Sunday was a day of rest work. Does that make sense? I pretty much sat at my desk all day and caught up on things. Started working on sales tax (not late until the 20th, so I still have a few days to beat my head into the desk… 2012 may be the year I go ahead and hire an accountant). Did a lot of things that distracted me from math, such as loading all the Epcot photos from October. Going through old paperwork and throwing things away. Going over my work schedule.

Did I tell you I’m working on a work schedule for myself? (Oh my god, you’re thinking, does this girl ever talk about anything other than work?! And the answer would be yes, and those things are pets and knitting and ice cream.) I’ve spent the last couple of months doing a full-on Muppet arm flail as I try to keep up with things. I hope this next sentence makes sense: I’m organized, but not scheduled. I know where everything is — I have to, in order to be able to make things at the drop of a hat. But at night I plot out what I’m going to do tomorrow and the next day it goes to hell because either I think of a hundred other things that have to be done right now, or things explode, or blargity blarg.

For instance, there are things I’ve wanted to make or bring into the HaldeCraft line that I haven’t had time to, because I’m busy remaking this, or restocking that, or trying to keep stock up in so many different places. That’s one of the reasons I bowed out of the craft market; it was getting too hard to keep making new things for that with a 3-4 week deadline, and keep Wild Iris things new (not to mention the exclusive things I’ve wanted to start making for them), and keep Etsy both restocked and have new things offered, and keep an eye on poor Shake Rag out in Melrose. It’s just getting to be too much, and something had to go. Sorry, craft market. I may do them again in the future (especially yearly events like GLAM, if I get a table again) but it’s too much pressure on me to do a monthly event (and try to help run it, but that’s a different and very long story).

So over my “vacation” (and I love that over on Facebook Swapna was all, “you took a vacation?” Hee!) I did a lot of thinking, and I’ve come to a handful of decisions that will hopefully work for me. I think they will. One is being OK with being sold out of something. Telling myself that just because something sold out on Wednesday doesn’t mean that the world will end by the weekend if I don’t get it restocked. Another is setting a work schedule, designated days that I do something. I’ve wanted to do this for a while but worried I might lose some custom work if I said I couldn’t get whatever to someone for three weeks instead of two. Now I have a custom list for yarn mugs that stretches through the middle of September, so if that doesn’t show me people are willing to wait, I don’t know what will!

So. Sunday is Office Day. Monday is making soap and every other Monday (like today) bisque firing the kiln. Tuesday and Wednesday are for painting and glazing bisque, and Wednesday is also for dyeing yarn. Thursday is for wrapping the soap I made Monday. Friday is glaze firing the kiln, and in the morning winding yarn, and in the afternoon making lip balms and lotions. Saturday is for pouring and cleaning greenware. At any time during any of those days, should there not be anything that needs to be done (for instance, if I’m stocked on balms and lotions and don’t need to make more) or something doesn’t take as long as I thought it would, rather than start something else I will take that time off and read a book, or knit. Or go for a walk. Or daydream. And if I need to set any of those things aside to do something else (like this Wednesday, in the morning, I need to go to Shake Rag and take an inventory) or if a friend needs me or Tim and I go out of town or I just need a day off, I can do that. I tried that last week and let me tell you… it was both easy and hard. I feel like I got a lot done, that I was more productive, but at the same time when I finished something at 4:30 it was really hard to go ahead and knock off rather than start a new project!

So we’ll see how that goes. Hopefully, it will go well and I will both feel productive and more rested, new things will come into the shop, restocks will be farther apart but steady, and all will be well.

My family of origin, both here and not here any more, for all the things they taught me both overtly and unconsciously. I am who I am because of you.

My family of choice, for the patient and hardworking do-right man they raised and happily gave to me, for the sisters and brothers I didn’t have growing up but have now, for the multitude of cousins and nieces and nephews, for the way they’ve opened their hearts to me.

My friends who have become family, for the way they support and champion me, for the way they come when I need them most, for the love and laughter and heartache we’ve helped each other through.

My friends who may not be as close as family, but I still care for and am charmed by with your humor and strength and quirks and stories.

My pets, who keep my feet warm at night and keep me exercising during the day by letting them in and out and in and out and in and out and in.

That there is a roof over my head, and it doesn’t even leak. Also that I have a car that gets relatively good gas mileage, and a mechanic who is both a magician and reasonably priced.

That I have the opportunity, skills, business sense, creativity, and flat out balls to do what I want for a living, and that some days it even seems like it’s working.

For music, of both the bluegrass and folk varieties in particular, but also the hard rock Irish drinking groups that I love so much. Both types bring joy to my heart.

