The First Day πŸ” | Perforated Lines
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⚑ January 12, 2015

The First Day πŸ”

A pear shaped like a buddha.

A pear shaped like a buddha.

Here we are in the sweet center of the vanilla-pear month of January. I’ve been ironing my antique and valuable linens with sweet-smelling spray-on water. The steamy warm scent rising up is food for the soul.

I’ve been living and playing in the digital world for over 20 years now, but ever since my unfortunate firing incident, I’ve not had any real reason to be online any more than once a week, really. I have therefore been spending long stretches ironing old doilies and reflecting on past dreams or listening to the internet radio. It’s just like old times, really.

A pincushion I just made.

A pincushion I just made.

I have gotten a good start on the newly revived Shadow Lawn Press, but it’s rough slogging. Thanks to the brilliance of Jekyll, it’s doable. Doable, but slow. So, I do a little each chance I get, and then I make pretty things, like the pincushion pictured here. It’s no ordinary pincushion, oh no no no.

Thanks to the internet and especially YouTube, you can take a skill – say, sewing – that you might have abandoned forty years ago so you could try to catch up to your peers in the world of business and now that you’ve thoroughly failed to even cover up your tracks with retirement, you can now pick up the old needle and learn how to do it right, thanks to a world of video that is not to be believed.

You can watch a Dior seamstress expertly pin and drape some fabric with great precision for ten minutes or so, and then you can choose to visit with a lady and her daughter in any kitchen in America as they make a dressform from a big plastic bag and a bunch of wet-and-mold strips of tape. It’s very instructive!

I do feel bad that I’m not currently making any money, but the path to self-employment is a windy, overcast one, and it can be a bit dreary in places. It’s also a lonely course haunted with eager teachers, grabbing at you for their own downstream activities, so beware! Listen to the babbling, but only if it’s a clear brook.

I will put up something to sell one of these days, but first I must build the selling platforms and re-purpose many of the old layout files of ours into new-fangled modern-era stuff. It’s all doable. What an ugly word that is – doable.

I have broken my first needle-felting needle on the first day that I got it.

See a pin, pick it up. All the day you’ll have good luck. πŸ”