Greetings, all! Been some time, as usual, although it's tripped by rather quickly for me.
I've been a little more active over on Facebook, and done some updating on Etsy (including making not-yet-live listings for larger items like custom gambesons and cotehardies)... still some more organizing to do, and I really should work on descriptions and pictures some more, but I dropped prices on most of my inventory, and really polished up my tags. The result is that I've finally reached a point where I'm getting a steady, passive trickle of views independent of my posting, which is AWESOME. I mean, it's only about 6-12 views per week on Facebook, and 30-40 per week on Etsy, but it's enough to indicate that I'm gaining an audience outside of friends politely clicking on what I've posted.
Deeplight went really well this time around, too! I sold a whole three things (albeit one of those things was bought by the event organizer to give away in the end-of-game raffle), which admittedly is not a lot, but still! Sales! It's a slow pickup in momentum, and that's nice to see. Plus, my event shop is getting more refined and inviting, so just setting it up and seeing my stuff look like stuff in a store is a major morale booster all by itself.
I've been logging some time in the sewing room, although not as much as I'd like, and not necessarily on any salable products. Most notably, I've built some improvements TO said sewing room. My ironing board cover had reached such a state of skankiness that I was hesitant to iron anything light-colored on it... upon closer inspection, I discovered that the padding was basic high-density foam which had started to break down, and that there wasn't any sort of heat- or moisture-resistant barrier between it and the whimsical kitty outer layer. So I took it apart and made a new one out of the proper materials, the outer layer of which is covered in handsome little owls sitting amongst pumpkins. I've also been working on a cover for my dress form, partly to make it pretty and mostly to bridge the gaps between the adjustable panels. I, of course, decided to make this project extra complicated by choosing the most difficult to match fabric in existence... it's covered in scattered overlapping star maps. The design is HUGE, and also delicate, so laying out each panel of the pattern is like a treasure hunt, trying to find a point where it repeats so I can get the maps to line up across the seams (which also means it's taking at least three times as much yardage to make as the muslin). It will be beautiful when it's done, but until then, it's a giant pain in the butt that I need to occasionally step away from so I don't go mad and attempt to murder the dress form.
In other news, I'm teaching myself to play the ukelele, as I threatened in my previous blog! I didn't buy my own ukelele with my tax return, as I had hoped (due to a calendar derp resulting in failure to cancel my Ancestry subscription in time... love the service, but DAMN is it expensive), but a friend of mine just happened to have a very nice one he never has time to practice with, which he lent to me as soon as he discovered I wanted to learn. I have the most amazing friends. After practicing about a week, I can almost play recognizable renditions of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" and Queen's "We Will Rock You" (the latter, by the way, sounds incredibly sad when played on ukelele), and I can barely feel the fingertips of my left hand.
Finally, I'm getting ready to launch myself into trying this whole "grad school application" thing again. I figure if I start NOW, I'll be able to come up with an essay that will actually be worth something, despite my out-of-the-loop-ness. The plan is to basically write a short test run of my eventual thesis, which at this point I'm calling a cross-disciplinary study of Postmodern and Classical Greek theatre in performance with the goal of creating an accessible mode for reviving plays of both genres and creating stage-ready adaptations of fragmentary works. If you could even halfway understand that sentence, congratulations! You're my kind of nerd, and may be able to help me. Right now, my biggest challenge is figuring out where to start. I think my first step is to read up on Buchner? Also, lots of Greeks, although it probably won't be at all helpful to Read ALL The Plays. And Brecht will be important, although I'll need to lean towards performance theory rather than his actual plays. Basically, if you guys could help me populate a reading list, point me towards links to performances, stuff like that? That would be SO AMAZING. I will love you forever. Especially if you happen to know where I can find any relevant academic work, so I don't have to reinvent the wheel for my initial research.
Hope to hear from you, and (as usual) hopefully I'll be better at posting!
P.S.: I've taught myself to knit. It is a nice, simple
task, good for puttering at while watching TV after Day Job-work, but it
still qualifies as Making A Thing and keeps me from getting down about a
lack of sewing room productivity. Also, fuzzy!
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