Time for a change.

"Uh oh.... what kind of change Evie?"

Relax.  It's... okay yeah actually it is kinda major.

One of the things that a Witch should be doing frequently, is introspection.  Self-improvement is vital but ego is meant to be a tool, not make you into a tool.

One must be aware of their interactions in every light.

Yesterday I found myself staring back at the realization that I have a large amount of work to do... and that I can't do it with my facebook stuff still active.  We ALL know how much a time sink that place can be.

Well it's also the home of keyboard warriors and their liquid courage.  Loose lips sink ships?

Loose fingers cause episodes.

Last two months have been many micro and small episodes after scanning my facebook feed and coming away dealing with memories.  That's a little too much power over someone.  I can't keep sacrificing my productivity just be online and debate with someone.   I better things to do, than sit on the floor staring at my computer screen wondering how the fuck someone could so god damn stupid.  The site is going full on depression trigger some days.

What happens when something has too much power of you?  You remove it. Completely.

Everything on Facebook is going to be shut down a few days before Yule.  Probably will be back up online there next summer.  The Zibbit and Etsy will be on vacation from December 18th to January 15th.  They'll be online and available for your perusal after January 15th again.  However, there may not be a lot of in-stock things.

I am going to be working on a new website, one where I can have the store, this blog and everything I work on in ONE place.

Yeah, there are folks I won't know how are doing because the only way we interact is Facebook.  There's only a few of folks that I'll actually seriously miss that I only interact with on FB.  Like a Controlled Chaos and MurphyMonster's Dad...  But the site has become a source of stress, and less and less enjoyment every day.  I'm looking at Ello and maybe MiWe I think it was called as maybe a new option over Facebook, but I'm not sure on those either.

But I am dangerously close to burning out.  I can feel that crinkling sensation that seems to happen at the edge when you've pushed yourself on one particular topic for too long.

You do what you have to in order to take care of yourself.  Regardless of what others might think is best for you.  They aren't you.  They aren't dealing with the consequences of YOUR actions.  They aren't responsible for your mess, your emotions, your problems.  You can weigh their advice against a situation, and toss it if you know it's wrong.

Sometimes the only piece of advice that's worth listening to is, "Now I'm not you..."

Pass the Coffee dudes.....

7:30 am this morning....awake.

I managed to get a 15 minute nap. After that it was very clear, there wasn't any going back to sleep.  Oh well.

The to-do list for today includes working on streamlining and cleaning up the facebook page for Jade Rose Zen, which also got a slight name change.  Jade Rose Zen ThreadWorks.

Someone finally went, hey the name doesn't really say much besides being catchy.  *head desk*

Never fails, either people won't give any advice or give too much.  Thankfully my friend Erin knows where to draw the line when it comes to advice.  Lovely gal that she is.

Though last night she asked me, what the heck it was that going on with JRZT.  Etsy brings in half of my orders but zero traffic.  Zibbet brings almost all of my traffic, but no orders.  Half of my orders come from Facebook, but maybe ten percent of traffic.

*head desk; head desk; head desk*

I do plan on building a website that is my store and independent of the crapp shoots that all these sellers.  Whether or not it work out..... well, that's another ball game and one that I'm not going to address until after the move.

And of course, Jade Rose Zen Threadworks even without the spaces is too long for Etsy, but the title can have it....

*rubs temples*

How one manages to stay sane while attempting to maneuver all this shit is beyond me.   So what's on tap for new stuff coming to the Facebook page?  Hopefully by the end of today, I'll have things organized better.  I am not an ads person.  Hell, I can barely write descriptions for the stuff I make that is outside of what the measurements are.  That's all folks need right?  Along with a good two or three pics....

Seriously how the hell do some of these folks come up with this prattle that is in their items listings?

Adding four new albums to the Facebook page, including a available for custom order catalog, knitting, crocheting and a paracord catalog.

Also, I call bullshit on anyone who says the economy is getting better.  PTUI!

Go fuck a duck.  Seriously.  Last year, I was getting several big orders.  This year, I had one big one and everything is small things.  Even small things are great though, but folks just aren't spending their money.  They're holding onto it tightly because they don't know when things are going to suddenly break on their cars that they've duct taping and wishing along as pieces start rattling that really shouldn't rattle.

Hell, I know folks who are trading quarts of food they canned two years ago to shade tree mechanics to get their brakes fixed, oil changed, etc.  People are trading goods for services.   Which is a time-honored tradition by the way.  One that I fully practice whenever able.  To be honest, things are not going to be better economy wise.  There's too many bubbles, there's too many head in the sand and there's coming up probably a few years where you're going to want armed guards on the fields protecting crops.

