Yeah, but still.

Not much going on today. I am too lazy or too depressed or too unfocused to upload the picture of the gloves, although I did discover the difficulty inherent in a right-hand-dominant person taking a picture of a glove that in on one's own right hand.

My insomnia seems to peak during one of two times of the year. I think we're in that time now. Twice this week I have laid down to sleep and gotten up 45 minutes or so later. Last night I got to sleep on my second try, around 4:30am.

I have been writing some during these times, though. I've barely been able to put a sentence together in the last year but I've written a few pages of dialogue and notes and such. I have a couple things gestating; it's been too full of a year to be able to process much until now.

I think that I also, for the most part, hate theater people. This might be (probably is) nasty emotional detritus left over from this spring, but still*. Mr. ARS once told me that, in his opinion, I wasn't an actor at all, but a writer. Keep in mind that he never saw me act, although he had a great deal of respect for me as a writer if not as an actor (or a person). Anyway, I have an awful fear that, ultimately, this will prove true, and I am sick with the notion that I will never perform again. However, I have been toying with the idea that, maybe, I'm a solo artist, and that's all it is. I don't play well with others**. Not that I'm an utter social maladroit. Merely a partial one.

Or I could just be in a complete funk (read: depressed) on account of the recent bout with not leaving the house, which in turn is on account of the high winds and flooding rains of the past two days. It's dark all the time.

But I did get paid! I did a nice custom order for a lady in Chicago: an over-elbow pair of fingerless gauntlets (hand-dyed, fair-trade Suri alpaca, vintage buttons and ribbon) for her 22-year-old daughter's Hanukkah and received her check and thank-you note today. She purposefully overpaid me, as well. That made me feel a hell of a lot better; apparently I am not yet completely worthless in the eyes of American capitalism!

Man, I gotta ease up on myself.


*James maintains that "yeah, but still" is the ultimate end to an unwinnable argument, the final, desperate gambit when you know you have been proved wrong but are just too contrary to admit it. It is a common phrase in our household.

**This is an awful pun. I'm sorry. Completely unintentional.

Oh, fiddlesticks.

I have no idea what some of the links on this blog go to.

Has it been so long?

Can't remember a thing.

I need some...ginkgo...or something...

Arson, gussets, and my boyfriend, the Luddite.

James and I had our first Xmas tree. Naturally, since it was our first Xmas together! Yay team us!



We got it at the Market; tiny, tiny tree! About 4 ft. tall, and we carried it home on the bus.

And, in what is sure to be an annual tradition, we burnt it after New Year's Day.

I wish that I had been less panicked when it went up because I would have loved to capture on film the twelve-foot flames that shot up when James lit a Lysol plume into the dry branches. However, panic we both did; I screamed, "Put it out! Use this!"

Fifteen minutes before the ceremonial burning commenced James had found an old fire extinguisher under the kitchen sink. I assumed that it wasn't good any more (they go bad, right?) and discounted it. But James, investigating it for the (missing, as we will discover presently) safety pin, accidentally shot the extinguisher off straight at the window. Our kitchen suddenly exploded in sweet and slightly carcinogenic-smelling white powder.

I mentioned he was drunk, yes? No?

So it was the (now confirmed) fire extinguisher that I rushed out the kitchen door to James, which he used with drunken gusto. Darby, our next-door neighbor, walked by on the street, twenty feet away.

"You guys need some help there?"

"Uh, no...we're good. We're fine."

Humans fear fire. I don't know if he and his girlfriend will come over to drink with us again.

Anticipating calamity (and rightly so), James and I had prepared a couple pots of water on the kitchen counter. We doused the remaining flames and vowed to do this stupid, not smart, very bad thing again next year. A new tradition born!

James cleaned the kitchen, too, apologizing profusely. He then told me that the same thing had happened years ago with his father (who looks and sounds like Fat Elvis), right in front of him. But with a gun.

