What the hell happened to August?

August started off good (if early) with meeting my friends at Wild Iris Books for the launch of their new online book service. Of course no breakfast that early in the morning is complete without champagne! Damn… looking at that photo makes me want champagne. Er, orange juice. That’s what I meant to say. Ahem.

Only one thing rivals a nice Mimosa, and that would be the Turtle at Sweet Dreams. GREAT. Now I want one of those, too. As an aside, one of the things I love about the mashup of my friends and foursquare is that there are about three of us who keep stealing the mayorhsip of Sweet Dreams from each other. One day, even, when we all went there together… I stole the mayorship back from Rhea (who had stolen it from me earlier in the week) and then we were both promptly trounced by Mariana, who stole it from us. Yes, silly; but fun.

August was our anniversary, which we celebrated with dinner and a nice shoot-em-up movie. This was eight years — Tim said the traditional and new gifts were wool and ceramic, and he was pretty sure I already had all that covered. TRUE.

I don’t know what I was doing on Thursday, August 11th, but I was apparently too busy to take a daily photo. Same thing with the 17th. And the 28th.

I decided I wanted to brush off my dusty, rusty sewing skills, and got as far as making a few potholders before I became too busy with some work-related things. September should be a little more manageable, though (I hope) so I’m hoping to finish up the other potholders and also start and finish a skirt for which I had also bought fabric.

Laura helped me do the fourth Monthly Craft Market, and it moved to a new location — The Doris, which is going to be a community art center. We were hoping that in moving to a new location that is a bit larger and also what with it being the creative and artistic space that it is, that the Market would reach a broader audience, and it certainly did. We had a great time, were busy the entire time, and I hear that merchants are already clamoring to be in the next one.

My friend Erin is part of this really cool thing called the After School Art Club, and the event this month was on slipcasting and moldmaking. Now, you wouldn’t think that of all people, I’d need to go to a class on slipcasting — but there’s always something I can learn (like about putting plugs in the pour-hole, which is not something I’ve ever done) and my knowledge of moldmaking is more… guesswork, really, than anything else. I know roughly how it’s done, but it was nice to see it In Action, and get some of my questions answered.

I think in August that I fired the kiln a total of six times, perhaps seven (note: I normally fire once a week). There were at least two weeks when I did both a bisque and a glaze firing within a few days of each other. I also made and wrapped more than 300 bars of soap. In the beginning of the month I had bought 150 pounds of soap base, and by about the 28th I had to order another 150 pounds — soap order are rolling in like … well, like awesome crazy large orders of soap! I just took 176 bars to Wild Iris yesterday, and I’m working on getting them all uploaded to my new online shop with them (this will be in addition to Etsy – I’m not leaving Etsy). Expect an official post about that after I work out why I can’t upload photos (possibly operator error, but… I’ll figure it out, or one of the Iris Goddesses will be all, “hey, dumbass, do it this way” and then it’ll work). In addition, I’ve been working on dyeing up some yarn, both for the shop and for Sock Club…. plus another few large orders that I’ll get around to blogging about once I get to the point where they seem more official and less like I’m going to jinx myself by even mentioning them. One of them involves my soap going into another local shop, and the other involves some of my ceramics going into a shop in New York City (I KNOW!!!!). And did I mention the magazine that’s going to put some of my mugs in a “gifts for knitters” article? I’ve sent my mugs off to them earlier in August, and the magazine is set to come out in either December or January. So I’m working on getting a big backstock of those particular mugs between now and when the magazine hits the shelves, in hopeful preparation for a few orders.

And now I’m tired just thinking about how wonderful and busy August was. How was the end of your summer? Of course I say “end of summer” as if it weren’t still 90-freaking degrees outside… gah! I’m ready for cool weather, and I fully expect all of you to remind me come February, when I’m freezing, that I said I wanted the temps to drop.