blissmorgan: (good morning)
 Precious few minutes this morning, and I am choosing to spend those which remain with you.

Yesterday was a rarey day off - no work, and the children at school, and SALM at work, and so I granted myself leave to sit in my chair and watch Blacklist in marathon mode while, stopwatch app running to keep track of my time, I finished a blanket that I had been commissioned to make. I'd already done the pattern once before, but this time I added a border as well, which made a world of visual difference IMO in terms of giving it a really "finished" look. It is the size of a throw:

     


Finishing the blanket made me nervous because the commissioner agreed to buy it not actually knowing what the final price would be, only that it would require me to time myself and that I charge $20/hour for most of my fiber arts work (which, considering that I have over 30 years' experience, might be undercharging, but eh. ::le shrug::). I finished, took pictures, sent them, and they were effusively excited. Then I let them know how many hours it had taken to make, and how much they owed outstanding after accounting for the down payment they had already sent. They went silent. For over an hour. I hate that silence. It is one of the loudest, and most uncomfortable silences, for me. I resisted the urge to fill that silence with offerings of any kind of discounting.

When they messaged me again, it was to let me know they had sent the money. ::falls down:: I'm still not used to people understanding and appreciating the huge difference between a handmade item and something they would pick up at the store, and being willing and able to pay for that amount of work and care. It is both one of the great and terrible things of a highly industrialized society that prices are so low. Great, because it means so many people have access to so many needful things. Terrible because the idea of what a thing "should cost" can get so skewed because we are used to the pricing of things mass-produced, and so unique and handcrafted items seem to be too expensive in comparison, rather than accurately priced for what they are.

I have an additional skein of this yarn on hand, and am making a scarf in the same pattern, albeit with the dragonflies offset. I made a short scarf with the remainder yarn and someone called dibs within five minutes of me posting pictures of it, and paid me so promptly my hair blew back.

Here is my face for no reason other than that I am feeling cute today, and therefore it makes me cranky that my webcam is so shoddy as to not even really pick up my hair.


Alas, you cannot smell me through this picture, which is truly your loss. I plucked a bottle at random from the collection today and came up with Spiked Nog Nutmeg from Solstice Perfumes. I smell gorram delicious.

There was more I wanted to write about, like the Spawn and a tornado project, but alas. I must be off.

Hello, Blisstopia.<3

blissmorgan: (good mornthing)
The morning has run away from me, but I think I've spent it well enough.

Last night, Secret Agent Lover Man and I stayed up quite late, watching some of the second season of <i>Big Mouth</i> on Netflix. It continues to be hilarious, and continues to be wholly inappropriate for real life children of the same age as the make-believe cartoon children on whom the show centers. I brought up to him that someone recently commented that today's children are so lucky they have <i>Big Mouth</i> to help them understand much of the ins and outs of puberty, but that was a comment with which I quite disagree. It is a show that is hilarious to those of us who have already gone through puberty, because we are past it. It's nostalgic and sort of... balloons and exaggerates the entire experience. It's not informative for kids going through it, not in a helpful, healthy way.

But yeah, funny as hell for a grownup, though.

Last night and this morning I have been making a lot of progress on the shawl I have been working on. It's a simple pattern with a four-row repeat, and in the yarn I've chosen and with the hook size I am using it is coming out beautifully - I am very much looking forward to finishing it and taking pictures.

I am more motivated to get it finished, now, than I had been, because a new project is on the rapidly-approaching horizon. I made that dragonfly-pattern blanket that I posted a picture of a few days ago, for materials and my time gratis, for a friend of my mother's. Someone saw it and reached out to me to commission one for herself, and so I had to do that detestable dance of price-setting, because I didn't really expect to be making others of this blanket and so I did not track the time it took me to make it. This commissioner is insisting on paying properly for my time, and so I am working hard to not undercut myself. They sent more than enough money up front for the materials, and I will be timing myself and giving them an accounting thereof when the blanket is finished. And I'm prepared to give them a discount anyway if it's steeper than they expected.

Eldest's best friend slept over last night, and I am positively vibrating with stress. Two thirteen-year-olds and a twelve-year-old. They all amp each other up, feeding off one another's energy to a peak. They're all doing so much better than they were three years ago, or even a year ago, but they are not to a point where I can just leave them be for an entire evening - they still require regular intervention for loudness, for cussing, for throwing things or getting physical. This means I have to stay close enough to hear when intervention is required. This means I am on edge with their amped energy even when it is happy energy, waiting for it to go south.

Sometimes weekends are the least restful time.



Later, I go shopping for the yarn. Right now, I work on finishing this shawl. And thinking about my NaNo story. I might write notes and try actual planning/plotting this year.

Hello, Blisstopia.<3
blissmorgan: (knitting)
 At the request of a friend of my mom's, I made a throw blanket. Normally I don't make things for people on request unless monies are changing hands, but this was a special case, and she picked out and sent me the yarn that she wanted it made from. The colorway of the yarn, like the motif of the blanket, was called Dragonfly:

She loves it. And it is good.
blissmorgan: (yarn)
 I just learned how to do Tunisian Crochet.

Oh nooooooooo

now I am in love with tunisian crochet

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