One of THOSE Days...

...sweet fuck a doodle doo, today was one of THOSE days.

I get out of bed, pee, and feed the cats like I always do. Nothing unusual there, until Lulu decides to go on top of the cabinets... AND PUKES. ON TOP. OF. THE CABINETS. Where I cannot reach unless I climb on top of the fridge, which was just not on my to do list. (And probably won't be, ever.) I wound up putting a very sturdy styrofoam box on top of the arm chair next to the fridge, and used my wooden practice katana (I'm not sure why I still have it either), after wrapping it in paper towels and taping them at the base, to literally wipe/pull the puke pile towards me, so I could reach it and clean it up.

Okay, after that I deserve a fucking smoothie, right? Knowing that my fella accidentally got me coffee flavored kefir at the store, I decide to go whole hog with it, and brew coffee to mix in with a tiny bit of cream and sugar, as well as some ice.

I can honestly say that was the NASTIEST FUCKING SHIT I have EVER PUT IN MY MOUTH. One mouthful, and it didn't even get the opportunity to hit my gag reflex. Spewed it out into the sink, and the entire contents of the blender soon followed.

Fortunately, I still had some coffee left, so I drank it, somewhat ruefully. I finished putting together a yarn order, wrote a letter to my sister, packed everything up, and got ready to leave. Realizing it was absolutely pouring out, I put my hoodie on, wrapped both letter and box in a plastic bag, and headed out. Blessedly, this process was uneventful, though soggy.

Upon exiting the post office, I decided to stop across the street at the market to get some more fruits and veggies and UNFLAVORED kefir. By this time, it's not just pouring... it is raining goddamn oceans. I mean, fucking BUCKETS are just coming down non stop. So I get what I need, totally scoring a whole bunch of awesome produce and kefir for a measly $12.81, and start home in the pouring rain. By the time my three heavy bags and I get home, my cotton hoodie weighs approximately 3495356456 pounds and my jeans at least half that. (Both are still soaking wet, and it's been 12 hours now.)

While putting everything away except for the stuff going right into my smoothie, I realize the right hand bulb in the range hood over the stove has burnt out. OF COURSE. So I decide to switch sides with the remaining good bulb, so that I can have more light to wash dishes by. I wrapped a paper towel around the bulb because it was still hot, and while trying to match the end of the bulb into the socket... THE BULB DISAPPEARS INTO THE RANGE HOOD. This was not a thing I had considered at all. At this point, I cracked up laughing, nearly burst out crying, and just flat out WAILED my feelings on the matter to the world at large. I did not even know it was possible to lose a bulb in there like that. I did manage to get it out though, burning myself slightly in the process, and got it properly screwed into the socket. Unfuckingbelievable.

At that point, I was done with today. So done. Apparently, I wasn't the only one having a day, though- it seems everyone around me did, too. I've since decided to just declare it a learning day- I learned a new use for a wooden katana, learned coffee kefir tastes like Satan's rancid shitbox, learned that one should be careful when replacing bulbs on a range hood, and subsequently, though not previously mentioned, learned that you should PROBABLY peel kiwis before putting them in a blender, as drinking them otherwise afterwards will irritate your lips considerably.

I did manage to finish plying some lovely beaded yarn tonight though, and also spun two small skeins of real hand spun, not recycled yarn. The day, therefore, was not totally lost.

I'm gonna go to bed now, and cross my fingers that tomorrow is not a repeat of today. Uh uh uhhhh. 

Weight Loss Update

I'm down 10 pounds already, WOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!! This whole "drink a bunch of fruits, nuts, veggies and kefir" thing is working out pretty damn well. I mean, that's ALL I have until dinner, and I'm not generally hungry. Staying busy and active really helps too, to distract me from food. And, not to get all TMI, but I'm greatly amused at the change in my doody. (Yes, I'm 5, shut up.) It's mostly very fluffy and loose, and not only that, my heartburn issues are still gone. Right this minute, I'm enjoying a big ol' mug of blueberry tea with lemon juice in it, and I'm not suffering painful burps or acid reflux. I REALLY LOVE having lemon juice in my tea, so this is super!

What I'm REALLY proud of, is that I came up with this all on my own, based on what my body told me it wanted. It's good to listen to what your body needs sometimes. (Of course, using common sense and intellect is a must. My body also tells me it wants to eat 4984950 pounds of sushi every fucking day, but even if my budget allowed, I'd know that is not a great idea.) I didn't even ask my fella, who is an expert on all things nutritional and fitness related, because I knew he'd pooh pooh the idea as some stupid diet fad or whatever. I went ahead and did it, no approval or validation needed, just let my body tell me what it really wanted for once, as opposed to me trying to impose what I've been told it needs to lose weight. All those really delicious looking healthy recipes and food photos I see on the fitspiration sites? Yeah, I tried those, and they don't work for me. I need a serious calorie reduction without it feeling like a serious calorie reduction. Smoothies are still fun and tasty and exciting to me. And, bonus, my fella is actually getting into them too... despite the fact that I make them without the cream and sugar that he prefers.

