Other than that, my day was spent winding yarn and filling massage lotion jars. EXCITING. Oh, and letting the dogs out. And in. And out again. And back in. Sometimes they do that thing where they walk out one of the back doors and don’t even go off the porch — just walk across it to the other back door and bark to come in. WTF.

Today I’m firing the kiln and trying to pour ceramics around the yarn I have hanging up in the ceramic room (to keep it away from Tiny Kitten while I get it all wound and work on labels). I have a couple errands to run, too, but I didn’t plan that very well what with also firing the kiln. So they’ll either have to wait until after about 4, or if Tim is going to be home maybe he can keep half an eye on the kiln for an hour or so. And let the dogs out. And in. And out again.

I also hate it when things explode in the kiln. There’s nothing I can do about it, but it still distresses me.

See the brown mugs on the right side? Those will soon be filled with men’s shaving soap, and I’m hoping to be bringing those into the shop by mid-to-late February.

Topping my toast in the morning with lemon garlic spice may be the best thing ever.

This post is totally random. Can you tell?

I was finally honest with someone the other week when they asked me which of the many open knitting groups I go to, specifically with the Sunday Stitch ‘n’ Bitch. I don’t go to any of them. Why? Mostly because when I was going to them, right after Hanks closed, people knew I used to own a yarn store, and that at Hanks I used to “happily” sit and give help for free, for hours. I was constantly asked at SnB to help people… to the point where it was difficult for me to just sit and knit and enjoy time with my friends. You know what? I don’t work for free any more. I don’t want to go to a social gathering where I don’t get to be social. That’s not fun for me. Now I meet with some friends twice a week, and while we wouldn’t turn anyone away, we don’t make a point of posting about it everywhere. I’ve occasionally been asked by passers-by if I could teach them, and I’ve gotten stronger about saying that this meeting is more about being social for me, but if they’d like to set up a quieter time and space in which to learn, that I am available for one-on-one lessons. Nobody has ever gotten back with me about that. I’m OK with that.

Behold the cute new sugar bowls to go with the cute creamers at Wild Iris! Also behold the three gator planters, which have been there since before Christmas and haven’t sold. I KNOW, RIGHT?

Today is one of those days where I am extremely grateful to my grandmother for passing on this skill. And grateful to my family for raising me in an environment where it’s not strange to be creative as a job. And grateful to my husband for his support of and faith in me (as an aside, this and this gave me a good laugh, and Tim spent a good portion of yesterday calling me “hey, girl!”).

It makes me angry when friends of mine are shit on for no reason. I want to lay down some ass-whooping. Is that what a parent feels like when their kids are bullied?

Maybe I should have done this post in bullet-point form.

OK, back off to work. I have more yarn to wind!

Then I came home and fired the kiln and bought advertising space on Ravelry and answered email and glazed some more bisque and generally puttered around not doing much work but getting a lot of things lined up to get work done. Does that make sense?

And… that was Wednesday.

I got enough glazed yesterday that I could almost even fire the kiln this afternoon when I get back from Melrose, if I wanted to. Part of that may be that I’ve re-glazed all three exploded plates and want to refire them, each alone on a shelf with nothing else (I don’t think that will fix the problem, I think the glaze is just going to explode off again, but I’d always wonder if I didn’t try). So I can’t fit too much more in there. I don’t know if I’d get enough glazed today and tomorrow to fire again on Friday (my usual firing day)… but I could give it ye old college try. I certainly have enough things I could glaze.

I also voted yesterday, and my polling place always makes me feel so lonely. It’s an old veteran’s lodge, and I don’t think any of the volunteers are under 65, and there’s never anyone in there when I go. Yesterday I went at about 2 in the afternoon and as I was walking in there was one vaguely homeless looking guy voting, and as I was leaving a woman drove up with her toddler daughter. Granted, I was only voting for City Commission, so there were only two boxes to fill in… so that took like, two seconds. But still. I think the only time I’ve ever seen it crowded was one presidential election year (not the last one… and not the one before that… but the one before that!) when I got there right before they opened. I had to stand in line for a whole six minutes until they opened, and then the line went right through. Also if I remember correctly, I was the only woman in line that time. Sigh.

Then, meeting friends for knitting and a beer and laughter, and then home to make dinner (I forgot to buy beef for the stroganoff, but remembered the extra mushrooms this time, so… it was still delicious).

Today? Off to Melrose in a bit for a soap inventory and to hear family friend Brandy play. That’s probably what tomorrow’s photo will be about!

I got to the mall at around 11. It turned out the optometrist could fit me in, but not until 3. I knew I could drag my other stuff out at the mall for about two hours, or a little more if I also had lunch, so since the mall is about as opposite across town as you can get from my house, I opted for not driving back home but to stick it out at the mall.