For literature, which opens doors in my mind and lifts me above the utter shit that I see in the news.

That other than the occasional migraine, my health is good enough that I haven’t even had bronchitis for a couple of years. And that I know what I’m allergic to, and only get zapped by things that have allergens hidden in them.

I am thankful that I have friends I can go have lunch with at the drop of a hat; that I have a lifestyle that allows me to meet friends at the drop of a hat; and that I live in a town with enough locally owned restaurants that serve food I’m not allergic to that there is a wide variety of drop-of-a-hat lunchtime meeting places (even though I am obsessed with The Big Apple salad at Wine and Cheese, the fried veggie spring rolls at Chopstix, and the cream cheese and pistachio sushi at Bahn Thai).

I am thankful for my hearing, which allows me to hear Old Dog snoring as she naps across the room, and the purring kitten in my lap.

I am thankful you read this whole thing, and that you might not even laugh at me too hard if I remember something after I hit “post” and edit this to include something else later.

Happy Thanksgiving, y’all! Eat some turkey for me, since I’m allergic and can’t have any. Me? Imma gonna put a hurtin’ on the lamb chops Tim is planning on making for dinner. Soon, I hope. I got hungry after writing that locally owned restaurant paragraph.

One thing that I DO NOT MISS about having a Real Job is yearly evaluations/performance reviews. Ugh. (OK, technically those are two things, and I should have used “are” rather than “is.”) Doing everything myself means – at least to me – that on some level I am constantly reviewing. Did that work? Can I do it better? Is that selling? Should I package it differently or quit carrying it? How’s my work load? Do I want to expand and grow? If so, what direction? And how?

One thing I wanted to do is get into a store or two. Not many, because I do make everything by hand and it does take time… so I don’t want to be in a whole LOT of stores just because I do want an online presence and I could see now, with being in two stores, that were I to be in… say… five stores, I wouldn’t have time to keep up with an online shop as well. Recently I had an opportunity to be in a third store, out of state. For a wide variety of reasons (and two months of heavy stress) I decided that we were not a good fit for each other and in mid-October we amicably parted ways.

The entire situation did give me a whole new host of things to consider and think about, and I’ve decided that wholesale ceramics is not a direction that is good for me. The time it takes and the stress it gives are not two prices that I’m willing to pay. People who are buying for a shop have a different checklist than people who are buying one piece at a time — and I totally get that. I’ve been a shop owner. At Hanks, we definitely had a different set of expectations for small hand-dyed companies than we did for big commercial yarn companies. And while I strive to make a unique and well-made product, even pieces cast in the same mold and glazed with the same color are not uniform. So bulk orders are not for me. I will still continue to do consignment at local stores where I can come by two or three times a month and check my stock, do inventory, straighten, evaluate stock for changing trends, and replace; but meeting wholesale needs just isn’t going to work for my business model.

One thing that I was interested in doing with HaldeCraft was getting into some craft shows or farmer’s markets. I soon decided that farmer’s markets were probably not the right fit — a combination of needing to buy and then wrangle in my small car an 8′ table, a chair, a tent, and THEN all the stock I wanted to bring… and then reading the fine print on the farmer’s market which I wanted to get into… well, let’s say I decided maybe I wasn’t cut out for that. Not at this moment. If I had a larger car? Like a mini-van type of thing, that would give me more of the room I need to carry that many things. But I also am a person who – believe it or not – functions better with a planned and set schedule. So when I found out that crafters were last on the list of the farmer’s market’s needs? That crafters, in fact, were so far down the list that they couldn’t guarantee you a spot every week and instead you would find out on the day before the market if they had a spot for you…? I decided that wasn’t going to be a good fit for me.

And larger shows, like the Spring Arts Festival or the Downtown Fall Festival? It turns out I can’t get into. They both specifically state in the rules that slipcast ceramics, like I do, are not allowed. So that’s a no-go.

Then in April I found out about this upcoming Monthly Craft Market. And I thought that would be a fantastic way to dip my feet in the water. It was small, but not too intimidating, and the people seemed friendly. I begged my friend Laura to go with me (backup in case it was busy, and she could hold my hand while I cried if it was dead slow) and clearly that’s been working out for me since there’s been a HaldeCraft table at each one since then (thank you, Laura and Greg, for doing September for me!).

