I keep forgetting that not everything is up to me, there is a universe out there ready to give me a hand while I help myself. Part of this is coming out because I’m listening to The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron and she is very much into the idea of a higher power, though she does admit that this can be any higher power you choose to worship, that is ready to help us out. A portion of this does come through, getting my downspout repaired and having more opportunities open up to me. I was wrestling with a ladder I borrowed from a friend trying to figure out how I was going to position the ladder between my porch and the Natural Gas meter that was placed right under my downspout when my neighbor came out to offer a hand. I accepted gratefully, he looked at the ladder and admitted that neither of us should get up on that ladder, so he mentioned that he had a friend that could fix the downspout. Yay! Of course it cost about half as much as a new ladder would have and I provided all of the supplies, so I was a bit put out because of that, but my downspout is fixed. I was able to get a gift card for some of the supplies from a survey site I participate in, so part of the supplies were free.
Soon after that I found out that someone that belongs to a guild I used to attend, right now I’m taking a hiatus until I get my credit card debt resolved, was opening up a new fiber arts store and they were looking for a teacher. Of course I volunteered, so I now have three classes and 8 ‘hang out’ sessions scheduled for her shop in May. This will be a great opportunity to promote her supplies, my skills, and library programming that we have to offer.
I have been steadily paying toward my debt, making other sacrifices to get this debt paid off. I sold a loom that I was not using to move forward to that goal. I recently heard from my accountant, yes I pay someone to do my taxes, and while I did not earn enough in my business in 2023 to make the paperwork worth it, I have returns from state and federal. If I throw one of that toward my debt I should be able to get my final credit card resolved. That will still leave me some leeway to take some trips that I feel I really need to take. Visiting friends and family that I have long neglected as well as taking a few small day trips to allow myself the chance to enjoy life rather than just exist.
By keeping these goals in mind I will be able to make progress toward larger goals. Getting my spending under control, making progress toward learning new crafts/arts, having fun, getting my house clean, make deeper connections to my friends and family.
Life is meant to be lived, I need to figure out what that means to me. In the meantime, remember to Live Life A Little More Abstract!
So, I have not made any progress on my banner or learning how to create bobbin lace. In the other hand I have been trying to figure out a good platform for selling my handmade crafts as well as creating stock. I am hoping to participate in two craft shows this fall, however, they require a picture of your booth setup during the application. This means that I need to have significant inventory to display in the booth. Also, as it happens many selling website platforms cost on a monthly basis. In order to afford the platform as well as create more inventory, I have been attempting to direct sale my jewelry offerings on Instagram and Facebook. I’ll post my creations at the end of this post, however this has left little time for anything else except working on getting my yard ready for urban homesteading this spring and summer. That is a post for another day however. I am also planning on taking out my first batch of polished rocks this week so I hope to put up a brief update then.
I was lucky enough this past week to have encountered a rare productivity burst. Throughout this burst I was able to get one of my rooms organized, start several projects, and make progress on other projects.
Not all of my projects turned out great, but most of them did what I wanted. The first paragraph is going to be about outside projects I was able to complete during a warm day, and the rest is going to be about crafts I have started, some are a little more artistic than crafty, but everything I do comes back around to crafts eventually. Even my garden, which is what the next paragraph is going to be about, is going to have plants that are good natural dye producers. Speaking of, onto the outdoor projects.
During a windstorm my downspout decided to blow off of my house. This seemed like a sign to add a rain barrel to my gardening. I bought a rain barrel, and the device to connect it to my downspout. To see if I was able to get away with a cheap solution I purchased a connector that was a little too big, sealant, and some screws intended for a downpipes, under $10, and decided to try to connect it from the ground… It didn’t work, but I really didn’t think it would I was just really hopeful.
This means that I am going to have to wait a little longer since I will need to purchase a 7′ ladder, new downspout, and probably an elbow for the top. I also noticed that there is no downspout on the gutter that surrounds my porch so I’m probably going to add one on just to be sure. The downspout was not my only outside project, I also managed to put up my mini pop-up greenhouse. It is weighed down with some stones from my front yard and it currently houses my mower, clippers, and a few other gardening things. This prompted me to finally put together my two workbench sawhorses, one of which is currently in the greenhouse. I’m hoping to start some plants in March or April. Okay, let’s get into crafts now!
In getting my home back in order I have discovered several projects that I have been meaning to work on for quite some time. One of which is my Unicorn in the Library fiber from Hipstrings. I finally managed to finish spinning it up, I did split the last puff into 4 pieces so that I could spin some other fibers in between that I will use as ply experiments. I also rediscovered my love for spinning silk, this caused me to spin up some lengths that I will allow my library craft patrons to use in their slow stitching project. That reminds me I need to make up a sample for that sometime this week.
