Oh Good Grief.

Oh lookit!  I finally get my butt into gear and decide to write a blog post and they went and changed it all.  :/  Like I don't have enough trouble figuring out what the hell I am doing.  Let's review!!  I think it took me months and months to figure out how to post pictures.    And then it was a pain in the ass.  I don't know if it's the iphoto silliness or if it's just that the old system was annoying.  Maybe it's me.  It's probably me.  But it is much easier now!!   I'm not saying the changes are bad.  I'm just saying it's gonna take me a bit to get it all figured out.  Could be months.  Or years.  Because while I love chattering on and on, the figuring out of the technical details?  Not so much.  I would rather be sewing.  Or drafting patterns.

Which brings me to my latest idea.  Which isn't so very new as my mother very astutely pointed out to me.

There needs to be someone catering to the plus-sized women a lot more than they are being catered to now.  Oh!  Clothes.  I am talking about clothes here.  I don't really shop for clothes so much myself, I mostly make mine.  But the subject of lack of attractive plus-sized womens' clothing seems to keep coming up in CPaAGG.  I keep thinking, " I could so be fixing this!"  When I told my mom, she pointed out that she had told me 20 years ago that I could make a fortune doing this.  I pointed out that 20 years ago, not many had the intarwebz in their home and I would have had to find a rep, make a line, have the rep sell the line to stores, blahblahblah.  Now?  All I need is a computer and a printer.  I can sell directly to the ladies via the magic of the intarnetz!!  No middle man!  Wholesale prices directly to you!

This is still in the really, really super early planning stages, but for the love of pete, if you are reading this and have input/opinions, please share!!

Tags.  Tags would be the really big thing I can't figure out how to do with this new format.  Boo.  Oh hey!  Found it!  Go me.

Project Bags!

And oh, so very, very many of them!  Okay.  I  call them project bags because I am a knitter.  And that's what we do with them.  Stow one of our 50 bajilliondy projects in them.  But they are good for other stuff too.  Make-up, art supplies, organizing all the crap in your bag.  Whatever.   I have a few that I found flaws on after I got them sewed up, this happens sometimes when dealing with vintage goodies, and I keep thinking I will just list them as very price reduced seconds at some point.  But I keep grabbing them and using them for things.   I should probably stop this or I won't have any to sell.

MsBettiesHandmade

And while we are on the subject,  I also have a shop of vintage finds, MsBettiesVintage

You know what sucks and has absolutely nothing to do with sewing?

Having friends who have cancer. I am too young for this shit. Or that's what I thought. Maybe I'm getting old. (sigh)

My friend Rick has cancer. I know, I know. A lot of people have cancer. But he lives in Buenos Aires and is on their national health care. And is getting his radiation treatments on some kind of pre-Nixon era machine. Which I imagine as looking like something out of a B-grade horror film. Actually, I don't know if he's actually started treatment or not. But he did say that the doctor told him he should sell everything so that he could afford the private treatments on the more-betterer-gooderer machine. :/

So this all makes me go into some kind of whacked-out Mom mode where I want to make him soup and knit him things and junk. I don't know if soup would be edible by the time it got to Buenos Aires. Crap. Am I spelling that right? I thought I was. But spell check don't think so.

Did I mention that Rick is one of my oldest friends? Yeah. I've known him since I was 20 or 21. I forget.

Oh jeez. I left out the point. The point of all of this random muttering is that he has extra expenses now. For medical things. Like colostomy bags. He makes enough to live on, but has no savings, and is pretty much paycheck to paycheck. So what with starting two Etsy shops lately, one for vintage goodies, one for things I've sewn, I am going to attempt to send maybe 10% to him via paypal. We'll see if I can swing that. Cause we be kinda broke right now. But I feel that this is much more spot on than tithing to any church.

Wow.

Sweet Mother of Maude I am so full of blogging fail of late. I last posted something in November? That's just sad. Well, seeing as to how my dad is the only one who read this, I suppose it's not really such a big deal.

What's been going on.... all kinds of stuff really.

I am down another cat. Stinkiecat died a week or so ago. Which wasn't too surprising. He had done nothing but lose weight since Alex died last August. Alex died during Halsted Market Days weekend. Which pretty much makes me want to pretend that Halsted Street Market Days doesn't even exist. It just makes me think of the cat.

But Mark's cats seem to really be warming up to me. Flash has finally figured out that he can come and beg me for love when I go to bed and then come back and get more love when Mark comes to bed. He's cute as hell, but dumber than a box of rocks.

It's odd how often I talk about the cats on this, the Needle for Hire blog.

So yeah. I have been going through the piles of fabric with stuff to sell on etsy in mind. I have so many little project bags cut out and partially put together. I got the first round done and had to order more zippers. I ordered over 100 hundred zippers. That's a whole lot of project bags. And that's just the start of it. I haven't even begun to explore the stacks of fabric that are big enough to make aprons, dresses, whatever... out of.

I'll have to post some pictures when I get some taken.

Spam Sucks

Dang it. I got an email this morning saying there was a comment here on the ol' blog. It was spam. Bastards. There is a special place in hell for people who spam comments on other people's blogs. I am so totally gonna sic my computer programmer geek boyfriend on your ass. So there. Yes. I am so totally 12.

Hmph.

I was just looking at old blog posts. On October 15th, I was quite excited about ComEd having some program that involved them coming and fetching old appliances and hauling them away to recycle. I was very excited about this. I just thought that I should provide an update on that. Manfriend hung around ALLLLLLLL day that day, ( I had to work) and they never never, ever showed up. I even called them. They said the dudes were running late. Hmmph. Whatever. We took off the lid and parked it out by the trash cans. It was gone by midday the next day. But I think ComEd should still give me my $25 rebate. Bastards. They didn't even bother to send some kind of apologetic email. I wish there was another electricity option.

Dad, if you are reading this, you better leave me comments dammit! :P

So yesterday I sent my family an email, saying, "Yo. Can you all use my gmail for email instead of the crappy sbc?" And I got an email back from my dad. Apparently he was bored, and had read every. Single. Blogpost. But left no comments. Which is weird. Because the man will talk your ear off. I want comments golldangit!! Even if it does just end up being a conversation via blog with Dad.

And mom emailed me back through the old email address, with a long, chatty email, saying that all these different emails confused her and she would use the new one. But she didn't. headdesk

Manfriend is all moved in now. The enclosed back porch room is a whole new world! I keep wanting to hang out back there. Who would have thought that it could look so nice? And he still wants to put up bunches of shelves.


What am I doing.... hmmmm.

Well, we have a whole slew of cute little cashmere hats in the works. Those will be listed on Etsy. Cute, knit, cashmere, reversible, what more does one need in a chapeau? I might have to get my butt in gear and actually post some pictures of them when they are done. You know, so Dad can see what they look like.

I have several pairs of pants in the works for Manfriend as well. I got two pair made already. These aren't super-fancy or anything, just jamma pants for hanging around the house. I have also promised him a pair of linen jeans. Have I mentioned how cute he is? Heh. :P Oh hell, what was I talking about?