Won't last for several years though, probably 3-6 at the most.  Americans are bred from incredibly hardy stock, from all over the world.  There's a very unique spirit there that after a time will shake itself clean and look around and go, "Oh hell.  This needs fixed, and this needs fixed...."  So they start fixing stuff in their own lives, which produces this gorgeous ripple effect.  It starts inspiring other folks to get off their asses and get work done.

Oops, there I go another tangent again... what was I talking about... oh yeah, the shop.   I'll be taking a decent number of pictures today of the paracord stuff.  There so much of it, they can literally be broken down by color.  Heck, I'll throw up a second post late today with everything in it.  Sound good?

Well, I'm done rambling for today.  Time for coffee and breakfast.  Ya'll have a great weekend okay?

Hey there...

....glad you stopped by. Come on in.  Hot Water on the stove if you'd like some tea.

There's been something rolling around in the back of my head for awhile now.  Let's talk about it.

Either late last year or early this year, I don't remember which, my mother told me about one of her residents at the nursing home she works at.  A doll of a lady.  Literally.  Apparently she was maybe 95 pounds. Maybe 5 foot.

She brought with her her organ, and was a mistress at playing it.  The thing that stuck out in my mind though was a small bit from one of the meals she had come down for, she was wearing according to my mother a very beautiful skirt.  When queried, she told my mother it was her depression skirt.

I just see the puzzled look my mother gave her.

"It's the skirt I made in the Depression."

...yes.... THE Depression.  The blessed woman was, IIRC, over 100.  Think about that for a few minutes.

A skirt she had made, probably in the early 30's.  That puts that skirt between 75 and 85 years old.  She probably hand sewed it.

It was still a beautiful skirt.  Can you just imagine what that looked like?

She was only the home for about a year I think.  She passed away this fall.  A few weeks after I had asked my mom if she could get a picture of her and her skirt.  (And yes, *THAT* thought did fly through my head, being the slightly superstitious wench that I am.  It didn't stay for long, but long enough to make me wince.)

This skirt and woman have been on my mind a lot.

She lived through an era where:

1. Money was practically worthless.
2. Material goods were of high value.
3. Everyone had gardens or knew someone who had a garden and they bartered with them, skills for goods.
4. Things were made to last.  Fabric wasn't as cheaply made, etc.

Folks survived the Depression because they innovated.

They relied on their skills.

They made due.

They were stubborn.

With each passing day, individuals who have decades of experience are slipping through our fingers.  Folks who were there for the Depression.  A treasure trove of a walking library.  One that preppers and survivalists are missing out on.

And their stories! Dear Gods can you imagine their stories!  All back before we were wired in like we are now.  

I really wish I could have might the Skirt Lady and shared a cup of tea with her.

Heads up

Crapp... where'd October go?

It's coming up on that time of the year where my orders for knit and crocheted stuff skyrocket.

You folks know you can buy handmade gifts year round right?  And that it really helps out the person making them?   Anyways...

After the gear article series is done on Blue Collar Prepping, I won't be doing weekly articles until January 15th, 2015.  There a few reasons this, one that I just spoke of in the upper paragraphs.

1) I have several orders for Christmas already, and the last day that I'm accepting custom work in order to get it out by December 16th is November 15th.  After that the custom options are getting shut off until January 15th.

2) I'm about on dry in terms writing material that I can crack out.  A large number of the articles I had done for BCP was due to the fact that I didn't feel like a large number of these prepping blogs where actually addressing things that were important... they were all doom and gloom. (Hey, one of the things you're going to have to keep an eye is depression and you stupid fucks writing all doom and gloom aren't helping, ya jackasses.)

Yes I've had some coffee this morning but not a full cup yet.  How can you tell?

So when I am back full in January, I will have more articles on skills that are a good idea to be known and understood if you want to be comfortable during hard times.  First series once back I'm planning on doing a break down of gardening and bits and pieces of information you may not know.

3) We are trying to get moved from California to Arizona.  This is proving to be a major stress factor for me because we have soooooooo many things that we need to straighten out first before we can move.

Hence why I'm focusing on the crochet orders as much as possible so that they are as good as I can make them, and keep setting up that reputation as a good crafter for myself.  This is because the Zibbet and Etsy store are my main sources of income, outside of the tiny bit that comes in from Amazon links.

