Good morning! As I’m writing this, I’m also watching Stargate SG1 — a little over a year ago, two friends and I started watching Babylon 5 when it began streaming. We did four episodes a week, starting early in the morning before work. After we finished all five years of that series, we moved on to Farscape (another favorite!), and after that, we started on Stargate. If we continue with all the off-shoots, that should take us a good long while before we have to decide on the next title! I have to tell you, it’s kind of fun to watch online with friends. We have a daily Facebook thread for every show, and chatter about what we’re watching as we’re watching it. I’m in Florida, one friend is in Tennessee, and one in Maryland. It’s good good times to start my day with those two four days a week. Anyway, though! On to what I’m working on!
In ceramics, I’m playing around with textures, shapes, and forms. I want to do something really awesome with this new honeycomb texture pattern, and also upcoming I have a new texture I was going to use on HaldeCrate… more on that in a minute, though. I’m almost done with everything for the Mardi Gras HaldeCrate, all of the ceramics for it are finished (although I have a couple of extra whiskey cups to glaze).
In soap, y’all. Y’ALL. I have made about 75 pounds of soap in the last two weeks, and you’ll be glad to know that after emailing with a couple of customers, crunching some numbers, and seeing what my distributors have in stock, I have 50 more pounds of Goat’s Milk soap and 50 more pounds of Oatmeal on the way. I need to clear off that work surface to dye yarn next week, but they both usually ship slowly anyway… so expect me to start updating the soap over the weekend with what I’ve got made now, and I’ll have another large update in about a month as well.
In yarn, I’m getting ready to dye up the pre-orders for the Mardi Gras HaldeCrate, and also the February Patreon yarn (which will also be the new color that’s coming out in March - don’t forget, Patrons in the Cosmic Maker and Solar Systems tiers get a skein of yarn a month, and during 2020 those will be early releases of upcoming colorways). I’m also thinking that I’m low on stock in a couple of colors, that I didn’t realize I was low on (I’m doing a lot of accounting and inventory work in the evenings and on one hand while it’s giving me a great view of what I’m sold out on, by the time I wake up in the morning I’ve forgotten all about it because do I write it down as I’m looking at it in the evening? Only a smart person would do that!)
In HaldeCrate… I think it’s time to admit that HaldeCrate has, overall, been a bit of a bust. I wanted to do something that was like yarn club, but also including people who wanted limited edition ceramics. In doing that, I’ve lost most of the people who were in yarn club, and not gained a corresponding number of people into limited edition ceramics. Over time, there have been less and less preorders, and since I make stock based on preorder numbers, as people preorder less, I make less. I’m still a little bit on the fence with this, but I may move more over to doing limited edition collections; for instance, I already had a great idea for the May crate, but instead of doing what I have been doing, I may go ahead and make five or six of the three different ceramic pieces I’ve thought of, not take any preorders, and on the day it’s released, the ceramics, yarn, and soap that I have for that Collection are what I have. I may also, the first weekend that it’s open, do sort of a custom-order listing for yarn, so that anyone who wants more than the two skeins that I make in each base (like, if someone wants a sweater quantity, or wanted two skeins of something that sold out right away) can guarantee they get what they want. You know I love my yarnies. It wouldn’t be preorders, though - it would be an addendum to the listing that I make, but maybe only available that first weekend the Collection goes live. I’m still in the “thinking hard” stage on this, so input from my yarnies is welcome.
In Patreon, I put up another chapter over the weekend, and the video of January. This coming weekend I’ll have a behind-the-scenes video and some sneak peek photos of a few things coming up. And like I said above, I’m getting ready to dye and mail out the yarn for the Cosmic Makers and Solar Systems tiers.
In knitting, I got about an inch done on my armwarmers the other day when we drove into Gainesville for the Faire, but other than that, my evenings have been filled more with accounting and inventory than with … well, anything else.
In other things… I’m getting a better handle on my Wednesdays, which now feel like Mondays, since I’ve been taking Tuesdays off to drive over to Williston and visit a friend who’s in a nursing home over there. Then on my way back through Gainesville I do some in-town errands, come back, and then argue with myself over which I should do - take the rest of the day “off” and do some house chores or try to get some work-work done. Which one wins kind of depends on what time I make it home.
Whew. Is it only Wednesday? Tell me about your week! What are you up to? What’s going on with your life?