Ok, off to sleep now. Past my bedtime, but I was working on my Park Ave cardigan (free Ravelry pattern!) and wanted to get up to the part where I put the sleeves on scrap yarn. Also had major catching up to do with Law & Order SVU. Still not caught up, but WHEW the first episode of this season was a DOOOOZY! I had to actually force myself to watch it though, because I'm still on business mode 24/7 and wanted to keep digging into the world of content marketing. Sundays, though, I've decided are my day OFF from all things work related. I broke that rule all day long, but I figured I had to draw the line at SOME point. Maybe I'll have cool dreams again tonight. Last night, the Pope bought Czechoslovakia (I know, it no longer exists, but it did in my dream!) and I found out through an old friend who was channeling a spirit or something, I dunno. And then she read a message from the fairies in the freckles on the back of my arm, and we had to run somewhere. There was rain. and many strange diners in trailers involved. And we had to be wherever we were going at 8:04 pm. Yeeeeahhhh. Ok bye!

Shop Update & Stuff

Well, to keep up with the shop stuff, you can go here, as I'm updating regularly now. And there will be more free patterns.

When I went into Manhattan the other day, I decided to skip Michael's and confined my trip to Dick Blick on Bond St, to get soda ash and urea, and then I walked up to 23rd to Goodwill pick up some sweaters for transforming purposes. I've decided to no longer get the majority of my dyeing supplies from Dharma unless I need to, as the shipping costs are way more expensive than round trip subway fare. Plus, it's instant gratification.

I don't know if I mentioned it the other day, but I've started to make smoothies for myself every day when I wake up. All kinds of fruit and veggies with whatever strikes my fancy, often with kefir. The marvelous thing is that my heartburn issues have suddenly mostly disappeared! I don't know if it's the kefir or that drinking food is easier on my completely fucked up digestive system, but whatever it is, I'm grateful for it. Hopefully it'll mean easier weight loss too... which reminds me, I need to ask my fella how accurate his weights are. The ones I lift should be 7.5 pounds, yet they register at 8.6 on my scale... which could mean I'm 1.1 pounds lighter than I think. I would not complain about the latter, juuuuust sayin'.

I'm still exhausting myself every day by doing what I love. Best feeling ever at the end of every day. I don't have any problems getting to sleep, and I love waking up each morning. (Morning being a relative term, as I'm naturally somewhat nocturnal. I usually wake between 11 am-1pm.) I'm devouring information on business strategies, learning what foreign sounding terms and acronyms mean in both definition and practice, and whether they're something that works in the context of an Etsy shop or if they're something that's best applied to an independent website. I'm bursting with creative ideas for both marketing strategies and patterns to offer. Still working on time management though. There's always a space and a lag between one thing to another. I get lost looking at facebook, or digging through my iTunes, or even purposefully procrastinating if I know I'm going to have to get clothes on to go somewhere. And... despite learning tons of valuable information, I have yet to truly apply any of it. I've got to make time for that this weekend, but not now. My brain is slowly fading and it's totally bedtime soon.

Here's hoping that tomorrow, the scale reveals a smaller number, and my bank account a larger one!

If At First You Don't Succeed...

...and you don't succeed the next time, but you REALLY WANT something, you have to stick with it and stuff.

I REALLY want to lose the extra pounds. So this time I'm REALLY sticking with the weight lifting, even though I lost all the progress I made last time, I'm changing my eating habits, and I'm being more active in general. This is as of three days ago, so results have yet to be seen. But! I've decided to reward myself with each ten pounds lost by plying up a skein of this lovely rainbow and black cotton tape yarn I've dyed- it was originally the ugliest shade of off white you could ever imagine, and I had an entire brand new cone of it! It's wayyy too thin to knit garments with by hand, as it would take forever- so I decided to chain ply it.

The chain ply looks a little sloppy in the last picture because it was, but a good soaking and thwacking evened it out very nicely, and it's currently drying. So this skein marks the start of the journey- ten pounds lost, and I'll do another. By the time all six are done, it will mean that I'm down to my goal weight of 130 or so. And, given that I'll have about 3000 yards of this by the time I'm done, perhaps I'll even knit myself a goddamn dress!