I made my first brave stop at Victoria’s Secret. I used to buy their bras, and while pricey, they last a long time. So I was on the fence. I mean, bras are pretty expendable with me (by the way, I bitched about bra buying a few years ago and everyone had some really good suggestions for their favorite bras… and that really helpful post got eaten/lost in The Great Blog Migration of 2009. Curses!). I tend to buy cheap bras, with about a $25 cap because I am cheap. VS bras run more in the line of twice that. However, when I’ve bought them before, they’ve lasted three times as long. Math tells me, then, that I’m actually spending MORE on the cheap bras because I buy them more often… so I should suck it up and at least get one good one.

Not to mention, in the back of my head was the idea that while Sears may have some bras that are pretty-but-not-too-frilly and for what I’m willing to pay… I can actually get fitted for a bra at Victoria’s Secret. Show of hands, ladies — who has been fitted for a bra? Did you find out you were wearing the wrong size, in spite of reading how to fit yourself and breaking out your own measuring tape? Because I did. Both measure myself, and find out I was wearing the wrong size. I’d gotten the band size right, but not the cup size… I was off by… well, let’s say quite a lot. I don’t even want to say; let’s just agree that it’s a double-letter and that this explains a lot of my… er, spillage issues (“great tracts of land”!). And the fact that the elastic commits suicide after a few weeks.

So from now on my undergarments will look like something someone’s Russian great-grandmother would hang on the line to dry… but that shit will FIT. Then, I admit, I went to Sears to buy a couple more, in the right size, but cheaper. Every-day, t-shirt types, and a sports one also for walking.

After that I decided to break for lunch, and slipped across the parking lot to BJ’s, where I got my usual (as pictured above). I can get it without onions, and it’s one of the only things on the menu that doesn’t come with something I’m allergic to. Fortunately, it’s really tasty and I do not mind at all getting it every time!

Then it was off to Bath & Body Works, and my timing was perfect because they were having a buy-three-get-two-free sale on what I wanted, and that means I even still have some of my gift certificate left. ROCK!

After this I needed a little sit-down, and got a soda and sat in one of the comfy chairs in the seating areas in front of a department store (usually I only ever see old people and bored husbands in those chairs) and sat and knit and drank my soda.

Then…. it was off to the eye exam. I got there quite a bit early, because I wanted to pick out frames before I was blind, and I’m glad I got there early because I had a really, really hard time making up my mind. Apparently big chunky plastic frames with bling are in this year… and guess what style I don’t like?! Yeah. Also, right now, I have frames I really, really like. And I was able to get the ear-pieces bent around; they hook over my ears and don’t slide off, which is fucking AWESOME when you are a crafter who leans over and looks down a lot. However, lately, I’ve been having to take my glasses off if I’m crafting up close for more than about ten minutes, because it’s getting harder to focus when I look up. And the part that makes them great – hooking over the ears – is also a pain to just take off and put on. You can’t just whip them off, and slap them back on again.

So it’s time for a change. And apparently more of a change than I thought, because… at one point during the exam, during all the “which looks better, one or two” stuff, I was looking with both eyes and it just wasn’t lining up. Major double-vision, and even though she kept fiddling with it, I kept having it, and … it wasn’t that she didn’t believe me… it was that she … well, maybe she didn’t believe me. But I kept telling her it was there. And here’s the thing — I haven’t had an eye exam in about three years. And in these glasses I’m wearing now, the left eye is still fine, but the right eye is blurry. If I close my left, I can see with my right (through the glasses) for about five feet… and then… blursville. (I am near-sighted, by the way.) And I’m a slight hypochondriac, so I’m thinking all kinds of things from my astigmatism getting worse to early cataracts, especially when she keeps saying that I shouldn’t be having double-vision with what she’s doing.

Then… drumroll, please… she looks at my chart again and pops out with ”Oh…! You’re… FORTY!” and since she looks like she’s about twelve, it was *really* funny. I mean, I just busted out and could not stop laughing. She didn’t say it in a mean way, just in a … I don’t know, it sounded like the punchline of a joke, and I just lost it. OooOOOOOoOO! You’re…. FOOOOOOORRRRRRTY! Seriously, even an hour later I was still chuckling. She makes a few more adjustments, a few more “which is better, two or three” moments, and then she sort of … clears her throat and asks me how I feel about bifocals. Again, I had to laugh.

See, G-ma had bifocals. And Daddy had bifocals. So sort of like when I was growing up I always thought I’d get a tattoo because a lot of people around me had tattoos so I thought that was just what you did…? I always thought, from the moment I first got glasses, that bifocals were in my future. I feel more relieved, more “jeez, about time!” than anything else. But, sadly, so much for getting glasses made in about an hour. I’m going to get what’s called progressive lenses, which they don’t make on site and take about ten days to get made and get sent to them. So I still feel sort of goofy in one eye, the feeling which has been irking me and was the pokey-pokey to get me moving towards a new eye exam.

