Posting Again

I am trying something new today: Posting with a time limit. I haven't posted in the past several weeks as I have been doing an Artist's Way daily journal of three pages of longhand, stream-of-consciousness writing instead. I noticed as I was doing it that it was much like blogging for me except without the spelling correction of the ability (and unfortunate reliance on) backspace. The other thing about the Artist's Way daily pages is that it takes a very finite amount of time (in part due to the afore-mentioned lack of backspace) as it is only three pages long. In the past I have spent much too much time days on blogging--to the detriment of accomplishing the things I was blogging about. So for the next little while I am going to split my time between daily pages days and blogging days--one for personal bitching and one for things worth sharing. I am writing all about this daily writing in the sharing venue as I truly believe in the value of starting the day with a mental purge from the squirrelly brain to page. It's my form of mediation or mental yoga (and has the side benefit of not being too physical!). To keep it manageable, I can blog for 15-20 minutes (the goal is 15 but I'm allowed 20) as there is no three page limit on the Internet.

Today's streaming....

I have a desk again! And in true Brenda fashion, it is already covered in STUFF. But it's a desk, and the laptop has a cool background today (it changes daily--of course it does). If I sit at it in the cool red chair for too long, my butt goes numb so I have go do actual work.  This is a good motivator for me.

Happy Anniversary to my wonderful spouse who asked me out for the first time 20 years ago today. We met 20 years and two days ago (and we both forgot that anniversary till yesterday) and he started today by bringing me a kiss and a mocha from Kavarna in bed. Awww.

Glass is flowing--literally--in the studio, though I am coming to the end of the orders I got at the American Made Show. Glass is also breaking with a higher frequency than usual with a gallery reporting two pieces--the largest and the smallest in their order--arriving broken. I now have a claim in with Hargrove for the AMS breakage and a claim in with UPS for the client breakage. That's over $1,000 in inventory I've had to replace. Hope it pays back.

On the Farm2Yarn front, I also made a first pass logo (though I am still waiting for Debbie Suchy, my marketing and product consultant, to get back to me with her designs and recommendations) and updated the website and Facebook pages a bit. I have almost 2,000 likes on that Facebook page (wow!) and I feel I should update it regularly because of it. But who has time?

Last weekend was the spring retreat for the Peachtree Handspinners' Guild (of which I am a member) and I spent from Friday at 6:00 pm till Sunday at 4:00 pm--excepting a tiny bit of time to sleep and eat--rolling roving into 4 oz balls and labeling it for sale. And even with all that I still have three bags left. I have a LOT of roving!! In order to decrease my inventory a bit, I signed up yesterday to be a sponsored vendor at the Georgia Fiber Festival in September. Though I have already sold all but six skeins (balls, whatever) of the llama roving, I still have tons of alpaca and a good bit of yak cloud for sale and I will also have a lot of dyed and painted rovings too. Though I have decided to specialize primarily in the natural colors as they are so varied and plentiful, I can't get away fro the blues, greens, purples and reds--and I have yet to see a fiber animal outside of Minecraft that is naturally deep blue. I do raise colored sheep in Minecraft and when I shear them I get colored wool all ready to make into carpets, but the real world requires slightly more work.

Time--both for writing this post and for life--are in short supply right now. Dan the wonderful carpenter built the games cabinet that is the basis for this year's Waldorf 7th grade class auction project, and now I have a week to make the veneer inlay for it, do the inlying, and sand and finish the cabinet. The design chosen for the cabinet isa detail from The Creation of Adam by Michelangelo as the 7th grade studied the Renaissance this fall and spent a good bit of time on DaVinci and Michelangelo. I have all my tools and materials save the first one I need to use which is the tracing projector as there is no way I am going to try to freehand an enlargement of this work. But is it supposed to arrive tomorrow morning and then I have all day tomorrow to draw, cut veneer and glue. Gulp. Hope I have enough time as Sunday is the day to do a year's worth of Quickbooks for my business (and our personal) taxes.

Now my time is up and it's off to the studio I go to meet Dee (who is coming down to help me today) and clean up the mudroom--it needs to be turned back into a coldworking room from the dumping ground it's been for the past year and a half.