About… what is today…? About three weeks ago, right before we went to Disney (omg, I still have photos to upload…!) the young woman who has been coordinating the event called and asked if I’d be willing to help her by taking on some responsibility for planning, advertising, vendor wrangling, etc. She’s got a lot on her plate right now in her personal life, and is job-hunting, and taking some classes. Talk about a full schedule! And since I had already seen some places, some things with the market, that I’d like to experiment with improving or making stronger, I jumped at the chance. She and I talked a lot, and Laura and I talked about a few more things, and I bounced some ideas off Tim and some of my other friends, and overall I think I brought to her a sense of excitement that was starting to wane for her, and a new bunch of ideas and a level of hard-ass business sense.

Now, through a series of events for her which are going to cut into her time (which BELIEVE ME I totally grok), it seems that I am now the lead on at least the November market, and maybe December, and even possibly moving forward in the future. I’m one of those annoying “everything that happens, happens for a reason” types of people, so the fact that the opportunity to take the reins on this Monthly Market come at just the time I’ve let go of a major and time-sucking wholesale order is not lost on me. One door closing and another opening, and all. If she had offered this to me even five weeks ago instead of three, I would have had to say “no”… and that might have meant the end of the Monthly Craft Market. But instead not only do I have the time and energy to take the reins, but I have the business sense and the personal contacts to hopefully make it an even better event.

So… there it is. Here I am, evaluating. I am in two really great venues, Wild Iris and Shake Rag. I’m taking on responsibility with a craft market that is indoors. and provides tables, so I don’t have to buy tents and whatnot (although I am looking into buying a 6′ folding table). I even got into a craft show in December that is, like, THE craft show for indies in Gainesville. Leap, and the net will appear. Or, make goals, work towards them, and they’ll happen.

So. What’s next…? I’m thinking about buying a kickwheel next year and learning to throw pots and mugs, which will increase productivity. And make me eligible for the Spring and Fall arts festivals in town. We’ll see how that plays out.

So, I have two soap molds, that I think are the cutest things ever. One is an acorn, and the other, while called on the site where I bought it, “braided round,” to me looks like a small tightly wrapped yarn ball.

I think they’re both adorable; plus they’re both exactly the right size to fit in the palm of your hand, so they’re great for things like travelling and taking just the soap you need for your trip, or when you don’t know if you want a large bar of soap in case you don’t like the fragrance, or HELLO you just want something cute! Sadly, neither of them sell hand-over-fist like I was hoping they would. That makes me ask myself two questions: “why?” and “what can I do to make that happen?”

I’m pretty secure in my pricing strategy, so I don’t feel that they don’t sell because they’re too expensive. Perhaps I don’t have them in enough fragrances? I’ve had them both in about five or six different fragrances. And don’t get me wrong — they do sell, they just don’t sell fast enough for me to have had to make more of any of them yet.

So I’m thinking about doing three things. One thing is reevaluating the fragrances that I offer in these designs. I’ve gotten some new woodsy/autumn fragrances since I started making the acorns, so I’m thinking about an overhaul there; and while I had made the yarn balls in some of my favorite fragrances and ones I thought would do well based on other sales, perhaps pulling those and only making them in one line — say, floral/herbal.

The second thing I’m thinking of is making a bowl, similar for the guest soaps that I put together for Wild Iris Books. I would take that to Craft Markets and hopefully the sheer quantity and cuteness would draw people in, and the fabulous woodsy fragrances would make people buy. Hmm… have you seen my acorn birdfeeder? I could not do the cutouts on that, but instead cut off the top as if it were a lid, and use that for an acorn soap display. I DARE YOU TO RESIST THE CUTENESS.

And the third thing I’m thinking about is either in addition to or instead of selling them singly (I’m not sure which yet, or both), selling them in a bag – as seen in my recent reworking of “Soapmaker’s Favorites” here – as a set. They’re $3.50 each, and so I think I’d probably not want to put more than five in a set. I could do a year-round acorn fragrance set with Ancient Sedona, Cedar, Lost in the Woods, Spiced Mahogany, and Teak & Sandalwood; and then maybe a Autumn-only set with Forest Pine, Pumpkin Lager, Pumpkin Spice, Winter Holiday Wreath, and… and one other. Either Frankincense & Myrrh, or Autumn Harvest. And a year-round yarn ball set with maybe… Blackberry, Coconut Lemongrass (a former Hanks fragrance), Lavender Patchouli (or Lavender Rose), Rosemary Mint, and … Woodberry? Rain on the Down? (Which, by the way, I’m thinking of renaming to the original supplier fragrance name, “Kentish Rain,” because out of context of the Watership Down club, I don’t think many people grok the name.)

