12.29.08
Back to Work for the New Year
Thank goodness, but I finally seem to have solved the phone line problem. It has been pretty awful trying to use dial-up with all the static on it, but it hit rock bottom the other night—to the point I was connecting at such slow speeds web pages wouldn’t open at all. We have two different lines serving two different parts of the house. My husband suspected that one line (the one he installed) might have something wrong with it and that it was causing interference on the other line, which is hard-wired into the house. It was finally dry enough today that I was able to get to the phone box and when I disconnected the homemade wiring job, the line in the bedroom cleared up. And thanks to my having some spare phone cords and connectors, I now have a phone cord running from the bedroom at one end to the bedroom at the other end, where our computers are. Hopefully my husband can put in a new phone line this weekend before we trip over the phone cord in the house and hurt ourselves. Still, after connecting at 4 and 9 kbs, 49.2 is looking awfully sweet.
I have been very busy over the last month making Christmas presents for family. I’ve already told my husband, “not next year.” One, it was too much stuff to make in too short a time. Two, that was time I was using to make stuff that wasn’t making me any money. Three, I anticipate the economy to be worse this time next year. I’ve already declared that next year everyone is getting a small something from the Dollar Tree or the Goodwill and that’s it. One day of shopping and I’ll be done with it.
We’re celebrating New Year with my husband’s family, since mine got Christmas. Once this week is completed, I will be back on a normal schedule and that’s when I plan on hitting my business good and hard. I still have a couple of veils to get put up for sale and I have some silk that I want to make some stoles out of. I have a book on medieval vestments with two different patterns directly from medieval tomb effigies. I plan on replicating at least one in thread embroidery, per the description. I plan on doing the other stole in beadwork, although I’m not sure if I will do the other stole’s pattern or perhaps one that was used on other clothing. If I can get a third stole from the silk, I think I will just do two beaded crosses on either end and keep it a bit more simple.
I also plan on making up an amice and maniple as examples, although I will only sell those by custom order, since they are not often worn anymore. No need to make up a bunch, only to sell one every great once in a while.
The cats are as wild as ever. We’ve joked about naming them Noh and Kwit, since that seems to be all we say to them. The house wasn’t in great shape before them, but they’ve laid it pretty low. I figure on taking all next week to get it back to company-respectable. It has to get cleaner before I can have room to work on anything else!
