Weaving hidden tapestries

It's been a while, I know. I haven't had time to focus on blogging (reading or writing) at all, lately, which is a shame since so many of you have such interesting things to say. To be honest, I don't much enjoy the holiday season, for many various reasons--some having to do with being the sort of person who doesn't care much for religion, some having to do with being the sort of person who doesn't care much for being told when and how to send gifts to people I care about--but here we are and I am busy making stuff to sell to stores so that they can sell it to other people, thereby turning the wheels of our great economy, blah blah blah.

My head hurts. Pretty much all the time, lately.

If you could see my studio space, you'd see me practically drowning in color. Great swaths of fabric are everywhere. Some of the fabrics are well-behaved and orderly with tags on them so I know how much there is on the bolt, stacked together by fiber (no mixing cottons and silks here), but others are not so compliant. They spill over the shelves, cascade off the tables, drape from the ironing board. They get into every corner and leave thread trails like sticky spider webs. We're forever pulling loose threads off our clothing and out of the vacuum cleaner where they clog up the brushes.

There are three different types of hand lotion sitting on my computer desk, just so my hands won't get dried out and snag the silks. My three meter long tape measure resides on the floor in a tangled heap, because any attempts to roll it up and keep it somewhere tidy inevitably backfire because then I can't find the damn thing. There is a box full of Japanese incense under my desk, and when I bend down to find a missing pencil or piece of note paper, I catch a whiff of that elegant and sublime aroma. "Reading for pleasure" means getting a new book through inter-library loan that covers a dye or weaving technique I've been trying to research. There's a perpetual stack of reference material by my bed, and I fall asleep sitting up almost every night.

Astrogeek puts up with all of this, probably because some days I remember to stop working and actually cook him a meal.

I've been told it takes 15 years to be an overnight success, which makes me about 3 years overdue. At this point, the best gift I could give my family is for me to be at least successful enough not to be stressing about paying the bills all the time. "How am I going to pay the bills" is the first thing on my mind when I wake up and the last thing on my mind when I go to bed. 18 years of financial instability (tempered with intermittent episodes of gainful employment) can make a person edgy at times. I have almost everything I need to make it all work, to earn a living wage, but there is something missing. I'm not sure what, but it's something important. Gumption? An MBA? A swift kick in the ass? I just don't know.