Heart to Blog

Some of you have expressed worry that my recent wave of short posts and missed days is conveying a kind of distance. The main reason that I've only been giving you a few lines is because I still strive to post daily (which, clearly, hasn't been working anyway), but sometimes I'm just crazy busy. Now, I moved craft stuff to its own blog and try to limit talking about it here, but it doesn't always work. The Gnomes have taken over!

So, on that front: I was hit with a big order at the beginning of the Renaissance Festival. Someone who works at the booth with my dad tried to buy my Halloween Witch - at the precise moment when the person who did buy the witch got it! That's pretty exciting for a new shopkeeper, really. So, this gent asked if I could make another witch for him. And, he wanted to know if I could do a Gnome in the colors of his favorite sports team. And, his office is holding a charity auction in November so he wanted four whales, a squid, and a dolphin for the auction. And, he wanted to know if I could make pirate Gnomes (which were already in development for a friend's birthday present).

The Pirate Gnomes this guy wanted were to be gifts for some of his friends. One of them is also a faire employee, and he showed off his Pirate Gnome to everybody. Another faire employee saw it, loved it, and ordered twelve more. September was, by far, my most lucrative month! In addition, someone liked the squids and ordered two of those. That cut into the time I wanted to spend making holiday Gnomes, and honestly, I haven't gotten into the holiday groove yet. A few are done, I just need some sunshine to get them photographed and listed.

Still on this wave, I've been working really really hard on my newest line of Gnomes. I had to learn a new craft for them, and I've been spending a lot of time perfecting it so it will be ready. Also, this new line will be very different than my other Gnomes, and I've been working hard to get the packaging just right too.

On the non-crafty side of things, there has been the kitten fiasco, which you did hear about. The epic Monty issue, which has also been put on another blog so those who want to keep up can and those who don't can simply not go there (I am aware that this blog is not updating on the sidebar. I haven’t figured out what can be done about it yet.). The only thing about that is that I can't separate myself from that situation like I can put it on another blog. The Montyverse will affect this blog, as much as I try to give you, dear readers, the option to stay out of it if you choose. I can't do anything about that. That has been quite a lot of my distance.

There's more. I've been dating a guy, henceforth to be known as Robin (as in Robin Hood, not the better half of Batman), for some seven months. Dating in the sense of dating only, there were no ties, no commitments, really no definition to our relationship at all. This in itself has been a point of struggle for me, mostly because I felt I was becoming a kind of person I never wanted to be. Without going too much into the realm of TMI, let's just say I struggled a lot with this not-quite relationship that had no definition, no label, and no solid investment even though investments were made.

That being said, Robin opened up an interesting conversation last Thursday. He was nervous, but he denied it when I said so. Robin has a close female friend who lives in Ohio, and she regularly gives him very sage advice. The most recent bit seemed to be that he was reluctant to put any kind of definition to our relationship because he's going to school and he doesn't really know how things will be in a year or two when he graduates. He was afraid to give me any kind of hope that there could be something more because of this uncertainty. The Sage told him to stop making decisions for me, which is advice she's given before. I suppose enough became enough, perhaps he was struggling with our lack of definition too.

In any event, we talked. We also learned that both of us had been acting exclusive for the duration of our "just dating" phase and it was high time we put some officiality to it (like my new word?). So, I can now say that I have a boyfriend. My roommates said "it's about time" at the news. It's nice to have moved out of the realm of unsure, really.

So, that's it in a not-so-nutshell. Lots of things have been happening. Lots of my time is spoken for. I also feel like I'm in a far better place today than I was even a week ago.