Amigo, Eyeball, Wiggle

It's warm enough that I can keep my curtains closed and not need fleece socks, warm enough that by two in the afternoon the sun cooks my workshop (it seems that I call dibs on the ovens of every house I live in). The heat reminds me of the coming summer season, the sleepless, sewing season that lends itself to puffy-eyeballed, zombied allnighters every Friday. I've been imagining myself being a person that doesn't do that anymore. I've been imagining sleeping deliciously each market eve. I've also been busy planning and lying frigid with procrastinative fears of utter failture. This is great. So great. It means there might be a person inside of me who wants to do things when reward or punishment isn't instant. 

Here are some new things happening with Very Small Shoes this year: 

• Change of business name! Very Small Shoes has been shortened from Very Small Shoes for Very Small Humans. It's been changed online, anyway. The business cards still read the unabridged name for hilarity. 
• Beginning small-batch production and phasing out old one-of-a-kind-only creation model. The last few years, I've been forging neural connections allowing me to shift from a hobbyist business to an actual business. I'd buy basically scraps of material to craft a pair of shoes, maybe two, and then I'd say goodbye to that shoe forever. This led to me feeling pretty attached to the damn shoes, leading me to feeling severely underappreciated and lots of days would be pity-parties about how lonely I was with my unrequited shoe affair. It also led to a difficult maintenance process for my online shop. I've broken up with the shoes, enough to consider creating items that I love and want to make more of for greater indulgence. I was afraid for several years that this would lead to me not giving a whit about my biz, but it's allowed for me to stop leaking tears all over the place, allowed for more freedom, and it's allowed for me to see the difference between creation for work and creation for pleasure. 

It's so stinkin hard to be my own boss. All day, I ask myself, "If I was working for me, would I consider myself to be working efficiently or wasting company time?" and then I go eat a muffin to distract myself from myself.

I'm working on fabric designs and block prints for cards. Lots of days I love the fabrics I work with, but some days I am mired in the fact that despite my love of drawing, none of my items have my own designs. This evening, I ordered a sample of my first fabric design. Wahoo! I feel a buzz of good feels about it. 

• Tags! My items have labels on them now! 

It seems like. No. It feels like. No. I am not a person who has good feels flowing all the time. Most of the time. Hardly do I really feel good feels, in fact, and I've been considering why the hell that is. It's as though I'm in a permastate of quasi-depression, but I don't find it depressing, it's my normal. However, some days I walk down the street and crave to speak to any stranger I see, and I do. Some days I feel really fucking okay about existing, and some days I even want to talk to my own friends. I'm finding that the more control I'm willing to let go of in my business, the more reckless I can run down the street. 

Oh, I also just got alien Vibram shoes, and also some white leather shoes with polka dots. Maybe the footwear has something to do with the recent bout of good feels. I've also been binge-watching Girls, recommended to me by my sister, and working on a web series, spending a few hours by myself each week to sew alone and/or be a coffeeshop auditory creep, wearing very soft, worn-down socks with holes all over and showering a few times a week and reading late late at night. 

The printer from hell went back to where it came from and now I need a new one. My camera can't take photos without one million grains of grit unless I'm outside, so drats to my lightbox. However, my spawn is very enjoyable and communicative. 

Favorite words: 

mango, amigo, flamingo, corn, bean, juice, dinosaur, wiggle, money, boot, noggin, color, eyeball

Zoo time with nugget.

We'll be out of town for the first two weeks of March, during which time we'll be driving across the country to Florida, where I will be cutting out ten dillion pieces of fabric to sew into goodies when we return. Shop will be closed, and it will reopen again March 15. 

The end.