the week, but I think I'm on track to finish it before the week is out. I'm also trying to keep up with remaking things for the shop. I keep thinking I should just finish the order, but I gave them a proper wait time that allows me to keep up with the shop. It would be really silly of me to do any project that makes that balance suffer too much. Either way it should be a busy week for my thread and needle and me of course, but what else is new.

Tatting Rules The World

I was a production line yesterday. When I got this big order, I told the customer it might take weeks to complete because I like a little cushion on things like this. I know that I work pretty fast, but what if life gets in the way? I was fully prepared to go at a nice steady pace until I got paid and realized that I won't get any of that payment until I ship a finished order. Money, as always, is a strong motivator and I worked hard yesterday.

I decided that I would work assembly line style doing each part on all the pieces before moving on and leaving the mindless, but terribly time consuming task of covering wires until the end. I am fairly certain I will regret that choice when I get to the end, but it seemed like a good idea. It also means that I don't get to count down piece done until then either. So a day and a half worth of work and technically nothing is done yet. A bunch of things are almost done though and you know what I'll be doing today. Don't worry, I'll keep taking pictures of the work to liven up the boring bits.

I do have one not so boring bit. Remember the Maclean's article I mentioned? well, it went up online yesterday. I looked for it after I noticed a few google.ca searches in my shop stats. It's up on their fashion page which does not appear to have a direct link from the front page of the magazine's site. The article is here though and now that it is up for everyone to read I do want to talk a bit about it now. So go read it if you want and then come back and finish this post.

First, I do wish it were longer. Don't get me wrong it's great and I appreciate the exposure for both myself and tatting, but I know she talked to a ton more people than were quoted in the article because I sent many to her and I'm sure they all had great stories to tell. Second, while I'm flattered by her description of me, I'm also kind of embarrassed by it. I mean I've tried very hard to expose tatting to new people and bend it to my own sensibilities, but there are so many more tatters out there who have been innovating for years. Somehow it makes me feel like a super egotist standing on a hill screaming, "I rule the tatting world!". I don't believe that at all. I mean I do have an ego, you know that, but I believe that there are many "guiding lights" online and off, people who are much more talented than me, ones that teach more people and that make jaw droppingly beautiful things and write books. I suppose they are minor complaints really and I am giddy over being in a major magazine with my pieces for once. I also loved reading quotes from other tatters that I recognize. So I guess all in all it's a good thing. Tatting Rules The World!

That's Better

So it appears the Universe was listening yesterday as things started going a bit better for me. I mean, sure I started the day with a horrible and arduous gardening task and yes, I did end up hauling out the giant carpet cleaner to take care of months worth of cat messes that occurred in one unfortunate spot, but it got better after that.

The customer with the missing package continued to be quite reasonable and contacted me pretty early in the day so I didn't have to stress over it. I will be remaking her pieces, but I needed to order more beetle wings to do so. I spent the morning remaking the necklace base that they will go on once they do arrive. I even made a second so I can do one up for the shop at that point as well.

Then I began a conversation with a repeat customer that had purchased things for their brick and mortar in the past and was looking ahead for some masks for the Halloween season. It was truly refreshing to deal with someone thinking so far in advance because I knew whatever we ended up working out I would have plenty of time to get them made and sent before the season arrived. Of course as a little bit of a back slap from the universe the purchase was made with Etsy's internal credit card system. What's wrong with that? Well, the systems one big drawback in my opinion is this sort of circumstance. You see, you don't get the money transferred to you until you mark the order shipped. This means I won't see a dime of the already made payment until I finish several eye patches and a handful of masks. I mean, I'll live of course, but what if I needed that money to buy supplies for the order or something? Oh well, it's a minor complaint really.

As you can imagine, I'll be working on this order for some time, though having to wait for payment until they're shipped is sort of a proverbial kick the pants to get them done sooner rather than later so I'll speed through them as fast as I can manage without hurting myself. I'm already ridiculously sore this morning from those household tasks I undertook yesterday so I should really take it easy. I won't though. I'll keep working as usual hoping the Universe continues to throw better things my way and I'll also try to remember to take a few pictures to liven up these wordy posts.

Really?

Man, I cannot catch a break this week. I was all ready to be slightly productive yesterday when I read through my emails to discover material reclamation messages regarding the kids school stuff that we only recently received. I was further confused when attempting to log into the school site and got the message that my account was no longer active. This led to an early morning phone call to one place where I was informed that their records show the kids as withdrawn and I'd need to call the school to find out what happened when they opened in two hours. What the what? So I had to wait those hours to call the school enrollment people and when I did and they said they'd fix it, I still had to wait hours to find out it was in fact fixed.

So even if I had been able to be productive despite the recent cat events, it was thwarted. Instead I cleaned as I'm wont to do when I'm stressed, annoyed or angry. I'm told this could be a healthy way to deal with those emotions with the side effect of getting the cleaning done fast. Of course those people have never been in my way when I was cleaning.

Once that drama was fixed up I was able to relax and work on doing a little remaking for the shop and I actually felt fairly productive the rest of the day even if it wasn't anything significant to share. I was also quite touched that so many of you left comments about yesterday's sad news and so many more of you sent emails. It's crazy how many people have a Boo in their lives and I appreciate all the support.

I was hoping to say that today would be better, but I woke up to a message on etsy letting me know that a package I sent to Germany in May never arrived. Of course it didn't. To make matters worse it was a larger piece, one that I never remade either. So the options given to the customer were a refund, which is always painful or to wait until I order more beetle wing cases and remake the piece to send a replacement, probably more painful. On one hand it's always a bummer to send back money, on the other at least I wouldn't have to worry about another package going missing past the borders. Unfortunately to track packages overseas requires much costlier postage than most people are comfortable with. Luckily these occurances are fairly few. Too bad it didn't happen with a small pendant or something more easily replaceable or refunded.

So today I'll be not so patiently waiting to hear the customers preference thankful that they seem reasonable so far and hopefully they continue to be. Otherwise I will be again fairly useless while my brain is playing out worse case scenarios. It's only Wednesday and I think I want a do over on the whole week. Look Universe, I'd love a little reversal of fortune for the rest of the week. Nothing fancy, just a nice change of pace from sad, uncomfortable and disappointing if you will. That would be great, thanks.