Anyway. Just some things on my mind, and the dogs aren’t terribly helpful in giving me feedback when I bounce ideas off them. “Blah blah blah blah blah blah, OLD DOG.  Blah blah blah blah blah blah, BACKUP DOG.” That’s all they really hear, I think.

So. Acorns and yarn balls.

I know that seems like a big thing to forget to mention, but really… all I did was get emails from Sharon occasionally asking how much I wanted to mark stuff down to. All the stock was at her house, so it’s not like I had to do anything to mail out the purchases. Discounts had been going on since we made the announcement in June; we slowly marked everything down until it stopped moving, and then we marked everything down again, and so on. We hadn’t had any sales in a couple weeks, so we marked everything down to 75% off and fucked if it didn’t all sell in like three hours!

It’s sort of… is anti-climactic the right word? I mean, I was more sorry to see it go before we closed the actual bricks and mortar shop — I was sorrier to see it going before we even told people, back when we hardly had any stock on the shelves and nobody seemed to notice. That was sad. This is more like … like when our 16-year old demented cat was sleeping in her own poop, and we called Dr. Camp to come put her to sleep. More relief, really, than anything else. Now I can stop internally rolling my eyes when people ask me when the three of us will open up another storefront. (To be fair, those people are most often former casual shoppers – not the folks who spent a lot of time there and have become friends, who realize that the three of us have moved on.)

I feel like some people are going to want me to write something here about how deeply moved I am, how saddened I am by the closing, maybe rend my garments a little… but I just don’t feel it. Please feel free to rend your own garments, if you like. I feel like I already said everything that needed to be said, and then I said more, and now anything else is just going to be grief porn, picking at scabs. I don’t feel now is the time for sadness; now is the time to move on.

Or maybe I just don’t feel bad because I’ve got the best part of Hanks in my heart, and the best people from Hanks are now some of my very closest friends. So what am I missing? Besides the cute boys from the pizza place coming in to check on us and seeing if we’re hungry and want a slice? Not a lot, really. Not a lot.

GAH. Here I go again.

So let me just play you a song, instead. It’s about Mark Bingham, one of the courageous men on Flight 93 who stood up and bravely did what needed to be done. While I tried to be brave for those seven months, it doesn’t hold a candle to the last seven minutes of his life.

I hesitate to write, sometimes, that I have frustrating days. After all – or so I’ve been told by someone – all I do is “sit around and craft all day, so how hard can THAT be?” And a few times over on Facebook when I’ve posted lists of things I have to do in a particular day, I’ve gotten comments from people along the lines of, “yeah? Try doing all of that, but with kids!” (Which always makes me want to say “try doing all of that and remembering to take birth control! It’s a vagina, not a clown car!”) Or invariably one person will jump in with some one-upmanship and be all, “Well, I have to do all that, too, PLUS both my legs fell off, AND I ran over my grandfather on the way to the hospital, AND since I live in an Escher print it was uphill both ways TOP THAT.” … to which there really is no answer other than my eyes rolling so far back into my head that they get stuck. Yes. I have Tourette’s Syndrome of the eyeball roll. I’m not saying these types of people don’t have legitimate complaints about their own daily lives, but first that’s what their own blogs are for, and second what happened to the common courtesy of just saying, when someone says “I’m having a hard day” of just replying “wow, that’s really rough, but you’ll get through it and it’ll get better tomorrow.”

If you feel that you might be about to do any of the above things, please save yourself the horror of me sending you a photo with my eyes rolled back to show you just how much of a fuck I do not give, and click the red “x” button in the upper right of your screen. If, however, you’re interested in the mental journey of how I need to work out a more effective work schedule for myself, read on!

OK, /end soapbox.

What I *meant* for this post to be about was how I need to narrow down, slim down, what I think I can accomplish during a day. Everything I do takes a lot of time, but almost everything I do also has spaces of waiting time built into it. Chaos surrounded by waiting until the chaos begins again. Sort of like driving across town in rush hour, and hitting every red light. But I seem to have an over-achieving broken sense of what I can do in a day… and part of that is because of the waiting bits that fall into my workday/week.

With ceramics, there’s pouring, waiting, draining, waiting, and opening the molds (with a repeat of pouring/waiting/draining for molds with more than one side that needs to be poured). Then there are days of drying, followed by a day of cleaning, a day of firing, followed by painting, waiting while that dries, glazing, waiting for drying time in between each coat of glaze, and a day of firing again. Oh, and photographing and writing down the dimensions and weight for listings.

