Thank cripes. I finally figured out what my username/password was for this wordpress site. Jeepers! The things you lose in a hard drive failure (ugh).
It’s been quite a while, I know. Lots going on, and yet nothing at all: Been seeing a few boys; some just your regular boy, but most of whom are actually quite awesome. Trying hard to make new friends, and resigning myself to the fact that I just get along better with guys than gals with few exceptions. Hoping to find someone to hang out with here and there. I’m really hoping a certain Girl will come dancing with me tonight, whoo! I miss dancing.
My jewellery is being thrown into new and exciting dimensions. I have booked a booth at the Christmas At Victoria Park Craft Market, the only juried craft show on the island and one which I have heard is “basically a license to print money for three days.”
My mom only got one boarder this year, so I rented the third bedroom upstairs (also yellow, the mirror twin of my own room) as a work studio. I have both of my workbenches in here, a sewing machine, my little stereo hooked up to my iPod, and a twin bed for a loungey-couchy deal. It’s really great, and I’ve been here about two months and there are NO snarls or end bits of wire anywhere because I put a garbage can right below my kneecaps, so the snips get thrown out as I cut ’em. It’s fabulous. I’m so very proud of myself for keeping it so neat for so long. I’ll never go back!
37signals does a lot of discussion about constraints and I am feeling it here; now that I’ve made a commitment I’m constrained by both time and volume, in that I must create enough to fill a 5’x10′ booth with pieces of jewellery averaging about two or three inches square(ish), and it must be completed before the middle of November. Being forced to sit at the workbench every single day has resulted in not only an astounding volume of pieces, but also innovative-to-me designs I would never have come up with otherwise. I’m highly enjoying it. New designs for rings, bracelets and earrings – things I don’t normally make because I don’t wear them – have been appearing on a weekly basis; and my pendants are evolving as well, sometimes even mutating quickly.
I might need to make another trip to the beach for some larger driftwood before it snows, because I’ve got some bracelets on what I already have and they’re so gorgeous against the soft gray wood.
I ordered boxes for my full neckpieces and they’re too big 🙁 Paid a fortune in shipping too. This is what I get for thinking, “that’s close enough” … grr. Usually that works for me!
I also found a fantastic sale on SD and Compact Flash cards, so my cameras now have 1G and 2G cards, respectively; I have another 1.2 gigs in various leftover cards, too. Which is great because my new camera was effectively useless due to being full and not having a computer to dump them onto.
Because yes, my *#&^$@% computer is still MIA. The hard drive failed completely, and we discovered that the flickering wasn’t a monitor issue, but some other type of processor/motherboard thing. And then, before it could be fixed, my tech guy’s basement was discovered to have mold… the insurance people swooped in and inventoried/boxed every item in his basement before sweeping it off to storage for the teardown/rebuild; every item, including my computer, monitor, and hopefully (yet expensively, although it might be worth it) salvageable hard drive. I’ve borrowed a laptop from work for now, but it’s only got 178M of RAM which is getting really tired.
Every couple of days I think of something that was on that hard drive that has been lost, and I am close to tears: every photo I’ve taken with my new camera since the spring, except those on it now; my NaNoWriMo novel; my freaking bloody business card which matches http://www.gaylebird.com/Â and which I was planning on blowing up into a sign for the show but which I must now re-do from scratch; passwords and emails and iTunes music and aaaaagh.
Oh! Funny anecdote: a new friend got into my car the other day, and said, “Hey, is this a standard?”
Me: Yup!
Him: Can you drive a standard?
Me: (Pause) .. Nope! Wanna watch me learn!?
Ha! I’m funny.
OK. Back to the workbench!