Pants are over-rated

One thing that has been a challenge since closing the yarn shop and working at home is sticking to a routine that involves exercise, and putting on pants.

Many many days at the yarn store – more days than I’d like to think about – it came down to choosing between exercising for an hour or getting an extra hour of sleep. Sleep would often win out, because I stayed up later than I wanted to most nights to have time to knit for classes and patterns that I was writing. Lack of exercise plus active couch sitting and knitting slowly allowed my thighs to expand past the point that makes me happy. So I was very excited the first few days after the shop closed, excited to start a new routine that would involve both enough sleep and enough exercise. And then, that first week, I broke my toe. HAHAHAHAHAH fuck you, Universe.

But I didn’t let my toe keep me from working, so over the last month I’ve started to get into a routine wherein I start crafting as I’m having my coffee in the morning. Get a cup of coffee. Turn on the crock pots for dyeing yarn. Get a second cup of coffee. Check the water in the crock pots, start dyeing once it’s heated up. Finish my coffee. Check the dye. Start pouring some molds. Change out the yarn. Check the molds. Clean some greenware. Change out the yarn again. Pretty soon, it’s time for lunch, and I’ve been crafting for five hours and haven’t showered yet. Also a lot of my PJs now have spots of dye and/or ceramic slip.

So some days I try harder than others with the whole “I know you want to start making soap, but today you need to shower *before* you turn on the crock pots” and then not only do I shower but I brush my teeth and put on a bra and try not to put on the one pair of jeans I have now that’s not got dye and/or ceramic glaze on them. (I feel like an archetypal Creative Woman in a novel, who always has paint on her clothes and has wild gray hair and winds up giving the young heroine of the story the emotional and creative tools to solve The Mystery.) This morning I really did plan on going to exercise; I did so yesterday and my toe didn’t hurt nearly as much – like, at all – as it did when I went out about two weeks ago. And I realized that I am really out of shape. But it’s almost 9 AM and it’s already hot as shit outside, so I am leaning more towards folding the laundry I did on Sunday, taking a shower, putting on clothes, and then getting to making soap. I’ve made about 50 bars in the last two days and am on a roll.

Also when I splash soap on my pants it’s a lot easier to clean up than dye or glaze.