I told him that I didn't want guns in my house. Funny, I never had a problem with them before.

So that was my Monday.

In less flammable news, today (Wednesday!) I taught myself how to knit thumb gussets! For non-sartorialists, that's the fancy term for the widening of a glove in preparation for the thumb part. It was so easy that I don't know why I never did it before. Anyway, I now can make actual fingerless gloves instead of just tubes with holes in them for your thumbs, which are dumb and don't keep you warm. For some reason when I wear "gloves" like that, it seems like 99% of the heat I lose through my hands is through my thumbs. Anyways, this first pair is blocking right now; I'll post a picture of them tomorrow as long as I remember to.

Finally, this evening (while sitting on the couch finishing the gloves) I taught James what the Refresh button on a web browser is used for.

"It's that thing with the two circling arrows*. Next to the red X, that's the Stop button. No, where the browser buttons are. Where the back arrow is. It's between the Home, the picture of the house, and the red X. Okay, you got it. Good."

I've never had to be the techie one before.

*On IE. I'm having download problems and can't get Firefox on my laptop. Probably because the laptop is so old that it predates the written language.

Had myself a merry little X-mas.

The Great Storm of 2008 has now passed, as has 2008. The snow is gone and we've emerged from our holes, blinking in the sunlight, to return to work.

Most of us.

I'm taking some time off. From working, from my day gig, which has been at the Pike Place Market since April. I've really enjoyed it, but the first day that the snow came the buses from my house stopped running I was overwhelmed by relief that I didn't have to go in.

So I never went back. I didn't burn any bridges, I have a lovely mom-like boss who is very understanding (and saw it coming), so I'm okay.

This has been a long time coming. I'm tired, I need the breathing room, and I think I finally learned this year just how bad the SAD componant of my health is. Being outside when things are getting dark, not enough light...yuck. I was coming home in tears since October. I actually really enjoyed the snow: it reflected light into our windows and made everything seem so much more cheerful. I miss it...but I don't miss the fact that the entire city stopped working for two weeks.

However, the reason that I can do this is because of my amazing partner, James. We're living together in Fremont. It's not exactly the neighborhood that we want to be in, but we both love the place itself. Neither of us has ever really been homebodies, but it's easy to enjoy our house now. I feel safe to balance my medication and get my life back together now.

Also, we're online now! So being in contact with life will be a little easier for me.

More later...now that I can!

Save small businesses!

Sorry that I haven't posted for a while. We'll have to save the updates for a while.

In the meantime, here is something important that I got from a dear friend today. I will try to have more links about this up soon.

*****

Hello everyone...

I've never ever sent a wide reaching email to everyone who's on my personal email list before, and I apologize if this is the first email you've received from me in a very long time (or if you don't even remember who I am?)...but this is very important to everyone - as the impact will be great for everyone - business owners and customers alike. Please pass this information along to everyone you know!

As you may or may not know, the CPSIA (Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act) is coming into effect on February 10, 2009. Our soon-to-be-EX-President, GWB already passed it into law and we are now facing an epic battle to save our small businesses!

In a very small nutshell, the CPSIA mandates third-party testing and certification for all toys and goods marketed to children 12 and under. The manufacturer must permanently label each item with a date and batch number. Failure to do so would result in hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of fines for each occurance. (You can read a very good summary of the law at http://www.handmadetoyalliance.org/Home)

Sounds good on the surface, right? Of course! I totally believe in the assurance of safety in the marketplace! However, the wording of the CPSIA is too far-reaching and would result in the removal and destruction of ALL handmade children's goods on market shelves today. You see, when this law takes effect, it will be illegal to sell or even donate inventory manufactured before Feb. 10th without the proper certification in place. It would even be illegal for you to try to sell your used kids clothing on Ebay! As a result, all of these items will be tossed out to fill our landfills - never reaching the hands of even a needy child.