With soap, there’s cutting up the base, waiting while the base melts, mixing in the additives, pouring the molds, waiting while more base melts, mixing in the additives, pouring more molds, and pretty much repeating this all day until I have no more room in the soap bar. Followed by an overnight of setting, then unmolding, a day or two of drying and being exposed to air, and then photographing (if it’s new or if I need better photos), printing and cutting labels, wrapping (and cutting tissue paper to size when I’ve gone through the last batch), and storing.

With hand-dyed yarn, there’s winding, soaking, dyeing — which is interspersed with waiting while soaking in dye, waiting while soaking in citric acid, chaos while moving things around if it’s a multi-color, and rinsing — waiting between 1 and 3 days while it dries, rewinding, labeling (printing and cutting and attaching it), and photographing.

With handspun yarn there are days and days of spinning, followed by plying, unwinding off the bobbin into skeins, soaking in wool wash (really the only waiting part is this, and then the drying afterwards), waiting for it to dry,  labeling (printing and cutting and attaching it), and photographing.

With pattern writing there are countless evening hours in front of the TV with my head in stitch dictionaries testing out different things, hours of knitting and ripping and reknitting, followed by hours of pattern writing, and then publishing. I have about 20 old Hanks patterns that I still need to reformat into my new look with HaldeKnits, and that’s going to be about… oh, let’s say three hours per pattern?

Then there are things like cleaning up after myself; washing off soap molds and letting then dry before storing… putting the molds that I’ve poured away so that I can bring out the next round of molds… cleaning slip and greenware dust off the floor… cleaning either the soap pots or the dye pots and moving one set back into storage so I can bring the other set out, depending on what needs to be done.

There are work-related office things that need to be done, such as listing new items on Etsy, renewing items that have expired, tweaking titles and descriptions or taking new photographs for items, and now I have to check all of the tags for all 250+ of my items as Etsy has just revamped its tag/key word policy. In gearing up for the holidays (and I wanted to do this last year but just didn’t have time) I want to put a line in all of my listings about “hey, like owls? See my other owl-related items here!” or “like this fragrance? I have other designs in the same fragrance here!” … and that won’t be time consuming, NOT AT ALL ahahahahahahah. There’s also checkbook balancing; taking stock of supplies and placing orders for things like fragrances or mailing boxes or tissue paper when I’m out; office supply runs for things like paper and toner and post-it notes; actually cleaning off my office desk; filing invoices and things; doing quarterly sales taxes; writing blog posts (both work related and personal, hey, remember personal posts?!); interacting with people via Facebook/Twitter/Ravelry/Etsy (answering questions, thanking them for kind words or reviews, instructions, wholesale or consignment term discussions, and occasionally just being silly). And the happy part of packaging up sales! That means printing invoices, carefully wrapping items, boxing, weighing, labeling, and taking it to the post office. And yes, I do know that you can schedule pickups — however, some days that post office run is the only time I leave the house, and the only time I interact with someone other than Tim. I need that interaction. Also it’s very easy to run to the post office when I’m running other errands — the PO is right across the street from my grocery store, and on the way to my office supply store and both of my knitting groups.

Plus I also want to relearn how to sew, and I have this watercolor set sitting on my desk reminding me that I wanted to learn how to do that, too, and it’s been waiting for about four months for me to touch it. And I’m in a writer’s group, of which my only contribution the last month or so has been to offer my house as the meeting place.

Oh, and at the bottom of the list are things like exercise, laundry, cleaning cat boxes, cooking dinner, shopping for said dinner, and running personal errands.

Do you know what’s at the top of the list, though? Making time for my friends and loved ones. I will drop work in a New York minute if a friend or family member needs me; I have that luxury of being able to turn the crock pots off and step away. I make time for my friends every week, meeting them outside the chaos of my house on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Tim and I spend at least two hours together every night, and even though I’m knitting and we’re watching TV, it’s our time carved out of the day.

One of my big problems is that I really like doing what I do — and I don’t seem to have a developed sense of “what is too much to do in one day.” I’ve tried to narrow it down to three things that have waiting time built in. For instance, pouring ceramics (which has waiting time wherein I can do something else) and making soap (which has waiting time wherein I can do something else) and wrapping soap (from which I can easily step away here and there when the next stage of ceramics or soap-making calls). But then I find myself in about an hour of chaos every three hours wherein both ceramics and soap need my attention RIGHT AWAY. I feel like I’m being pulled apart by horses.

So I think – and it’s hard for me to admit this – I think I need to move that down one notch to doing only two things per day. And I need to choose one thing from Column A (crafting) and one thing from Column B (background work). So instead of pouring ceramics and making soap, I can either pour ceramics OR make soap; and the second thing I will do is, say, clean my office and file paperwork. The only time I can choose two things from Column A is if one of those things is firing the kiln — it’s loaded the day before and unloaded the day after, and really just needs to be looked at every now and then to make sure the back porch hasn’t caught on fire. So I could for example today… fire the kiln, and dye some yarn, and catch up on household chores.