I have been exploring some crochet techniques, mosaic crochet was not as much of a success as I would like, I found a Tunisian Crochet pattern video that I am working through and transcribing into a written pattern, and I will be seeking out resources for two sided mosaic crochet to eliminate the weird stair-stepping I am getting on the inside of my mosaic crochet.
Now we are getting to the part where I can never be content, I have to try everything. I don’t know if I mentioned that I bought a Rock Tumbler? If not, well yes, I bought a rock tumbler, some sample rocks, ceramic media, and enough grit to last me a while. I have been watching YouTube Videos by Michigan Rocks for some time, and my Aunt mentioned not getting around to using her rock tumbler, plus a way to force myself to go outside to find rocks all combined to have me starting this new hobby. I have had a ton of fun so far, I have owned it for a month, and I managed to get my ceramic media tumbled through the first 3 stages ( I didn’t bother to polish it), as well as some of the bag of tiny chips that I only half regret purchasing. They aren’t going to turn into anything great, but I’ll run them through the cleaning and two polishing stages to see if I can get them to have a shine. I did put about three pounds of the bigger rocks into each of my two tumblers to get them started on the stage 1, I’ll pull them off on Saturday to see what they look like. I’ll put out a post of how to get started Rock Tumbling, as well as linking to some great resources later.
Of course I cannot start just one hobby at a time, you think I have any self control? I haven’t started this one but it is going to go hand-in-hand with the rock tumbling, I plan on wrapping the rocks in wire when they are tumbled. To be able to sell these for something like a decent price I plan on purchasing some Sterling Silver wire. I’m not selling necklaces, just the wrapped stones for now. This brings me to my last two projects that I’m working on, skipping over the fishing poles I purchased today because I found out that there are ‘no license fishing days’ in New York State. I will need to find pictures of the types of fish it is legal for me to keep, and I have to remember to invite my friend out since I bought her a (cheap like mine) fishing pole.
Okay, so I did manage to have a sale on my Etsy site (thank you to whomever bought the Dino Plushie) and that caused me to realize that I hate having to pay Etsy out of what I had calculated as earnings. I know that people look for inexpensive items, deals, and sales. This means that I’m going to be paying about .20 per item, every quarter (I think that is how often), create listings, and pay for shipping, to make very little if any money. I do plan on creating some spreadsheet and other printable items to put up on Etsy once I have them perfected, to create something like a passive income stream. I have some great ideas I just need to slow down and find enough time to start working on them, I think I might start staying a couple extra hours on the days I’m supposed to leave early, or go to Panera Bread for a couple of hours before I’m supposed to be at work to get these things done.
Due to the slow nature of my Etsy Sales I have decided instead of dripping my products onto Etsy as I get them done, and sort of rushing to get them done, I will take a little more time and sign up for a couple of craft shows this Fall. There is one in September and another in October I would like to sign up for. There are registration fees, I’ll need another table, and I need to take photos of my setup, but all of that should be doable by September. I’m really sort of excited about this, though I am not sure what type of craft I should bring. There is an apple festival that mentions having old-fashioned crafts, so I’m thinking about seeing if spinning and weaving would work for them.
I think that this is long enough of a rambling post to be getting on with for now. Until next time remember to Live Life A Little More Abstract!
Okay, so as a follow up I still haven’t gotten much done over the past two weeks. My stomach flu came back with a vengeance that Tuesday so I had to call off of work Wednesday. Then the following week my allergies stuffed up my head to the point that I was very dizzy. I took the medication, however, when I reclined to take a nap until the effects kicked in, I became nauseous and did when you do when you’re dizzy and nauseous for about 2 hours.
Needless to say I called in sick to work again. Now I have switched my allergy medications, which should last 24 hours, to the night before and I am looking into getting an air purifier to help with these problems.
All of this being said, I have not gotten nearly as much done as I would have liked. Just this morning, the last nice day for quite a while, I managed to get my rain barrel put together and outside, though I am still working on getting my downspout reattached. I have some crafting plans as soon as I get my house in some form of order, so hopefully I can get the organization done this weekend and get started on crafting again!
Life is full of ups and downs, sometimes the ride makes you nauseous, sometimes euphoric, but you have to stay in the cart and keep riding along. Live Life a Little More Abstract!
I have made significant progress on several home improvement projects, not only to procrastinate on finishing hiding threads on the quilt…but oh well. The crafting content will be after the ***** if you want to skip to that.
I finished making my lighted walkway look a bit better. In about an hour I used a tined weed remover to loosen the grass and dirt along the path. After that I removed the grass and put it on my compost pile, the dirt went into some flower pots that were lacking in soil, I’ll see if I can plant something there next year. After that I used black weed preventing cloth that I staked down with my lights. After the cloth was laid down I added the rest of the lights and a bag of brown mulch. My grass doesn’t look bad enough for me to worry about mowing so I’m not going to bother just yet.