But wait, testing is good, right? Yes! Of course! But consider the impact on your small/micro-business friends who already make handmade toys and kid's clothes responsibly out of known safe materials with standard safety in mind. They are already bound by current laws to create safe products. But, the CPSIA does not distinguish between small/micro businesses and big business. As written, the law encompases each SKU made by the company and requires that each size be tested as well as each color. Add that up and testing will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars - within the reach for huge corporations, but far beyond the capabilities of most small businesses.

As a result of this law, it is speculated that small business funding will be cut, banks will retract loans and businesses will shut their doors since there is no way anyone could run those numbers and come up with a profit! In the Wall Street Journal, Rick Woldenberg was quoted as describing February 10, 2009 as "National Bankruptcy Day" (source: http://www.fashion-incubator.com/archive/national-bankruptcy-day/).

All in all, this will GREATLY impact ALL small companies who make anything for kids under 12 including all handmade clothing, costumes, toys, blankets, diapers and even baby carriers. It will impact parents, grandparents, relatives and friends with kids by, at minimum, ensuring the removal of all unique, handmade items from the shelves of shops, boutiques and stores all across the country.

While I completely believe in product safety and testing to ensure the protection of our children, this act as written will surely force many, if not the majority of small/micro business owners to close their doors and cease the production of the products and further push our economy downward as hundreds of thousands of people flood the already dried-up job market.

We need to ask our Congressmen and Senators to rewrite the CPSIA to support our country's small businesses and exclude all items made in batches of less than 5,000 units per year or manufactured within the USA and trusted countries with established toy safety regimes such as Canada and the European Union and that they all be held exempt from third party testing requirements. If they still feel that testing should be required, then we should ask them to provide free testing services for USA manufacturers and importers from Europe or Canada with revenues less than one million dollars.

I encourage you to read the links below and do your own research before writing to your Congressmen and Senators. After I fully comprehended the impact of such a law, I signed the petitions and emailed my Congressman and Senators right away (using a modified version of the Handmade Toy Alliance letter).

By taking a stand, we can save our country's small businesses. Thank you in advance for your action and support of the handmade community.

Sincerely,

Marlo Miyashiro
Jeweler / Teacher / Mentor
Organizer, EtsyRAIN.com meetupSeattle, WA


marlom.com (jewelry website - day job)
tote2go.com (recycled fabric bags - new line)
imakecutestuff.com (personal blog)
imakecutestuff.etsy.com (etsy shop - crafts)
marlom.etsy.com (etsy shop - jewelry)

James.

James is sitting right next to me, watching me write this. He's refused to read my blog until I write about him.

Look, here he is:

See him? He's right there.

He says to mention that he's really good at "doin' it". Doing what, I'm not sure, but he's great at it. Or so I'm told.

Now he's just told me to go to hell and that we're breaking up.

Anyway, I am deeply in love with this guy and now we're living together.

And that's the short update. Long update comes later. Everything is fabulous* for a change.

Mmkay, must dash.

*His choice of words. Over "fantastic".

3 to 1.

I thought that I'd follow up my over-medication of women with anti-depressants with this:

And what do parents with hyperactive young boys do? They stuff them with Ritalin. They drug them so they’ll sit still and behave. The last time I read a number, Ritalin prescriptions were at least 3 to 1, boys to girls. But I don’t like to look at the numbers because it makes me too sad. It appalls me that parents would feed their kids pharmaceuticals. People managed rambunctious kids for centuries—just take them out to do stuff.

I'm looking forward to reading Kiley's article, even though I don't particularly care for his journalism.

Having just spent the past weekend with Matt's kids and Jinny's son: four young boys, ages 9 to 13, and one girl aged 6. Yep, boys sure do get nutty and bothersome when you keep them inside for hours on a nice -- or not so nice -- day. Enough to drive you mad.

We took them out and let them run around the park for an hour.

Problem solved! Went back, ate lunch, chilled out. It was a great time.

Parents are dumb.