This blog here will be maintained, but it'll mostly be just showing orders that I've managed to get done and probably cute video of puppies, kittens and other various animals doing adorable shit.  But it's going to be a tiny bit erratic.

Now it's entirely possible that I will get all my orders done by the 16th of December.  What am I going to do between then and my return date of January 16th?

Simple.

Chill.

I have books to read, to work on and a large amount of research to do for the next year's articles.  If I do this right, I'll end up with several months worth of material again.

And probably several more adventures along the way.

In the meantime...

BABY BURRO!

Seen near Lake Havasu.

Glorious

So yesterday was eight hours in the car.  We left, I chilled in the vehicle while he dealt with a court thing and then we grabbed some .22 and 45 and started driving.

This morning I wake up in a gloriously different place from LA.  Yeap, Arizona.

"How can Arizona be better that California?"

Ah my dears, that is because you might be forgetting that everyone has different priorities.  I'm a Witch, k?

Here in Arizona the vibe...it's the difference between stepping into cool water on a hot day and looking at dirty, muddy, been tramped in for weeks on end and knowing you can't get out of going in.  The latter being California.

The vibe is just better.  It's cleaner. It's less artificial feeling to me to be honest.  Plus there's constitutional carry.  ^_^

Now onto the gross bits...

Gross bit section begin:
An update on the ongoing project of using re-usable cotton pads.  Ever since I was started my periods, my right ovary has been the real cunt of the two.  Everything from when the cramps hit of collapsing at work and getting sent home to being violently ill for about four days.  My left one is not as bad.   Hell the left one is a little angel compared to this bitch of a right one. The left one about 75% only causes cramps for about a day and 100% of the time cravings for red meat.  (The rawer, the better!)

Well since using the cotton ones I made, the right one has been reduced from four days to two days.  This is a major improvement.

Another thing I've noticed is that the tissue lining (this is what you end up bleeding during the period) seems to be having an easier time of coming loose.  I've gone from 4-8 days of periods to 3-6.  Yes this means heavier periods, however that just in the first day or two.  This means I'm back on my feet and able to be fully productive again faster.

Read that last sentence again and understand that that is incredibly important to me.  If I'm not feeling close to 100%, I can't do my crochet work.... this leads to other problems.

End Gross Part

Another thing that has cropped up that is going to be crucial to address, is the fact that I have lost my familiarity with guns.  This pisses me off to no end.  Hence why grabbing a bit of 22 from storage and 45 was so damn important yesterday.

I'm one of the girls who used to work for Oleg Volk for fuck's sake, I knew guns and they were
merely objects.

Really fun to shoot objects, but pistols and rifles held no power.  Now, because of losing my familiarity with them...they bring back a few memories that I don't need.  Like the fact that one of my first firearms teachers was also treating me like a cumbucket ("You have no concept of how to easy on yourself do you?" Nope.) and was also one of my rapist when it was all said and done.  He was a lousy fucking teacher.  Can't handle shotguns because of it.  (Fuck him by the way.  Karma ain't done with him yet.)

This is going to be one of the harder projects to work on as I refuse to let this stand.  I will be pistol packing again full time once in Arizona full time and I'm not going to do it afraid.  I will not let something that helps me be able to walk unafraid of other piece of shit wanna be humans, be a fucking PTSD trigger.

I will not be afraid.

Fear is the mind killer....

Wear a Hat, to keep your ideas from escaping.

That was an old joke, I used to tell to my mother way back when I was a teenager.  I was always a baseball cap.  As in, I would pitch a fit come church days because I couldn't wear my hat.  (Looking back, I can honestly tell you that it was actually a means of hiding from people.)

However, it relates to something I'm dealing with now: Trying to keep from losing the dozens of ideas I get a week, either relating to crafting, magick or otherwise.  I've seriously wondered if I shouldn't start wearing that hat again.

I know better though.  It's not like I don't have this thing about collecting notebooks and journals and pens and sketchpads and drawing pencils and colored pencils.....(okay so actually I do, it's one of the stranger quirks that I don't have an explanation for right now.)

Recently I went down the rabbit hole of Irish Lace.  Great Danu, the ideas haven't stopped.

Now normally, when I'm doing a new design I just freehand it.  I don't have it written out (seriously the patterns I do have written down are a bit out of character for me, but a new habit that I need to keep working on).  I have a picture in my mind of the end product, and I start working from the basic stitches I know to get to that point.

