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?

More Odds and Ends...

I do believe I'm on the upswing from the bummed out episode of the beginning of the month.  Which is a good thing considering the amount of work that I'm tackling in terms of the crochet and knitting orders.  However that means I'll be cutting time online in many ways.

Outside of my music addictions that is...

I've noticed I get a weird kind of lonely.  Like not for a lot of company but one particular person's company.  Yeah him.  Heh, what do you expect?  I love him and we help each other stay happy.

Down side is I have 19 pages to type up (which are handwritten and it translates that three handwritten pages usually equal one typed page... unless you're one of those people with small and neat handwriting which in that case go fuck off.... I hate you....)

Some people are able to force themselves to write and you can't tell the difference between the forced writing and the parts that they wrote in a fit of inspiration that lasted almost all day, and yielded blah-k number of words.  Me... I can't do that.  My muse will give me weird looks when she's feeling writing lazy but wants to crochet.  Or when she wants to write and I want to crochet.

My muse is a multitask-er.  She likes that I can do many different creatives things.  She gets frustrated when I have to remind her I only have two arms. Trust me, I'd love to have two sets.  One doing the yarn work and one typing furiously down all the blasted ideas that roll through my head.

Oh to be Pilot...

I'm actually hoping that once we get the desktop built, I can get one of those write as you speak softwares.  That would make a lot of things easier because I could be on the couch working on the next project and when an idea hits, I can just start talking but keep working.  Being able to do both at once....

Hey a woman can dream can't she?  =D

Also, one more thing.  Yesterday, I grabbed up the The Giver series Omnibus.  The trailers had intrigued me so I grabbed it up.  At least once a month, I have to read a book.  Else the brain fog like I was experiencing earlier this week, just gets worse and it gets harder to get what I need to, done.

It was a pleasant read.  Four books though in six hours time is... well.... I'm a fast reader.  It's just how it is.  However, do not read the books and then see the movie.  You will be pissed.  The trailer has given me enough indications that the movie will be identical in name, character names and maybe a few elements of the story line.  THAT'S IT.

I'm a bit disgusted that the author didn't put her foot down more when they bought the rights for a movie.  There is a good story there, but the fucktards of H-town fucked it up big time.  If you're interested in the Giver series, click that link up there and it'll take you to the Omnibus, which is a better buy than all four separately.

Prototypes: They are a must!

A long long time ago, in what seems like another dozen lifetimes ago, a woman taught her eldest daughter how to crochet, and a few years later how to read a pattern.  Then after about a decade and a half, that now grown daughter began to freehand her patterns.

Yeap, I was probably around 6-8 years old when my mom took those first steps of introducing me to the world of crochet.

It was simple things at first.  Afghans and hats. Yes, actually afghans are incredibly easy and when they get to a certain size, you can curl up underneath of your work during the cooler months of the year.  I really really like making afghans and shawls.

In the last couple of years, I've stepping outside of the pattern books.  When I moved home with my parents for a time again, I was still struggling with being able to find a big enough comfort zone to be able to work a "normal" job again.  *shudder*

I had already been crocheting constantly at that point as it was an incredibly good coping mechanism for what I was going through. One day I got froggy, and decided that I was going to make a crocheted coat.

I had a large amount of yarn as well that I was trying to get used up, but this prototype was an incredibly important step in my creative endeavors.  I proved to myself that I could design something when I put myself into it.

Now I learned several lesson from this particular prototype:

1. Measure, measure, measure!  Especially the armholes.  The sleeves were massive on this thing.  Way too big for a lean critter like myself.

2.  Always double check my sleeve placements.  The sleeves on this piece were almost two inches, too far back.

3.  The neck was too small almost.  From this coat to the next one I made, the front pieces were made more narrow as I worked my way to the shoulders.  This allowed for the hood to fit better, and gave the next piece a very nice sculpted look.  I really wish I had taken a picture of it, but it was a late order that year and it needed to go out.

4. As you can see from the front of this, the bottom was almost too narrow.  It really doesn't sit well anywhere.  This lead to me making the bottom part a couple inches wider than the person's hips and once above the hips, taking it in just a couple of stitches.

5.  On the next coat, I learned the lesson of "Don't be afraid of an extra wide edging."

This summer I've ended up with three coat orders, and will be documenting their progress and if any new lessons are added to the ones above.  Two sized mediums and one size small.  I did the small one first, because that's my size and I can get better pictures of these coats now.

Without having done this prototype, I wouldn't have ever even considered making coats, nor would I be anywhere near where I am currently in my skills and the things I can offer as a crafter.

I have a large amount of scrap yarn ("Gee really?") that I use to test stitch styles before committing them to a project.  Color test swatches have also entered my toolbox so that I can get the colors right before I start work.

This prototype coat, I did in what's called a Shell Stitch and in Double Crochet stitches.  As you can see, it looks good... but not great. I wasn't pleased at all with how it wanted to droop because of how loose the fabric had ended up being.  It was too inclined towards stretching and didn't mold to a body properly.   These days, I use the very simple Half-Double Crochet stitch.

It creates an amazing look, gives the work a stiffer fabric and molds better.  Instead of drooping... it drapes. Almost all of my work that I present now via the shop, was preceded by a prototype. In some cases, several prototypes.

If you've not considered using prototypes in your work before (whatever your work might be), I would highly recommend trying the process out.  I do prototypes with even my cooking these days.  =)

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.