While my gut feeling is that I’ll get less done (because, you know, doing fifty things at once HAS SO CLEARLY BEEN WORKING FOR ME) I hope overall that after a few weeks of being rigorous with this new scheduling rule that I will actually feel that I’m getting *more* accomplished… because I won’t be running from craft room to craft room seeing all the things I don’t have time to do.

I’ll keep you posted. If I have time. Heh.

OK. Still with me?

I hate June. It’s hot as fuck outside and shit always seems to happen that’s just flat nuts. One day in June, when I was 15, my Stepmonster came home after work and said, “start packing everything, we bought a farm and we’re moving this weekend.” LIKE WTF, CRAZY LADY. A little heads-up next time? My grandmother had a stroke in June. My grandfather died in June. Years later, the same grandmother also died in June. For years, my lease was up and I had to move in June. In June of 2007, I told my hateful job at the Enginerding Firm that I was giving them a more than generous six-weeks notice and that two friends of mine and I were all going to open a yarn store together. Then in June of last year, we announced that the yarn store was going to have to close the doors and we were going to an online-only model. Yesterday we announced that we are also closing the online shop. Hey, everything is 25% off starting today! Go buy yarn!

And you know what? I’m OK. I was going to write this long blog post about change, and morphing, and whatnot, but what it really boils down to is me being OK with this. Like I’ve been saying for a year, it was harder when we had no yarn on the shelves and no money to buy yarn, and I couldn’t talk to any of my friends about it. Also, this does not affect the long and deep friendship that I have with Sharon and Ginger. I love both of those women to pieces; nothing will ever change or get in the way of that.

And hey, I have some good news for the fiber addicts! I’m going to keep dying yarn, changing the name of the yarn line and bringing it into my shop on HaldeCraft. I haven’t decided on the exact name yet (submissions are welcome!). I’d love to call it “HaldeSomething” but I’m having trouble narrowing the Something down. I already have HaldeSpun, so I don’t think I want to call it HaldeYarn, as that might imply the other stuff isn’t yarn (?). HaldeDyed makes me sound like I have a stutter. HaldeColor sounds like 1950′s segregation. “Dyed in the HaldePots” is sort of my favorite so far, even though it makes it sound like I’m swishing them around in a toilet (HI NEW READERS!). Last night, Ginger suggested both HaldeStrings and HaldeStrands. Well, I have about three weeks to dwell on this, so… just putting it out there. Suggest something I fall in love with and maybe there’ll be some yarn in it for ya!

SO ANYWAY. Yes, I’ll still be dyeing yarn, both in some of my favorite and the most popular Hanks colorways (ooo, HaldeHanks?) but not all of the colorways. Some just never sold very well, even if I did like them, and I can’t afford to have a bunch of things that aren’t moving. But if you’re an old Hanks customer and are looking to get one skein of something to finish a project, don’t be afraid to give me a shout. And I’ll be bringing in new colorways, lots of one-shot deals, and I’m totally re-vamping the sock club (I’ll do a complete post on that once I get the last few details narrowed down… like a yarn name…).

And I feel… whole. I don’t feel any more as if I’m letting Hanks down by focusing on HaldeCraft, or cheating HaldeCraft by working on Hanks. Now it’s all the same. You could argue that it was the same before, since it was all for *me,* but… it just felt different. I’m really sort of excited. I mean, nervous about money (when am I not?!), but really excited about ideas that I have for HaldeCraft and bringing in hand-dyed yarns. I think you yarnies reading this are going to love what I’m going to do with sock club.

So. Stuff is starting to go on sale at Hanks, and next week I go on vacation for two weeks. Three weeks from now, I will take any leftover Hanks yarn (hopefully this will not be much!) and start listing it on Etsy (either under the Hanks Etsy shop or mine, depending on how much is left), and I’ll start dyeing the new as-yet-unnamed line for HaldeCraft. I’ll start dyeing the August sock club, and posting information on the new sock club coming up. HaldeCraft, by the way, will go into vacation mode while I am gone — I get from a Google/SEO point of view that this will screw up my Google Rankings, but that is less of an issue for me than someone ordering something and me not being able to mail it to them for two weeks. I’d rather fight my way back up Google than let a customer down. ALWAYS WITH THE PEOPLE-PLEASING! A good portion of my free patterns (and I’d already started to work on this) will be re-worked and re-listed on Ravelry under HaldeKnits (see? Foreshadowing! You can see it in retrospect, right?!). Plus, I’ve been working on some ideas for patterns that I will charge for (and they’ll be worth it, trust me). Those will also be for sale on Ravelry under the HaldeKnits line.