However, I've been getting more and more ideas, to the point I have taken to rough sketching my ideas out.  I have to as I have too many ideas.

The same is happening with other lines of creative working I'm slowly trying to ease myself back into, like the writing.  I keep getting random ass ideas and am trying to get back into the habit of getting the bits and pieces written down.  I have this habit of getting four or five scenes of characters and a universe that are not in order. So I end up having to write them down and figure out the order they come in and what the blasted connecting story bits are.  

Anyways, with writing it out, sketching it out, the ideas are cementing themselves faster.  It's becoming easier to quickly design something in my head.  My sketches aren't pretty but they do the job and that's getting the basics of the idea out and on paper to where I can glance at them when I'm on dry for mojo.

So the ideas has slacked off in their escapes though I am concerned I will have points where I can't keep up with the number of ideas or won't be able to grab something to get out of my head in time while working on a larger project.  This tends to happen a lot.  Especially if I'm online doing class, every few weeks it seems my mind off goes like a shot in the opposite direction and every which way except where I need it to go.  Those are the days where three hours of classwork and lectures.... become six or eight.

Is okay though.  I don't mind, because now I've taken to doing online classes and giving my brain something to chew on besides just creative, I'm more creative.  I've been able to read more books. (Ack... I have more to read and review too!  Bad Evelyn.... Oye.)

Now, ideas in terms of this blog were a bit easier so here's the schedule I'm going to attempt.

Monday's will be a small article highlighting books with older skill sets or listings from Zibbit or just a quickie blurb of some kind.  Monday is when my weekly article for Blue Collar Prepping comes out, and it does seem that several of you come over and look here, so I want to give ya something on Mondays to peruse.

Then Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays will be whatever pops into my head.  I really don't have anything concrete right now that is a standard to talk about on here.  So I guess I should apologize for how random my blog is.  I have a very big range of things that I like and enjoy and hopefully there will be something for everyone.

Crochet Pattern: Re-Usable Women's Pads

I've been using these for over two months and decided it was nigh time to share the pattern I had gotten figured out.

This is a free pattern, that I'm sharing with you.  Please do not post this pattern as your own. If this looks a lot like a pattern you've seen before online, I'd like a link to that please.  I went hunting for a pattern like this back on this article and never found anything. If you decide to make and sell, please credit me.

If there are any problems with this pattern, please comment so that I can update either terminology or stitch count etc.

For your yarn I recommend using Lily Sugar'n Creme cotton and an F/3.75 hook.

Re-Usable Pads -
For heavy flows, make 2 ovals and one filler.
For medium flows, make 1 oval and one filler.
For light flows, make 1 oval.

Chain 24 foundation single crochet.

Row 1:
Chain 2 (does not count as hdc), 2 hdc in same stitch.  *1 hdc in next 22 stitches.*
In last stitch, 5 hdc to form the end. Repeat **.  3hdc in last stitch, slip stitch in first hdc to join.

Row 2:
Chain 2.
1 hdc in joining stitch. 2 hdc in next stitch.  *1 hdc in next 22 stitches*
On the end:
2 hdc in next stitch.  1 hdc in next stitch.  3 hdc in next stitch.  1 hdc in next stitch.  2 hdc in next stitch.
Repeat **.
On starting end: 
2 hdc in next stitch.  1hdc in next stitch.  3 hdc in next stitch.  Slip stitch join in first hdc.

Row 3:
Chain 2.  1 hdc in joining stitch and next stitch.  2 hdc in next stitch.  * 1 hdc in next 23 stitches*
On the end:
2 hdc in next stitch. 1 hdc in next three stitches. 3hdc in next stitch. 1 hdc in next three stitches. 2 hdc in next stitch.
Repeat **.
On starting end:
2 hdc in next stitch.  1 hdc in next 3 stitches. 3 hdc in next stitch. 1 hdc in next stitch. Slip stitch join into first hdc.

Last Row:
Chain 1, sc in each stitch all the way around, slip stitch join in first sc, fasten off and weave in ends.

Filler layer:
Chain 21 single crochet foundation

Row 1:
Chain 1, 1 sc in all stitches to end, chain 1 and turn.

Row 2:
Repeat row 1 until same width as ovals.

Assembly Notes:
Use a yarn needle and put two lines of stitching in the middle of the center stitch and edges.  Do not sew the edges shut as when you wash them, they won't be able to dry properly without the air flow.

"How does it stay it place?"
You can crochet simple ties using chain stitch, or even make wings. Fastening them with buttons or snaps.  That's up to you.