I am still working on getting rid of the grass between my sidewalk slabs, so please ignore that. I did try to get some of the spaces on my front porch fixed up, I’m going to wait a bit to see if it looks better before I take photos. I did another two hours of sanding on my back porch. I like how the porch is looking so far. I did some filler on the other railing and sanded down the first set of filler.
I know, it doesn’t look like much but this was significant progress for 2 hours work. I’m hoping to finish sanding either this week or during my vacation next week.
*********************************** I did manage to get some crafting accomplished this week. About half of the threads are hidden on my quilt and I figured out how to easily thread the needle to hide the rest. I experimented with some inexpensive templates I purchased from Amazon. I tried to use a pen like knife to cut the card stock, but it didn’t work. Due to that I traced the inside template piece with a yellow marker to maximize the piece of paper, the yellow is very hard to see in a photo.
Once I had the traced them out I used scissors to cut out each shape. Later I am going to have to use the larger outer template to cut the fabric. I will be using a rotary cutter, being very careful to not cut myself.
I have been messing about with a few other things but I’m going to wait a little bit before revealing anything further at this time.
Until next time remember to Live Life a Little More Abstract.
Hello Everyone! The first part is information about my mental health so if you want to skip to the crafting content skip to the ****************.
My site and store have not been updated in a few weeks due to a slight adjustment in my anti-depressants (anti-anxiety for me) and the time at which I was taking them. I was taking them in the morning, this resulted in my consuming more caffeine to keep myself awake and not taking my ADHD medication (which is a stimulant). By changing my anti-depressants to evening I am able to sleep better and not spend my entire day trying to stay awake, I am also taking my ADHD daily to see the difference it makes. After half a week I have more energy and I am able to better focus on accomplishing various tasks.
I also had a friend visit to see my new house for the first time, it was so much fun to catch up with her!
My new desk has re-ignited my desire to ensure that my first floor work area is optimized, or at least I can access everything I need. This of course means that I have to move everything out into the open before I can store it away. I did find my shuttle tatting supplies about 6 weeks before I am set to teach needle tatting to a guild, so that is going to be great to demonstrate the difference between the techniques. Right now the room looks a fright, I did manage to finish weaving off the warp I had set up for coasters that I plan on giving to the guild as prizes for the EGLFC (Eastern Great Lakes Fiber Conference) in October. This allowed me to push that loom to a wall and put items that I use more frequently in front of it.
There is a cubby that I built years ago, not very well admittedly, that had been against a wall but hidden with items in front of it. That is now next to the loom against the wall, mostly accessible. There are 3 cubbies that have longer term storage items that I placed a small end table against. I then pushed my desk up against that end table to create a seamless corner of work space, where I can still access most of the cubbies, that I feel will be very functional.
These moves allowed me to better access my 16 shaft table loom, which brings me to one of the reasons why I started all of these adjustments. Mirrix Looms had a program where they invited everyone to weave every day in April. It was such a success they decided to bring it back in July. This has resulted in my spending the first three days of July finishing off the coasters, so I could put that loom away, and making my 16 shaft loom more accessible. Much earlier this year I put the warp for some towels through my reed, and found out that despite what I thought my warp is wide enough to fill the entire loom…this means that I need to go back and start at the beginning to rethread my entire reed. I thought I could ignore this and just leave the extra threads off of the warp, so I began threading the heddles, however the truth is if I do that I will always hate these towels. I checked with Mirrix and warping up my 16 shaft loom does count as ‘weaving’ toward their goal. I do understand how ridiculous all of this sounds, however I need that external motivation to get myself working on this huge project.
All of this does not mean that this is all that I have been working on! Last Monday I taught a guild how to make scissor fobs, and I will be repeating the lesson with another guild this Saturday and yet again on the 22nd. The first class was such a success I am very excited to see what creations the other guilds come up with given the supplies available! I purchased a lot of supplies for these scissor fobs and I am hopeful that I will get the supplies cost back so I can invest in teaching another class next year, though I am not sure what in yet.
If you have not gotten the gist yet, I never have just one or two projects on the go at a time. I have also been doing some work on my house, my front garden is planted with new blocks for my potted plants, they are a dye garden plus a couple of vegetables, so I look forward to seeing what hues I get out of my garden this year. I’ll try to get a good photo of my straw flowers by next post. I also went a little too far at the 70% off fabric sale at JoAnn Fabrics, though I hope to make a couple of lap quilts in the next week or so, yes I know I’m getting a bit too ambitious again!
I think that is all of the progress I have to report on for now, if I like how the workroom looks by time I’m finished I’ll try to add a photo to this post. I’ll probably have a post about organization products I use in my house in time for the Prime Sale on Amazon with affiliate links by next week. Clicking on the affiliate links will not cost you anything but I might get a small stipend.
Until Next Time Remember to Live Life a Little More Abstract!
A Little More Abstract 