Ideas! I has lots of them! England prevails!

So I will answer the questions as if I were being interviewed, and I’ll try not to poke too much fun.

Tell us about yourself.

I sprang from the ocean on a clamshell. NO JUST KIDDING. (oh, the pressure) At this point I feel I’m supposed to say something that will endear and enchant the reader, make them feel as if they know me, know my heart, in just three sentences.

I was born into a family of science fiction writers, was taught an equal appreciation for science fiction and folk music, and believe that everyone has a story. I don’t exercise enough, my heart is bigger than I like to pretend it is, and I’m very literal minded. I’m smart, funny, easily irritated, and will totally come get you at 3 AM if you have a flat tire or have been broken into (after which I will spend the next ten years going “hey, remember that time when you called my ass at 3 AM?!”).

No, wait, how about this? I am a dichotomy. I am equally charmed and frustrated by my fellow human beings. I love and anger easily. I enjoy baking but not cooking. I am usually motivated to eat (I’m also the worlds pickiest eater, and have food allergies) but not motivated to exercise. I am just like you, but am completely different.

Apart from creating, what do you do?

Read. Shower. Put on pants.

No, seriously. Almost everything I do is, on some level, creating. I work all day at home, creating things. At night while watching TV, I am also knitting (creating). Cooking is reasonably creative (or, at least, I am very creative about finding ways to set the kitchen on fire…).

What would be the title of your memoir? Why?

See, now… this irritates me. Why am I so important that I’d have a memoir? It seems that here is when people list off all the quotes they’ve been saving that are pithy and funny and inspirational. I would be more likely to use a song lyric. I want to be good, is that not enough…  Play it the way that you feel it… I did it my way… All that you have is your soul…  Don’t think twice, it’s alright… I learned the truth at 17… I COULD GO ON LIKE THIS FOR DAYS.

And then, why? Why would it be titled that way? Because when the moon and sun aligned in the magical crossroads of the  … WHATEVER. See? This is what I hated about English classes, because I was raised by writers. Maybe so-and-so wrote it that way because HE WAS DRUNK. Maybe what’s-his-face was so lengthy because HIS EDITOR TOLD HIM HE HAD TO MAKE A SPECIFIC WORD COUNT. Maybe my mythical memoir will be titled whatever it is titled because I will not be able to choose from the billions of song lyrics I relate to, and my editor will just choose something because we have to go to print. WHO THE FUCK KNOWS?!

What does handmade mean to you?

It means that it was made. By hand. See? I told you I was literal minded. Handmade, to me, means that it spent more time becoming a finished product in someone’s hands than it spent time becoming in a machine. Some people say that “handmade” means it has to 100% be made by hand. I don’t know about you, but most of the creative and talented jewelry makers *I* know aren’t also alchemists. They don’t make gold down in the basement.

Who has been most influential in your craft?

See, now is the time when the person usually thanks their spouse. Well, my spouse is unbelievably encouraging, but he is not THE MOST INFLUENTIAL. I believe that the person MOST INFLUENTIAL isn’t the one who pays the bills so you can paint big-eyed green-skinned girls on black velvet, the person who is the most influential is the one who TAUGHT YOU TO CRAFT, or opened your eyes to crafting. I think people, when answering this question, are getting “supportive” and “influential” confused. Tim is incredibly supportive; in my husband I have found a valuable champion and cheering squad. But he does not influence my crafting as, say, my grandmother – who taught me how to make ceramics – has been an influence.

When did you know you were an artist/maker?

Am I? Do I know that?

So… there’s this scene in the book The Little Princess. Sara Crewe is sent in to French class, because she has said that she has not learned French. It turns out, and she tries to explain this to no avail to the headmistress, that she hasn’t learned French because she grew up speaking French. She doesn’t need to learn French. She *is* French.

How do you know if you’re an artist/maker if you’ve made things all your life? That’s no revelation. That’s just who you are.

How would you describe your creative process?

Show up. Do the work.

If you could peek inside the studio of any artist, designer or craftsman (dead or alive), who would it be?

This is like one of those “you can invite five people to a dinner party” questions, which I always hate because I fear I’m going to forget someone. Sigh. Can I just make a list, and one of you can choose for me? Antoni Gaudi. Frank Hurley. Diane Arbus. Gustav Stickley. Connie Willis. Sheri Tepper.