As far as my business is going, things are really wonderful. My repeat customer can't seem to get enough of my cotton yarns, and I've picked up two other strangers along the way, one of whom left me a GLOWING review, and the other is getting her package shipped out tomorrow. I've got some supply buying to do, as I'm almost out of soda ash and I'm completely out of urea, which means no cotton dyeing for a while. I haven't had time yet to fully implement the strategies I learned about and took such careful notes on- but I'll get to it soon. Time management is something I need to get better about. I've been so busy making yarn that I've been neglecting social media and blogging again. My goal is to post on the business page a minimum of  2x a day... and I've been barely doing that in a week! Instagram is something I hardly look at anymore, and while I did manage to get a re-pin on Pinterest, I've been neglecting that hardcore too. I've really got to set aside about 2 hours a day for this stuff. While I'm incredibly grateful to have one loyal customer, I need to get my yarn out there more because I know my yarn is flippin' awesome and I could have MANY more loyal customers, if I could just get them to know I exist. I'm really interested in learning about SEO and algorithms and all that jazz. Although sometimes I feel a little pessimistic because my yarn is such a niche item, I know that in time, if I persevere, I will be really, really successful. My yarn is too sweet to fail.

I've been making it a habit lately to pay extra attention to the things I'm grateful for. Random things during the day that I appreciate- a Van Morrison song, petting my cats, cooler weather, food, etc- I take time to really enjoy and be thankful for. There is absolutely no fucking reason to whine and complain and make problems where there are none. Why be miserable when you can be happy? Why let other people's behavior affect who you are? I am working on learning to respond, rather than to react, when I need to respond at all. Ok, sure, so going to the store down the street today and witnessing some absolutely rude, oblivious shit going on around me made me a bit homicidal, but I'm still wrestling with letting stuff like that affect me. It's just that it seems like SUCH BASIC STUFF that people should know- like moving aside when someone says "Excuse me," or not letting your toddler scream at feral cats and scare them off, or if you're a cashier, responding when someone says HELLO and THANK YOU. My solution to this at the moment is the same as it's ever been, which is to not go out during the day at all when I can help it. Anything I need to buy in the neighborhood, I can usually get 24 hours a day. Unfortunately, tomorrow I NEED to go into Manhattan to buy more sweaters and stitch marker supplies. I'll steel myself for it. It'll probably be good for me anyway, to get out a little. I'm reaching real hermit status these days, unless going to the post office a few times a week to ship out orders counts.

Oh! I don't know why that reminds me, but it does- I've decided to just stop dyeing my hair altogether. I had originally thought I might just dye it in increasingly lighter shades of brown, until I got back to blonde, but ain't nobody got time for that. I just plain don't even care that much about how my blonde roots are going to look growing out (they're already at a questionable point right now) and it's hat season anyway. I've got a ton of really cute hats I've knit that I never wear. Now is as good a time as any, I guess!

Annnddd... that's it, that's all I can type. I am so goddamn tired right now. It's so satisfying though, being able to end each day knowing that I exhausted myself because I was doing work that I love and I'm stark raving passionate about. I feel like I'm doing exactly what I need to be doing, and it's exactly what I want to be doing, and it's only getting better every day. Thank you to the universe, to the all, to my higher self, to divinity external and internal. I recognize and accept the blessings already received and yet to come, and I will continue to strive upward each and every day.

Metaphysical Explorations, and Better Business...

Well, I apparently didn't mention it in my last post- I guess it happened after I posted- but I got my first stranger sale! As in, a stranger bought my yarn. And then... this past weekend... the same lady bought TWO MORE SKEINS! I was positively giddy, but at the same time I really need to get my product out to more people. I know it's good, she knows it's good... other people need to know it's good. I'm finding more places to promote, which is important, and more potential customers.

As far as metaphysical stuff goes, I've been exploring the Law of Attraction lately, and it's already making a huge difference in how I've been feeling towards my shop and my business. I'm going to re-open Magick Cat Knits, and sell non recycled yarn items that I've made there. I'm going to be selling recycled yarn items that I've knit in MCSS. I'm definitely a lot more motivated and inspired, and it's showing. I FINALLY updated my shop blog. I feel much more creative, and that's incredibly important. I'm even putting together a book! (It's a commentary on society.) The most important thing here though, is not to give up. I know a business isn't built, and results don't always show themselves, overnight. I've always been a bit of a late bloomer with certain things, and this seems to be one of them. I tend to learn from experience, which means there's usually a lot of trial and error involved. But I'm more than willing to learn!

I mean, I just baked my first ever fucking PIE this past weekend, and it was AWESOME.

I know, that was a total non sequitur. But... it was a really good cherry pie. I made everything from scratch. No canned filling or pie crust mix for me! It was made in a celebration of the cooler weather. I really love Autumn.

OK, I've got a bunch of knitting and plotting and what not to do, so I'm signing off. Later!