Yes I’m still alive…

Dearest readers, I’m sure you’ve been wondering…

Or maybe you live in one of the places in the United States that is suffering from too much water or not enough.  The Northwest is burning, the south Central part is flooded, the south eastern part is battening down the hatches for the mother of all storms.  So my little escapades are the last thing on your mind.  Trust me that my little escapades are the last thing on my mind as well.  Life is too cruel for many of you at the moment.

All of my little issues and problems stem from too much going on and not enough time, but really, these are first world problems, I have classes to teach, contractors to manage, a new assistant to train (she is a Godsend) and a tech guy that is researching how to move all my digital things to a new hosting company, blog and store, upgrade the store, and get me into at least 2017, rather than what was created more than 10 years ago.  

I had some lovely photos to show you that in spite of my constant travels, I am managing to finish a couple of projects, my lovely wool tailored jacket that appeared in process in Threads Magazine.  A sweater I’ve been working on for more than a year, nearing completion, just the collar to finish.  Sadly all those lovely photos are still in my phone, and I haven’t the slightest idea how to get them into my computer.  I always just plug the phone into the computer, which recognizes the phone, and then move the files.  Simple.  Except when it doesn’t work.  I tried rebooting everything.  Nothing.  the phone just sits there and charges…  It is on my list to get a new phone, but I don’t think that’s the issue.  So the photos are stuck there, and I can’t show you them, nor all the wonderful photos from the five day garment construction class I just completed at Harrisville.  

I leave for Sievers on Washington Island, WI tomorrow morning at 6am.  I have a limo coming for me, and I have been upgraded to first class into O’Hare.  Yeah me!  I’m going far away from all the death and destruction that seems to be covering more than half the country.  I am afraid for all my wonderful fiber family who are struggling to survive at the moment, maybe even lost their homes and studios.  I’m afraid for all my friends in Florida.  And I have a lot.

Meanwhile, I spent a couple hours mucking out a pond that kept losing water, a voice in my head (probably my late husband) kept yelling at me…  “I taught you this, at the end of the season the pond plants get overgrown and they block exiting water from reaching the next level and the spillways overflow.”  Unable to reach my pond guy, I rolled up my proverbial sleeves and dove in, hacking away at overgrown plants, realizing that indeed the spillway was overflowing back into the side of the yard, I had to remove the rocks and rebuild the side of the pond higher.  Not what I wanted to do right before I left for Sievers.  But I was successful and it all seems to be holding.

Meanwhile, I decided to take advantage of my absence from the studio, and clear out the entire front half and have painter guy come and paint and clean up and install three large glass front bookcases.  My assistant will then come in and move all my books to the new cases before I return from Sievers.  Anyway that’s the plan.  

Meanwhile, the blog and store were down yesterday, thanks to an alert reader who I’m sure was checking to see if I had posted about my trip to Harrisville, which was lovely and successful and I have such great pictures.  They are stuck in my phone…

My tech guy spent about 12 hours here trouble shooting things like why subscribers don’t get my notices when I post, and why I don’t get notices from my eShop when I sell something.  Google thinks I am spam I’m thinking.  Like the kind of spam that doesn’t even show up in my spam box.  I have no idea and neither does he.  The next step is to get off the hosting company I have, move everything to a new and better platform and I’m having an anxiety attack just thinking about it all.  There isn’t enough wine.  

Truth of the matter is, this is all stupid stuff.  There is some serious shit happening in the world right now.  There is threat enough from natural disasters, earthquakes in Mexico, fires in Oregon, Washington and Montana.  California too.  Texas underwater, and Florida about to become history.  And not the good kind of history.  And there are whack jobs threatening the world with nuclear bombs and the newspaper is so depressing I want to stop my subscription.  I never watch television news, there is not enough wine in this world.  

So I am hopefully prepped, and ready to leave in the morning.  You may or may not get notification of this blog post, because well, I don’t know why.  $1000 later, and my tech guy doesn’t know why either.  If you need me, I’ll be hiding out on an island for awhile, under Canada.  Far away from everything.  I want to wake up 10 days from now, fly back into Newark and find out all the destruction was just a dream or an overreactive media.  

Stay safe my friends.