What handmade possession do you most cherish?

Does my dad’s ponytail, which we cut off before he started radiation treatments, count? After all, it is his hair. He grew it himself.

How do you get out of your creative ruts?

What ruts?

Where would you like to be in ten years?

In a bigger house, with more room for my crafty explosions. With a few more bills paid off.

Up on the watershed, standing at the fork in the road
You can stand there and agonize
Till your agony’s your heaviest load.

The more response I get to HaldeCraft, the less I want to work on Hanks… and then the more Hanks suffers (and the less I want to work on it). I mean, when we closed the bricks and mortar shop a year ago, Sharon said she was going to take care of the web store stuff, so I leave that to her and try hard to keep myself out of it. But I still think the blog, the twitter, and the Ravelry group need to be taken care of, so I do what I can there. Except nobody ever comments on the blog, which makes me feel my time there is wasted– so I basically have said “fuck it” to the Hanks blog. My time needs to be spent on that which rewards me somehow. Twitter is slightly less unresponsive, especially in the last few weeks as I’ve tried to make more of an effort. And by starting a weekly “what are you working on” topic on Ravelry, I’ve been able to get some great chatter going there — including a few voices from whom I haven’t heard in months. But that takes time. Time I could be spending on HaldeCraft, which gets me easily five times the feedback. Imagine if I took the time I spend on HaldeCraft and applied it to Hanks — or visa versa? How much interested could I drum up in Hanks if I spent as much time marketing it online as I do HaldeCraft? Or how much more soap could I wrap if I wasn’t dyeing and winding yarn? Only, don’t actually say that, because voicing that makes me feel traitorous to my little yarn shop. And in spite of the massive debt I do have and the savings I no longer have because of Hanks, I did get a lot of good things out of it (even though that sentence doesn’t make it seem that way). Friends. A lot of knitting skills. Direction. A better sense of business ownership. The taste of working for myself. So I do have good things — so why am I feeling sad this week in relation to the yarn shop?

You’ll never fly as the crow flies, get used to a country mile.
When you’re learning to face the path at your pace
Every choice is worth your while.

And then I remembered what month it is. And I started thinking about anniversaries. One year ago now, we were starting to make whispers to each other about how Things Weren’t So Good. It’s the anniversary of some days wherein a lot of things got thought about pretty hard. In fact, one of my photos of the day, I took while thinking that at best we were going to have to move to a smaller location (I think that was the day were I  spent time drawing floor plans of both halves of the store in case the landlord would let us put the wall back up and only rent half the space)… but that more realistically we were going to have to close. And what was I going to do? At that point my husband – infinitely more skilled in the work department than I am – had been unemployed for nine months. What chance did I have of finding a job if he couldn’t? What savings we’d had left after putting money into starting Hanks were dwindling quickly; there was no way we had any more money we could put into the yarn store. Not without risking losing our house. I was sad and lonely and I couldn’t tell anyone what was on my mind because most of them were yarn store friends and I didn’t want them to feel guilty, or sorry for me, or worried, or whatever. I started bouncing ideas off Tim that week; thoughts about what else could I do, maybe something crafty, maybe something at home, maybe now was the time to start that ceramic studio I’d always wanted (remember this poll? I should have titled it SPOILER ALERT). I could do that at home without too much starting costs, thanks to my grandmother. So, anyway. A year ago this month I was scared and sad and lonely. Which apparently I didn’t let myself feel until THIS year.

Well there’s always retrospect to light a clearer path
Every five years or so I look back on my life
And I have a good laugh.

–Emily Saliers

Because I realized that what was really tugging at me in the last week or so was the anniversary of it. One year, it’s been, since the rug was pulled out from under my yarn store life and a fresh sturdy brick walkway of ceramics and soap was put in its place. I’m happy where I am – questioning some things, of course, but I think I always will. But I couldn’t let myself mourn the death of Hanks last year because I was too busy just trying to survive, trying to get through each day. So today I am sad, and maybe this time next year I’ll be less sad, and the year after that I won’t even think about it, and then five years will have passed and I’ll be a little reflective and look back on what I’ve done for the last little bit… and maybe question some more and evaluate, like ya do. And maybe there are some choices I have to make; maybe there are some more hard thoughts I need to think, and maybe I don’t want to think them — as if refusing to think about them makes them any less pushy?

ANYWAY. Anniversaries. Time for reflection, and maybe a tad too much introspection coupled with some navel gazing. HOLY SHIT 1167 WORDS IS ANYONE STILL READING THIS?!