EDITED TO AD: OK, I totally accidentally just hit the POST button, which means my brain must think I’m done with this super-long recap of yesterday. That’s kind of funny! SO ANYWAY. Took the day off, talked to a lot of people about my boobs, and got new glasses. That pretty much sums it up, if you’ve skimmed down to the end.

Here’s my lunch from the Faire; “ye old fruit and cheese plate” coupled with an orange and cream soda blend. Mmmmm.

As you can tell from the above, we went to the Hoggetowne Medieval Faire yesterday, and I promise to have pictures up before the end of February. Heck, I don’t even think I’ve blogged about New Year’s Eve yet, so maybe … er… March. ANYWAY. We went with Laura and Gerry, who in spite of their long-lived status as Gainesvillians-with-roots-here, had never been. We were there for hours and hours, and still didn’t do everything. We saw jousting, and the Birds of Prey, and the Chess Game, and a lot of vendors and of course some axe-throwing, and Jenn harping (actually, we missed her harping, but saw her… what the fuck was that? It looked like an oboe and a digideroo had a baby!) and let me not forget the Maypole…. but there were still a lot of the smaller shows that we missed, like fire juggling. Of course, we also see that on New Year’s Eve, heh.

We also ran into Bill and Jennifer (always nice to see them) and while we were eating lunch, we witnessed the King and Queen interact with some of the peasants – er, I mean, common folk, er, I mean, the people in front of us. It was really cute; he dubbed the boy as a knightly emissary, and the two girls as Honorary Princesses, and the one girl who was about nine or so…? I could see it in her eyes that she was going to remember this day FOREVER.

I got up early today to take care of processing weekly orders and then had a full day ahead of me which is why I’m just now getting to blogging about Sunday; if I were smart I’d throw some stuff in here about today, too, but I’m getting tired and am ready to change into PJs and hit the couch for some serious knitting (and dinner… Tim is making pork chops and homemade mac&cheese… at least, if I lay off the Fair Song, that is).

Remember how I was talking the other week about my love for cuckoo clocks? And some of you may know I also have a love for really intricate gingerbread houses. So how about an Edible Gingerbread Cuckoo clock?! I KNOW RIGHT?!?!? I just peed a little.

I also just banged my head into the wall a little, because I opened the kiln and a custom piece that I’ve made four times now didn’t turn out. Fuckity fuck fuck fuck!!!!

Grr; argh.

And on that note, I think I’m going to go pour some ceramics, clean my ceramic studio, and maybe finish up the audio book I’m listening to.

Last night after dinner we watched an 80′s movie that neither one of us had seen before, but that Rhea keeps telling me I’ve got to see – The Goonies. Well. Now I can say I’ve seen it. I’m not going to probably ever have the urge to watch the whole thing again, but it was cute. Everyone looked so young! Young Sean Astin, before he was the “fat nasty hobbit.” I think I would have liked it a lot more thirty years ago. At the time it came out, I was 16, and remember thinking that I was too old/too much a girl to relate to a movie about 12-year-old boys, and that still mostly holds true but I could appreciate it from a nostalgic “isn’t that sweet” point of view.

OK; time to move on with my day. I have a little more glazing to do, a little more soap to wrap, laundry needs to be done, etc etc etc.

Anyway. Yesterday! Fun! It was great to see Lynn and catch up on what she’s doing and working on, and to just hang for a while. She has some great knitting going on right now, one of those mitered-square blankets and it is ginormous and beautiful! What a great use for scrap pieces of yarn.

…aaaaaand, that’s about it. I have a lot to do today so I’d best wrap this up. Expect many soap updates in the shop today — I’ll be listing four sets of guest soaps on both the Etsy shop and the Wild Iris Marketplace (same soaps, available two different places). And I have glazing to do, and yarn to dye. But I don’t have to go anywhere today, so I’m going to be all squirrelly and crafty and shit. Yes, I will have pants on (so that my legs don’t get covered in dye and glaze).

Yesterday was spent firing the kiln and cleaning the house – not only is Lynn coming up today to help me wrap soap (and eat good food – forecast calls for lunch at Chopstix and dinner at Emilianos) but we’re getting the house appraised today because we’re trying to refinance. So mostly I puttered yesterday, going through small piles of things and putting things where they belong and sweeping and whatnot. Tim completely cleaned off the back porch when he got home; I do love a clean back porch. When I unload the kiln later I’ll try to take a wide shot to show off how empty it looks.

Aaaaaaaaand, that’s all I got this morning. I need to rush off and sweep the front porch, open the kiln and inspect pieces, and do a few last-minute bits of straightening. You crazy kids have a fun day!